Friends, it’s that glorious time of the year again.

No, I don’t mean the holiday season, but rather St. Thomas’ perennial social media pastime that is bound to get both laughs and blushes.

I am referencing the anonymous social media group phenomenon.

Every year, the revival of these anonymous confession pages take St. Thomas’ bandwidth by storm, spreading through freshmen dorms while still drawing upperclassmen back for more. Though a few years have passed since one of the most memorable secret admirer sites surfaced, this always-interesting distraction continues to be an Internet hotspot for St. Thomas students.

The trend’s origin seems to come from 2010, my freshman year, with the now-terminated social media website called “LikeALittle.” The site, created for flirting and compliments, had branches for individual college communities. When posting, you would take the identity of a fruit (kiwi, apple, etc.) as an anonymous username while you talked about, or sometimes with, your secret crush.

After LikeALittle fell off the map and ceased to exist, the spree of Facebook pages began appearing and disappearing as the university tried to crack down on said “hopeless romantics.” The university targeted the Facebook group UST Confessions, pressuring its creator to abandon the page last year. Since then, UST Confessions as well as a new page, UST Crushes, have revamped their work with this new semester and new admirers.

For the most part, I find the groups to be comical but also increasingly important for our St. Thomas community, feeding our generation’s face-to-face communication issues.

I’ve never personally posted on one of the pages, but I do admire a lot of those who do. For the record, I’m not referring to the overly obscene or provocative posts. Those may account for some quick laughs, but nobody’s day is made after reading how bad some anonymous dude wants to take them back to their dorm. It’s creepy.

However, I do think the genuine “secret admirer” posts are both entertaining and create an overall positive vibe at St. Thomas. My admiration goes out to the people posting genuine compliments about their classmates. While you may not feel comfortable approaching someone you don’t know very well in person, the kind words surely do not go unnoticed granted they view the site.

On a campus that some days seems to be very “cliquey,” I think this is a tool for people to say something kind to a semi-stranger without feeling ridiculous or out of their league.

It’s obvious that St. Thomas does not want its good name tied to something it cannot fully control. That’s why I think we’ll continue to see attempts to intimidate the operators and shut down the pages that do not distinguish themselves as separate from the university.

While these pages are like the untamed wild west, I think the university should leave them to regulate themselves. In the end, it’s all in good fun and page operators know where the line for regulating posts should be drawn.

As for the users, while your comments may make your crush’s day, take the real initiative and talk to them in person. It’s pretty obvious that if you don’t take the next step, all it will ever be is a Facebook post, so why not give it a try? While I think the Facebook page is mostly a good thing, it also shows us how detached and timid our culture is. We hide behind our computers and our anonymous posts just to give someone a simple compliment.

But on the plus side, if everyone is too shy to actually talk to the pretty girl or handsome guy, you’ll look like Casanova for just saying, “You look beautiful today.”

I’m sure that anything kind you say over the Internet will surely sound better coming out of your mouth.

Alex Goering can be reached at goer8777@stthomas.edu.