Whether you like it or not, a new social media platform has come to Trinity. ‘Sidechat’ launched on campus on the 30th January after being successfully rolled out across universities in the US and UK, and seemed to dominate conversation for the next twenty-four hours (albeit mainly people asking what it was). This was in large part due to their marketing. Playing on the tropes of the ever-hungry, ever-broke college student, those who signed up were offered free doughnuts and €10 to post about it on Instagram. But the app also relies on another student-stereotype: the student in search of their “authentic self”. 

Users of the app post – mainly memes – to a communal feed, and can “upvote” posts to escalate them to the top of others’ screens. Sidechat’s selling point is that this is all done anonymously. Its founders explicitly link this anonymity with the concept of authenticity, stating that “all posts, comments, and messages are anonymous, offering users the freedom to be their most authentic selves.” Supposedly, then, “authenticity” – the elusive concept of being true to one’s core self – is found at college not through academic, social or cultural exploration, but via the memes we post from our homes (or, as many Sidechat posts would suggest, the middle of a lecture). 

Despite the initial excitement, Sidechat does not seem to have taken off at Trinity as it did overseas. To call it a failure would be harsh; the most popular posts seem to have between 300 and 800 ‘upvotes’ and the feed is populated fairly regularly throughout the day. However, as social media researcher Ysabel Gerrard told the New York Times, “anonymous apps are notorious for rapidly rising and falling in popularity.” With 20,000 students at Trinity, engagement with – from the looks of it – roughly 5% of College is not a skyrocket to success, by any means. Indeed, it is nothing in comparison with its usage at American colleges. But aside from accomplishing its usership goals, has Sidechat met its supposed aim to foster authenticity among students? 

Logging onto the app, one is doubtful. Memes seem to use the same formulas over and over, which is increasingly obvious when all the topics stem from the same collegiate inspiration. Whilst there is an initial pleasure in seeing your everyday experience distilled into one long stream of jokes, there is also a sense of mind-numbing repetition. Further, the total anonymity makes any engagement with the app feel like shouting into the void, if the void consisted of arts students with a vendetta against queueing single-file for the Perch. The app has not been a gateway into raw honesty or, as some hoped, salacious confessions, but rather seems to function as a collective meme-sharing page. Though it may be too early to write it off completely, Sidechat is clearly not a platform for true “authenticity”. Perhaps it is time to ask whether this was even a wise goal to begin with. 

As Sidechat’s mission statement shows, authenticity has become a buzzword online. It is extolled and ultimately monetised by influencers, who demonstrate uniqueness through quirky “photo dumps” or splinters of vulnerability between sponsored posts. However, it is not only extolled online. I – it is also a cornerstone of the college experience, with some people (who might not realistically find gainful employment through their degree) going to university to figure out who they really are. Discovering not only your likes and dislikes, your talents and foibles, but also trying to come to terms with who you are when potentially removed from the family and friends you’ve grown up with is what further education is all about. Authenticity is also a concept used to label others, deeming people “fake” because presumably they are hiding their true self under another, outward personality. But is there really any such thing as an “authentic self”? 

The concept of authenticity implies a stability of personal identity which, in my view, simply does not exist. If it does, then it should certainly not exist at college. It seems to contradict the very purpose of further education: learning from others, absorbing new ideas and changing constantly because of them. If we are always looking inside to see who we truly are (in an attempt to then project this outwards), then we might miss the whole point of going to university in the first place, which is to evolve. Authenticity seems an admirable goal, but on closer inspection it may result in an eddying stagnation when we are so busy trying to learn how to be ourselves that we don’t see the joy in growing into someone else. 

Sidechat, then, exemplifies the odd obsession with authenticity today, and the desire to replicate that online. It argues that young people will be more true to themselves under the shroud of anonymity, rather than encouraging them to discover a variety of selves – and voices – they might actually want to acknowledge publicly, even if it is only to joke about the air bubble on the Ussher staircase.