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Like so many other freshmen, my first real exposure to the University of Michigan experience was the U-M student Snapchat story — a shared social media feed anyone with a U-M email could view and post on. Anxious about meeting new people, I posted my class schedule and residence hall placement (East Quad, forever the best residence hall), hoping to make new friends before I even arrived at the University.
I quickly gained and talked to several new Snapchat friends, mainly ones who also had the pleasure of living in East Quad. In particular, I argued with one girl over Taylor Swift’s albums (who doesn’t like 1989?!). I was confident that I would be able to create deeper connections with these same people once the school year actually started. However, I never actually ended up physically meeting any of the people I talked to on Snapchat. Despite so many of them living in the same residence hall as me, I never encountered or recognized them. However, I quickly forgot about these connections.
Still, during the first few weeks of college, I scrolled through the story daily. There, I found several posts from students detailing their experiences with orientation, their dorms and the food. From my feed, I learned that Markley had roaches, that crazy preachers were common on campus and that math here was almost impossible to go through.
As the year went on, however, the story began to lose its relevance. After all, I had already found my friends, mapped out the campus geography and learned about campus life in general. What was the point of the story?
There was nothing worthwhile in it anymore; it now almost exclusively consisted of students attempting to sell their overpriced football tickets. I continued to mindlessly scroll through it between bouts of studying for finals and was rather disappointed by the lack of unique content. However, this summer, something finally caught my eye.
Someone had posted several selfies on the story. Alongside these selfies were several outlandish, usually self-congratulatory statements. One post proudly claimed, “Mother Nature has granted me two things, dastardly good looks and the heavy weight on my shoulders to save the human species.” Another boasted, “I go the extra mile in fashion just like my academic works.” Still, one more stated, “Many people ask (me) … ‘Why do you dress so seductively?’.” Alongside these were several other political posts expressing support for leftist policies and candidates.
All of these posts were created by one user. These posts soon went viral on both X and Instagram. As ridiculous as they were, I couldn’t help but excitedly wait for his next post. The posts were an odd but funny relief from the usual routine content on the story — I knew I needed to meet their creator.
LSA junior Damien Baldwin, the man behind these posts, is a recent transfer to the University. Baldwin describes his posts as a form of venting.
“A lot of my posts deal maybe not directly, but in large part, with a lot of socioeconomic, political factors that are happening in the United States,” Baldwin said. “And it’s more so a method for me to communicate and be authentic with other people. That’s a big thing for me: authentic human connections.”
Baldwin stated that the tone of his posts were inspired by political shows, most notably “Secular Talk” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” which he grew up watching. However, he noted that he was more left-wing than those political commentators.
“I’m at least deeply inspired by the methods they use and the format that they presented,” Baldwin said.
Like both shows, Baldwin evidently wanted to reach a more grounded, working-class audience, and he found Snapchat to be the perfect platform to do so. After all, what other venue reaches almost all U-M students?
When asked about his more outrageous posts, Baldwin said that his content was “30% truth, 70% exaggeration.”
He explained, “(The exaggerations were) getting people to interact, respond. And you know, some people say ‘rage bait.’ I don’t really like that word. But yeah, that’s definitely a big reason why it blew up.”
Still, he added that his political views were 100% genuine.
LSA junior Noah Gulli also achieved fame on the Snapchat story in the months leading up to the fall semester of my freshman year. He posted several videos of himself walking through the campus at midnight, sometimes trekking as far as Bursley to Alice Lloyd. However, Gulli disagrees with Baldwin’s approach to the Snapchat story, believing that his posts are too political and too frequent.
Despite their differences, I actually found that Gulli and Baldwin held similar opinions on the Snapchat story. For one, they both thought the type of content on the platform should shift.
Gulli believes that the story should be used to promote clubs and events for students. He recalled that he had only found out about the yearly snowball fight because of his Snapchat feed.
“I kind of liked having celebrities on there, where you could look forward to something, or maybe like a daily meme page. If somebody gave a new story and you had something like that, or maybe like contests, or I don’t know, something to make me look forward to looking through it,” said Gulli
I found myself agreeing with both Baldwin and Gulli; the Snapchat story seems like massive wasted potential. Used well, the platform has more reach than even advertising on the Diag. Right now, however, it’s cluttered by advertisements for football tickets. I’m surprised by how few clubs advertise their events there, but maybe that’s for the best: We’ve already seen what advertising for football tickets has turned the story into.
Even if you don’t like Baldwin or Gulli’s posts, you can’t deny that they stand out. Both realized that the Snapchat story could be something more, and their genuinely creative usage of the platform made them campus celebrities. I want more of these posts — something that makes me look forward to scrolling through my Snapchat feed. The Snapchat story should look less like eBay and more like the Diag. Of course, the Diag itself does have some advertising, but it’s always filled with something unique: singers, dancers, crazy preachers (Sister Cindy, anyone?) and protesters. I never get bored walking through it; I shouldn’t get bored scrolling through my Snapchat feed.
Other student-made platforms, such as YikYak and Reddit, are able to cultivate a distinct community despite having a smaller reach than the story. I don’t see why the Snapchat story wouldn’t be able to form a community similar to these. And, unlike YikYak and Reddit, most Snapchat accounts are not anonymous, allowing people to recognize you in real life.
Still, Baldwin and Gulli found that the Snapchat story was not ideal for making new friends, even though both said they have been recognized several times on campus.
“You have people taking pictures with you and everything on the street,” Baldwin said. “But then at the end of the day, those are not real human connections in any meaningful way…In Snapchat, you’re not gonna find true human connection.”
Though he did go to some parties advertised in the story, Baldwin ultimately decided they weren’t for him. When I asked Gulli if he had met any friends through the story, he answered:
“I wouldn’t say real friends.”
The Snapchat story is similar to the Diag in this aspect, too: you may meet someone at the Diag, but you likely won’t get close to them. As previously stated, I didn’t make any true friends from Snapchat. However, I think it’s unfair to blame Snapchat for this; after all, I didn’t make an effort to keep in contact with them. The story, like the Diag, could be a great platform for finding friends, but it’s ultimately up to you to develop that friendship by continuously talking and meeting with them.
When I first joined The Statement, I recognized the name of one of my fellow staffers. It turned out she was the girl that had argued with me about Taylor Swift on Snapchat. We recognized each other and recalled our conversation, before wishing each other luck on our articles. Perhaps the Snapchat story did help me make a friend.
Statement Columnist Ian Joo can be reached at joonebug@umich.edu.
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