“Now that we’re all in person again, we realize there are so many things we missed out on seeing last year,” said Ash Saple, a 17-year-old junior at Hamilton Southeastern High School, in Fishers, Ind.
At Ash’s school, there have been accounts capturing good parkers, bad parkers, cute outfits, shoes, fast walkers, slow walkers and red-haired students. Compared to the spicy rumors shared by fictional students (and teachers!) on “Gossip Girl,” the images are rather tame. (Even when you take into account the odd accounts that delight in showing students’ feet under bathroom stalls.)
Ash herself runs an “affirmation” account, where she makes and posts funny, glass-half-full memes that play on her school’s inside jokes and culture. Her first post showed a car parked off-center in a school lot. “I will not end up on @hsebadparking,” the affirmation read.
The students behind these accounts say they are mostly a harmless trend, predicated on the novelty of being in the same physical space as their classmates again. There is also a poignancy to the accounts; as many students head out for winter break amid a national surge in Covid-19 cases, there is some uncertainty about whether in-person instruction will resume in January.
“On your computer in your bedroom, you can’t see people napping and you don’t see how badly people park their cars because no one left their house,” Ash said. “There are so many things that you forget about that are just normal things that we’re now able to notice.”