Do you like? Site lets college students flirt anonymously online
BY KARA SPAK Staff Reporter/kspak@suntimes.com January 18, 2011 11:38PM
Katelyn Newey, likealittle.com’s moderator at UIC, publicizes the site with notes she puts up through campus that say “Anonymous flirting?” | Keith Hale~Sun-Times
Updated: April 30, 2011 4:45AM
Northwestern got it from Stanford, Roosevelt University from the University of Michigan. University of Illinois at Chicago connected through Hope College, DePaul through Iowa State.
Likealittle.com, the latest social networking site to sweep America campus-by-campus, has taken off locally in the last month. Started Oct. 25 by Stanford University students, the site facilitates anonymous flirting in a “missed connection” format. The site describes itself as a “flirting-facilitator platform,” a place where anyone can “compliment and chat about potential crushes you see around you.”
At the University of Chicago, that means messages like “At Kuvia: Female, Brunette. Gray shorts with pink trim over gray leggings. Your very appealing mix of cute and hot made getting up at 5 AM that much easier :)”
For students where nothing is really meaningful unless it is published online, the website fills a space where posters can put themselves out there under the safe blanket of total anonymity. Depending on who is looking at Like a Little it’s either the new Facebook, a pathetic waste of time or an amusing diversion floating in cyberspace somewhere in between stupid and the next big thing.
“My generation has trouble even talking to each other, let alone flirting,” said Jeff Verenski, a DePaul freshman political science major. “Most people just laugh at it. A few people have used it. It is addicting.”
Chicago’s Like a Little campus coordinators all learned about the site from friends at other schools. They contacted Evan Reas, the founder, who signed off on them publicizing and moderating the site at their own schools.
For Katelyn Newey, a 23-year-old pre-med student at University of Illinois-Chicago, publicizing the site meant sticking Post-its with “Anonymous Flirting!” and the website’s address around campus. She also distributed the information in biology lectures of 300 students. “It’s something kind of spontaneous and random and anonymous,” she said. “Kids these days are always trying to pass the time at the cafeteria or in the gym.”
The website bans sexist, harassing or demeaning comments. Newey sees the anonymous positivity as a way to bring her commuter campus closer together.
“It’s by no means an online dating website, it’s a fun way of flirting,” she said. “I think the anonymous factor is really what makes it interesting. It’s a weird, anonymous way of getting people’s attention.”
Northwestern was the third school in the country and the first in Illinois to get Like a Little. Michael Haapaniemi, a freshman industrial engineering major, saw the site through a Stanford friend and set up a Northwestern chapter.
Haapaniemi said he and his Northwestern friends were brainstorming ways to market the site when a few Facebook mentions did the work for them.
“It just took off on its own,” he said. “In big classes where everyone is on the computer I’ll see people on Like a Little. People go to the website because they want a laugh. It’s a way for people to get creative and post something funny for the rest of us to read.”
For Avery Ash, the site’s Roosevelt University coordinator, the enemy of Like A Little was winter break, which killed off a lot of the site’s momentum at her school.
“We’re trying to get it back up there,” she said.
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