You seeing this shit? The shit where every publication on campus except the one good one is fucking snitching on the peeps who just wanna hang out outside, have a good time in the sun, maybe spread around a little permanently reduced lung capacity among a few dozen friends? Maybe it’s naïve of me, but lemme confide—I was shocked. I was disappointed. I’d had the thought that, “Hey, the Daily ain’t so bad, and the FoHo too—they’re on the side of the people, y’know? They can keep a secret.”
Well, what a diddling fool they made me out to be. Not only are they fucking narcs, spilling the beans about those little sunbathing sessions, they’re taking creepshots from fifty feet away and posting them on the web, not even blurring any faces or nothing. Does that count as revenge porn? It’s heart-breaking, is what it is, knowing that you can’t trust your fellow student, that they might tear off that face at any moment to reveal that they’re no friend of yours but a cop, monitoring your every action for any perceived transgression. It’s the motherfucking panopticon, man. I hear a reporter even tried to put students under citizen’s arrest.
The Flipside, on the other hand? We’re with you. We stand with you, always have, so let’s swear an oath, here and now—may the devil take me if I ever break the unnegotiated trust of people I don’t know to speak out for the common good. You know what they say—defy (administration, media, and health guidelines) together, die (in a global pandemic) together.
