The Demise of Juicy Campus

Juicy Campus has officially shut its doors to the college gossipers and frightened socialites who loved and hated their presence on the site. 

The website began in August of 2007 as a place to make anonymous postings about everyone and everything on college campuses. It took off this past fall as freshmen joined new colleges and needed a way to vent about the RA who was drunk all of the time, the easiest girl on campus, or that hot guy next door about whom nobody knew anything. 

I was subjected to my own Juicy Campus post when the guys I have my work study with decided it would be funny to see how many views I’d get. They posted something about each of us and we sat in complete shock by how the number of views in a matter of hours had doubled, tripled, and quadrupled. 

To be on Juicy Campus was an embarrassment in every social circle, but once something was posted, there was no convenient “x” to press and get rid of it. That was the rule of the site, anonymous postings that you couldn’t delete. If someone said you ate food from trash cans and had friends who were rats, anyone could read the post till the end of time, the internet, or thankfully as we just saw this last week the end of Juicy Campus. 

Many rumors have been flying around about why Juicy Campus actually closed. According to the press release, the lack of ads and the worsening economy was its demise. Revenue had been a problem for a long time, and when no other solution was found the website decided the best option was to shut down. 

For all of you gossip hungry, anonymous posting addicts, the College Anonymous Confession Board — anyone trying to find juicycampus.com will be directed to the blog spot for the College anonymous site and a link to collegeacb.com —  seems to have stepped in to fill the void. According to the website owner and operator Peter Frank, a freshman at Wesleyan University, College ACB purchased the domain rights for two months to the Juicy Campus site.  Frank made it clear that the two sites, while similar, were not affiliated. The first post on the Emerson College page of this site did not show much faith in another phenomenon. 

“First post on the new Juicy Campus. Well, I predict this place will fizzle and die faster than flaming kitten thrown in ice water. Lets see.” 

Are the online college gossip days gone? Some would hope so. But others I feel still secretly miss the thrill of someone finding you important enough to post about or even the safe venting space that can’t be accomplished on something as public as Facebook.

-- Emily Gonzalez