EDITORIAL: FU Makeouts Embarrasses Students, Fordham

While most of us would agree that college is a time to test the waters of freedom and adulthood, a popular Twitter account called FU_Makeouts is stifling many students’ desire to test such waters.

The account, which has posted over 145 pictures through individual tweets, shares photos of Fordham students participating in PDA at off-campus locations such as bars and parties for its 1,200 followers to read, favorite and retweet.

Tweets, in addition to the attached snapshots, often include a corny caption that pokes fun at the behaviors of the participants or makes a joke about the level of creepiness required to angle the photograph perfectly.

While we at The Fordham Ram do not condemn the actions of the photographed students, we are uncomfortable with the attitudes other students exhibit in response to these photos.

One of these attitudes is commonly referred to as “slut-shaming” where a double-standard is placed upon women for this kind of behavior.

This is the result of students finding the actions of female students as deviating from traditional standards of sexual behavior, especially in the public forum. FU_Makeouts encourages this in its description, which reads “Because PDA is practically a core requirement… Embarrass your friends. Send us your pics.”

While the account calls all the actions embarrassing, students’ receptions turn out to be much more two-sided: Male students are commended by their peers, while females are often degraded, seen as acting “inappropriately” by engaging in such “mistakes.” This is most likely a result of a lack of context of the submitted photographs. FU_Makeouts makes the incorrect assumption that these intimate moments on camera are always mistakes.

This, of course, is not always the case — that is until it is shared on Twitter for everyone to see. In the case of so-called “mistakes,” the gravity of an action changes completely when it is captured on camera and posted on the Internet, where it will stay in some form or another forever.

Doing so on the part of FU_Makeouts is unfair to the students involved and is an invasion of privacy, regardless of the context surrounding the moments captured.

Another aspect is the humiliation these students have to face when their friends and acquaintances recognize them and then have the ability to retweet the image, with the friend’s Twitter handle. With employers and even family members browsing social media sites, is a picture of a kiss one night at a bar really what a boss or parent needs to see?

FU_Makeouts has also received attention outside of Fordham from news outlets such as nymag.com. Is FU_Makeouts and the catty behavior it supports the image of our school we want to portray?

The fact that we, the students, are the ones spying on our peers and sending their private moments to a public website is wrong. One of their latest posts includes a picture of what looks like a couple kissing on campus, but it was taken from someone hiding inside a bush. Have we really stooped so low to go to such extreme lengths, just to post a picture of two people kissing?

We at The Fordham Ram see FU_Makeouts as an outlet which seeks to put down Fordham’s student body, a form of bullying in itself. While FU_Makeouts asks students to “embarrass your friends,” doing so by submitting a photograph to this Twitter account certainly blurs the line of what a “friend” really is.