For UoB students like me who are now in their final year, we have had to endure the ups and downs of the infamous confession page ‘Brumfess.’ This was a staple of my first and second-year experience, updating me on the ins and outs of university life – from where the best study spaces are, to the estate agents to avoid.

While Brumfess served as a confession and advice page, its partner site, Brumble (a pretty obvious pun on Bumble), covers all things relationships. It was the place for people to post about campus crushes, relationship advice, help discovering their sexuality, or casual hookups. Both Brumfess and Brumble have been on a hiatus since August… but they have finally returned to grace our Facebook feeds with a ludicrous amount of anonymous content.

As a child of the Gossip Girl era, I would love to say that I am over the moon for these pages to be back. Gossip Girl was everything I wanted to be, I was desperate to be like Serena Van Der Woodsen, swanning around a university campus with a horde of anonymous male admirers; but maybe the reality is not as idealistic as we all hoped.

For many people, the pages can be helpful, especially regarding questions around sexuality and gender as people can receive advice from commenters who have been in similar positions, helping to establish a real sense of community across a campus which at times feels so isolating.

The flip-side of this, however, is the sense people may get of being constantly surveilled. A trip to the library is no longer just a chance to study, it is an opportunity for someone to spot you and later, anonymously post about you. This is made all the worse if you happen to be wearing something distinctive or recognisable – why else would you bother buying a player layer with your sport on it or a collection of niche laptop stickers and tote bags?

It is these posts that perhaps give the seemingly-harmless pages a more sinister reputation. People that feel constantly harassed by the confession pages may be made to feel uncomfortable on a campus which should be welcoming. This is even more of a problem with people who post anonymously about others they have seen in the gym. I cannot think of anything worse than discovering once I am home from a workout that someone felt the need to watch me enough to have noticed, and recorded, such recognisable features of me. Even if no one recognises that it is you, it must still feel incredibly objectifying and would significantly impact your experience at the gym.

Similarly, Brumfess can often become a space for people to air their dirty laundry, whether that be about societies, relationships or friendships that have broken down. Again, while this might not be widely recognisable to the student population, it must be devastating for the person who is the intended recipient of the post – these are usually issues that should be worked out in private, not in the public sphere of Facebook. There have been multiple times where I have had to do a double-take when reading the Facebook page, terrified that someone I know has written a post about me and even after realising it has nothing to do with me, the initial dread takes a while to wear off.

This is not to say that we should not welcome the return of these pages. They are an integral part of the university experience and are duplicated at universities across the country – why should Birmingham students be the ones to miss out? But we just need to be more responsible in the way that we post and consume content on these websites, making sure that we are not overstepping boundaries and verging on encouraging predatory behaviour on campus. The rebirth of Brumfess and Brumble gives us a new opportunity to create an entertaining, inclusive group for University students and the only hope I have is that it stays that way, rather than devolving into the dystopian-world of Gossip Girl where privacy is non-existent and boundaries do not exist.

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