An anonymous app allows students to submit inappropriate pictures.
Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a weekly series examining social media accounts both affiliated and not affiliated with Ohio University.
There are some things you can’t unsee on Unseen, a mobile application new to Ohio University this fall that features pictures of women’s breasts and butts, posts of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs.
The app’s premise is simple: anonymously submit pictures with — usually — no consequences. That’s led the photo stream associated with OU to fill up with everything from partial nudity to pictures mocking individuals.
The app was first introduced to students at Texas A&M University in May, and is now at dozens of university campuses nationwide. Unseen is at five campuses in Ohio, including Bowling Green State University, Ohio State University, Kent State University and Miami University.
Users can post their own pictures and “up-vote” and “down-vote” other posts. They can also comment on their own posts, and other posts, anonymously.
On Monday, one of the posts with the most up-votes was of a girl who was covering her breasts who appeared to be showering. It had more than 400 up-votes.
Michael Schramm, one of the app’s co-founders, recently told USA TODAY College the anonymous photo sharing service is a place for “debate, discussion and collaboration.”
“It allows you to share your thoughts and beliefs, and controversial topics, without feeling the repercussions of it,” Schramm said. “What you share today (on Facebook), you may not want to claim five to 10 years down the road.”
Schramm and representatives from Unseen’s parent company Breach Inc. didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
Users must agree to be respectful, and to not post pornography or sexually suggestive content once the app is downloaded on an iPhone or Android phone. But at OU, those rules are broken. Constantly.
“Smash or pass?” a post asked in white letters over the image of a blonde girl, presumably an OU student.
Comments on the post continued to discuss the student’s attractiveness.
Another image showed someone holding a mason jar full of marijuana. One comment questioned the need to post marijuana; another asked to “share” the marijuana.
However, not all of the posts are scandalous.
A picture of a misplaced OU student’s identification card was posted on the app and the person who lost it got in contact with the person who found it and retrieved the card.
The app features two different sections to filter posts: one that shows the most recently uploaded images to the app and one that features the most popular posts on the app, with the latter based on a combination of comments and likes on the individual post.
The number of OU users and posts made by those affiliated with OU were not available at press time, but the app has been populated for weeks.
Although a lot of students were hesitant to discuss the app and many had not heard of it, some students, such as Ben Starkey, a sophomore studying history, said there are both good and bad aspects to the app.
Some comments left on a picture are positive and encouraging, but others engage in slut-shaming, he said.
Brookelynn Schaller, a freshman studying business, uses Unseen, but doesn’t upload explicit content.
“I just post a bunch of pictures of campus,” she said.
Not all students are excited by the newest craze in social media, however.
“I’d say it’s definitely more positive when I look at it, I think it triggers responses,” said Grayson Huck, a junior studying microbiology.
However, he said he would not suggest posting pictures with sexual content.
“I wouldn’t go around promoting taking pictures (like that),” Huck said.
@will_gibbs
wg868213@ohio.edu
