Occidental students took to the Academic Quad Jan. 25 to hand out donuts in exchange for one thing — downloading Fizz, a social media platform with personal online communities for individual colleges. Over the past week, students have taken to the Fizz app to anonymously share memes and posts that are similar to Tweets.
Since its launch at Occidental, the app has experienced a surge in popularity along with ample backlash. Fizz allows students to upload all sorts of posts, such as polls, confessions, upcoming campus events and more. One feature is the ability to upvote or downvote another student’s post, similar to Reddit. The posts that garner the highest number of upvotes get ranked on the app in a section titled “Top.” As of Feb. 5, a confession that reads “Like if you have ever thought about transferring from Oxy even once- genuinely need to know if it’s just me” has the most upvotes across the app, surmounting over 595 upvotes.
Fizz users all have two things in common: the school they attend, and they post under the name “Anonymous.” Only students with their verified college email can make an account on the app and enter a school’s community. Users can post to their college’s feed and directly message their classmates — all anonymously. According to the app, Fizz is not affiliated with Occidental and assures its users that anything a student posts will not be linked back to the school.
Sophie Goldberg (sophomore) was one of three students hired by Fizz to be launch leader ambassadors. According to Goldberg, employees of Fizz began to approach Occidental students about the app back in December. Goldberg said she was approached by Fizz via email and had to attend three meetings over Zoom to complete training for the role.
“My role was to recruit like 10 other people to be ambassadors. And basically, the ambassadors would hand out donuts and go around with the wagons and try to get people to download the app,” Goldberg said. “We all had an app download goal. And if we reached that goal, we got a bonus pay.”
Goldberg said her paid role for the app has concluded and was only necessary to facilitate the launch.
According to Fizz’s Instagram, which has 81 followers as of Feb. 5, the app intends to build a community unique to Occidental and to share and learn what is happening on campus. In the past, Occidental students have attempted to utilize various platforms to connect with fellow peers such as the app Yik Yak, GroupMe group chats and confession pages on Instagram. Yik Yak is another anonymous social media platform for college campuses. Zahir Choudhry (junior) said he only downloaded Fizz because his friend was hired to work for it and does not use it anymore because there is basically no difference between Fizz and Yik Yak.
Aidan Saeed (sophomore) and Damarian Parker (sophomore) said they both downloaded Fizz to post for fun, but have since deleted the app.
“It was fun while it lasted and, you know, seeing different opinions and stuff like that. But honestly, there’s no point, especially [when there is] Yik Yak,” said Saeed.
After two to three days of using Fizz, Parker and Saeed said they were directly messaged through the app to be moderators. Their role was to review reported posts and see if there was content such as hate speech, xenophobia, homophobia or misinformation about names, according to Saeed. In addition to deleting posts, Saeed said they were required to post 40 times every day.
According to Saeed, the two of them took a crash course, or training module, and were told they were officially moderators. Parker and Saeed said they believed they were going to be paid, but it ended up being a voluntary position. According to Parker, the two of them completed the same training that paid moderators did. Saeed said they both quit after they realized they were not going to be paid.
“There’s a few people I know who are [paid] moderators who just recently got fired,” Saeed said. “I think it’s on decline because I don’t think it’s popular enough.”
Posts quickly surfaced on the app depicting Black stereotypes, according to a Jan. 25 Instagram post by the Occidental Black Student Alliance (BSA).
“The Occidental Black Students Alliance (BSA) is absolutely repulsed by disgusting racist behavior coming from the Private Channel on the Fizz App,” BSA said in the Instagram post. “After only one full day of being active, the Fizz app descended into a space filled with Anti-Black racism, which seriously harms members of OXY’s small Black community. Three Anti-Black posts are featured on the official Instagram of the Fizz App of the highest-rated posts.”
The anonymity on Fizz means that students who post harmful messages cannot be traced.
“All users on Fizz’s Occidental channel are holders of OXY email, and these posts collectively attracted hundreds of likes,” BSA said in an Instagram post. “Anonymous racism on the Fizz app is still racism in the Occidental community.”
The question of if the app will fizz out or recover its hype is still in the air. Saeed and Parker both said they think the app will not last.
“I think it’ll die relatively soon,” Saeed said. “I think it was like a big launch and everybody was super excited that first day. But I think it was overhyped.”
Contact Emma Cho at echo2@oxy.edu
