Introduction

Hope everyone knows me, for those who don't - “WHAT ROCK ARE U LIVING UNDER?! Go get some help”.

Setting up this lovely little confessions-page has been one of the best experiences of my college life. What started as a casual idea during my first-year summer has now become one of the notable pages in our college community (hehe).

It all began on that random summer day in the lockdown-era when my friend and I thought that creating our own confessions page would be a great idea. The old page existed but it was kind of dead. I tried submitting a few confessions to it, but none were posted for months, which made me lose interest.

And so, "Confessions 2.0" was born. We spent a week researching how other IITs managed their pages, including the type of content they posted, the Google form fields they used, and their designs. Then we made a Google form with the necessary fields and a simple-but-lame logo for the page.

Setting-up

But do you know the best way to get noticed as a confessions page?

✨ Write a targeted and fake, love confession about someone!✨

And just watch their friends flood the comment section to tag them and make a ruckus, boosting the post's reach and bringing in new followers to the page. And boom it worked, and we started receiving a few real confessions. Of course along with that, a flood of obviously fake confessions also came in, talking about random stories unrelated to college. And I had to delete them all and change the form settings to be exclusively available within the institute.

Then after some time, the page went silent again. I started writing once in a while to keep the page going and remind people of the page’s existence. At one point, the page looked more like my personal blog. I tried every idea to keep it active, like posting stories with questions such as "Suggest a pickup line" or "What will you do if you’re going to die in 10 minutes?" and so on. These got some good responses but weren’t quite enough.

Eventually, we started getting slow but consistent confessions, at least one in every 3-4 days. Yet I kept contemplating the decision of starting this page the entire semester, and then things started changing when the college moved offline.

Finding stability

For those who don’t know, this event was planned by the Cultural Committee as part of the 2020 batch’s freshers' night. A girl would gift a chocolate to a boy of her choice, and a boy would present a rose to a girl. The ones with the most chocolates and roses would be announced, but COVID restrictions poured cold water on those plans. So, I marketed the event virtually, devised plans to execute it, and announced it. And..., despite the planning, there was meagre response from people, and I was simply clueless. The event ended up in silence with no announcements, and I just conveyed the results to the respective people on DMs. Thankfully, no one ever asked about the event later - saving me from the embarrassment, phew.

But the silver lining of this dark cloud was that the page gained some traction among the masses. Any new confession is a topic of conversation among students. Public conversations and couple fights happened through counter-confessions, turning the page into a mini-campus newspaper. I couldn’t be more proud. People wrote such beautiful poetry for their loved ones. I wonder why such humans don’t appear on Udaan. (By the way, DM confessions have the best poems, but that's a secret. Shhhh.)

Now.. try to guess, what’s the downside of being a popular page? Controversies!! Yes, they spread faster now. All campus wars just originate in the comment sections and spread offline, be it between batches, communities, genders, or individuals. People get triggered and write extremist confessions about their opponents. And… I had to work nights on such days, filtering out derogatory words or sentences, sometimes discarding entire confessions, turning off comment sections, so on and so on. I usually try to post an equal number of confessions from both sides to maintain neutrality, yet some still accuse the page of being biased. Well, I never cared much about that; it's all about perspective.

Though my evil side sometimes posted unfiltered confessions to watch the campus burn, I deleted them before much damage could happen. Sometimes it was too late and seriously though, those incidents still haunt me.

All these negative things aside, let me share with you a few specific times with the page, that I as an admin, enjoyed and remember the most.

Highlights

✨Falling ill and being in HC for two days✨

Yet, I posted the confessions from my bed, but a little less frequently (I would say that it was out of boredom, rather than dedication). I entrusted a few friends to share the workload once I reached my bearing limit. And on Valentine's Day, we hit the 100th confession of the period with an appreciative confession to me at the end - 🥹 (Thank you, whoever you are).

Another special month was again February, but of 2024... The traffic this time was even higher than that of 2023. Why? Because this time, February was more than just about Valentine's Day. It was - the month when people got fed up with the caterer, the month of Tirutsava cancellation, and the month of the post-GBM uprising. Haha! People hurled stones at each other, ranted grievances, and more. I was once again stuck in the dilemma of taking a side or being neutral, I was literally at the edge of getting cancelled, but luckily the fights were silenced out once I stopped posting them (superior solution).

And yeah, how can I forget about the Confessions Wrapped 2024!! I fell in love with numbers for a couple of weeks, tabulating the content, running analytics, compiling visual graphs, highlighting trends. Hehe, analysing human behaviour through numbers is interesting, no wonder there’s a dedicated club for such stuff. And designing the final video took a couple of days. To be honest, I still go back and check the video and feel proud of my little accomplishment, haha.

Conclusion

Here’s to all the followers who kept the page alive and vibrant. Your confessions, comments, and interactions had been the bread and butter of the page and my enthusiasm. You've made it a place where students can express themselves, seek advice, and sometimes just have a good laugh. I hope the page continues to thrive and grow. I believe it will remain a cherished part of our campus life, till batches to come.

Thank you for being part of this incredible journey with me. Farewell for now, and keep the confessions coming!!