Whether you love the Smith Confessional or just love to hate it, there’s no denying that the website occupies an essential place in the Smith social conversation. Last week I caught up with Shibo Xu, the Refersion co-founder who moonlights as the owner and self-proclaimed “janitor” of the Smith Confessional, to talk about the history of the Confessionals, his approach to moderation, and who he thinks the Confessional is a safe space for.
This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
The Sophian: For a student at Smith who isn’t really aware of the history of the Confessionals, could you give us a brief history of how it began? How did you get involved?
Shibo Xu: What happened was that back in 2006, a student at Oberlin College called Harris Lapiroff started a website called Oberlin Confessional. The concept came from an anonymous thread on the Oberlin LiveJournal community that started every year around finals time that was like: Okay, all your most stressed-out things, all your confessions — spring them out. It got a little crazy sometimes, but it was a really great stress reliever.So the administration received a lot of threats from angry parents saying, “Why am I sending my kids to Oberlin just for them to gossip online?” Remember, this was before Facebook. Twitter had just come out. Nobody knew what this was, what was happening. Harris did it and there was so much controversy that he didn’t want to keep doing it. But I really loved the website, so I bought the company from him in this college student deal where I gave him 300 bucks and he gave me the code. I just took on the torch.
TS: What happened once you took it on?
SX: I started working on it with a few different collaborators and we passed it on to other colleges, which were just colleges of friends I’d gone to high school with. I would tell them “Hey, I have this thing, could you help me spread it?” and they would start it at their schools. It was at Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Middlebury, Kalamazoo.We had millions and millions of pageviews. It was doing very well until we got some lawsuits and people started trying to shut us down. That scared off a lot of the people who were working on it. And then it was just me.After college, I went into finance and then tech consulting for a few years before I decided that I wanted to do my own thing, so I came back to the Confessional. I had been gone for some time but there was still some traffic, mostly on Mt. Holyoke Confessional. I decided to try and relaunch the confessionals.
The Sophian: Of all the college confessionals that you tried to relaunch, which ones succeeded? Which are the most active?
SX: I think Smith and Mt. Holyoke are the most active, actually. I tried to bring it back at Oberlin, at some other places — all it did was make me feel really old. Like, I don’t know how to interact with college students anymore. Smith Confessional got relaunched and it works pretty well now, but I couldn’t spread it at other colleges. There was no history of confessionals there or people forgot about it. I tried to bring it back at each of the five colleges, but now it’s mostly just Mount Holyoke and Smith. Smith is definitely the most active. Mount Holyoke also has a pretty active website. All of the other ones are really really random. Now, I mean, it’s a different world. Everyone tries to get college students to download apps all the time. When I was doing this back in 2007 I was just one student.
TS: In college student money, 300 bucks is a lot, I would say. What was it about the confessional that made you decide, “Okay, I’m going to buy this from Lapiroff”?
SX: I love technology, I love the internet. I made my first website when I was 14 and I always thought there was something special about it. At the time, I just thought it was a cool thing to work on. If you imagine websites, right? Websites started as just pages on the internet for reading content. 2007 to 2008 was the first time people started thinking of websites as an app — a function that you do or the software you use online instead of something you just read. So I was really interested in that. At the time, I literally thought I was going to take on Facebook and I was going to become one of the next big things. And I think we had a shot at the time. But you know, things change. This was way before venture capital, way before tech companies being as mature as they are now, so I was just doing my thing and trying to make it work in Oberlin College while getting threats from the administration. But my idea was that, “This is a good thing.” I believe that things are better said than unsaid and that the community can figure out a way to deal with even problematic and harmful thoughts, because we all have them. I just feel like it’s much better to release it rather than to keep it all up in yourself. That’s when the problems start — you feel like you’re alone.
TS: When I got here my first year, my orientation leader told me, “Hey, don’t ever go on the confessional, it’s really toxic.” While it’s true that the confessional can make it easier for people to reach out and find help, people can also spew very hateful thoughts on there. What’s your perspective on this?
SX: Every once in a while I see the “Take down the confessional” threads, and I take it very seriously. When I first relaunched at Smith, I actually came to the campus and talked to a few students there. I wanted to see their perspective and I wanted to understand what people actually thought about this. I worked with them and in my head at the time I thought “Okay. There’s something here that has value for people.” The hate? I have to say, I’m not a psychologist, but to me it seems that we all have hateful thoughts. I just believe it’s better to release it somewhere rather than let it build within us. When I was in college there was something I learned about called a Bull Session, which is something in politics where people get together and they just say things in order to get a sense of how it feels when they say it. That’s why it’s called a bull session — everybody just goes in there and bullshits each other. But the goal is to figure out how it feels. I think the confessional is something like that. I don’t think the confessional will ever be a cheery, happy place for all positive thoughts. But I think you have other channels for that.
TS: What’s your current role in maintaining Smith confessional?
SX: The website, Smith Confessional, has been using the same code that was written back in the early 2000s. I just make sure that the services are running, nothing’s broken. If something’s happened, I go in to fix it. But other than that, I just review the moderations, review the reports, and take a look every once in a while. I’m very hands off. There was a time when I was a student and I was much more on the topics that you guys are talking about, but now I read over the reports and I don’t know why people are offended or I’m confused, so I’m limited in my ability to actually moderate. And it’s your community, it’s your topics. So I take an approach where most things on the confessional, once reported, after a certain amount of time they just get removed and I can kind of go in and put it back if enough people mention it.
TS: How much do you estimate you spend on the confessional a year?
SX: In a year, probably like a few thousand. I’m fortunate enough to be successful in my career to be able to do this for Smith college and the community. To me, the reason I do it is not because I want to read your minds or anything — I can’t understand half the things that are on there anymore — but it just seems useful. It seems really meaningful to some people. Even if one student in a year finds some value and it helps them in their roughest times, late at night when they have nobody to turn to and they go post on the confessional and get something back positive — to me, that’s more than worth it. I understand that time. It’s tough to feel like you’re lonely and alone, especially now when there’s nowhere you can say it. You can’t post on twitter, you can’t post on facebook, people are going to talk to you about it. Like, sometimes you just need to vent. I think having an outlet is important.
The Sophian: Maybe you don’t have any insight into this given that you aren’t very active in checking it anymore, but why do you think Mt. Holyoke and Smith are still active when other colleges have moved on to other websites?
SX: I have some theories. Even in the beginning, there was a very clear difference between the content on Smithand Mount Holyoke’s confessionals and content from all other schools. And I think it has to do with the fact that it’s an all-girls school. I had samples from other colleges, similar age range, similar size, not too far away in geography, so why was there a difference? I couldn’t really tell, except maybe the sex or gender makeup for the demographics. That seems to me to be the only thing that was different. Coming back to it now, there’s a lot of ways for people to say shit to each other online, and having one more way to do that, it doesn’t really help. But to have a community of all women in one space — I think that’s special. I think that’s why traffic builds on these college websites. I can see that there’s alumnae that actually go to the site and visit the community continuously.
TS: Could you talk a little more about what was the difference in content between Smith and Mt. Holyoke and the rest of the colleges?
SX: Now, I don’t really have a basis of comparison, because only Smith and Mount Holyoke remain. I’m talking about years ago, when there was a comparison. The way some of the posts were silly, some of the posts were deep and thoughtful, some were just harassment — I think that mix was kind of similar across colleges, but the tone was different. At Smith there was a stronger sense of community, like: I might poke at you, but I’m not going to stab you with a knife. There was a fair amount of aggression at the other colleges. At Smith and Mt. Holyoke, not so much. It was a little more passive aggressive, but it didn’t feel threatening or anything like that.
TS: You mentioned that this was born before Facebook. At the time, maybe you didn’t have a lot of guidelines to think about in terms of moderation. But moderation right now is a huge problem that a lot of platforms are dealing with — Facebook, Reddit, Twitter are all struggling to figure it out. What is the line between content that is acceptable and that isn’t?
SX: I’ve actually taken a few different approaches to moderation. I also think I have a very different perspective from what a lot of those other platforms are doing. They’re doing it to protect their ass, for legal reasons. But I do believe that because it’s not my content, it’s not my community, I wouldn’t know what is offensive to someone or not. So I really encourage students to report things and by default we’ll take them down. And then if people believe it’s meaningful discussion and they can either post it back up or or they can ask me to bring it back. But I do believe that some thoughts are just difficult. And I don’t think we can expect everybody to go through all of the emotional work of developing all these thoughts down the right path so they can present it to the public in a positive way. I think it’s more important to get it said then not said. I wouldn’t take content on the confessional too seriously. Smith’s moderation is just about you reporting things and me taking them down. So far, I think that’s okay? What do you think about that? Should I be trying something else?
TS: In this political climate where we try hard to make safe spaces for people on campus because they might not feel safe outside of it, it can be difficult to go on the confessional and see some quite disconcerting ideas about particular groups on campus. It brings up the question of: Okay, the confessional is a space for people to vent, but who is the confessional really a safe space for?
SX: I think the confessional is this strange middle ground. It’s definitely not a safe space online for everyone, but it’s a safe space for Smith college students. If you don’t have a smith email or IP you can’t log in, so you’re not engaging with the mass internet, you’re engaging with just the Smith community and that’s it. The colleges came to me at the time and they said, “Your website is encouraging all these negative thoughts. Your website is giving these thoughts a place to run and it’s gonna end badly. You can’t do this.” I did take that argument very seriously. But at the same time, my thought was: it’s actually very difficult to get your voice heard. There are very few places where you can say what you think without attaching your gender, your demographics, your age, your perspective — to have just your words for people to engage in. So that they can judge their words for the words themselves, not who is saying the words. For me, that’s unique. So my challenge back to the colleges at the time was, “Guys, these are some ideas of the students on the website. They’re going to exist whether or not this website exists.” Wouldn’t you rather know than put your head into a sandpit and think “Oh, everything is fine”? That’s always what I thought about it, but for colleges they’re also trying to just protect themselves. It’s easier to say “I didn’t know about this” when something bad happens if there’s no record of it, whereas if there is a record of it and it shows you didn’t do anything — that can hurt more.
TS: If you really think about it, it’s kind of weird for a fully grown adult to be in charge of a college website. I was surprised when I first found out that the person who was running the confessional didn’t go to Smith in the first place and graduated so long ago.
SX: (laughs) Yeah, I totally agree with you. Honestly, I’ve tried to pass this over to students, like “Here, you take over of the code and the management of it, I’ll just pay for the services.” I’m fine with that, I’m happy to pass on the torch. But I haven’t found anyone who wants to take on it on yet. I can’t believe how long I’ve been doing this. I never thought: I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. At the same time, personally, so much of my identity was tied up to this. You know, I was a kid, I didn’t know anything about business, my parents worked in medicine or lab-type research. I came to America and we were really poor. I didn’t know anything about American politics or business. My parents just wanted me to go into academia. So when I started working, what motivated me to keep searching in my career until I got to the place where I am where I’m running my own company — was because of the confessional. I remembered what it was like to build something that people would use and what it was like to maintain and manage that and be fully responsible for it. So I always looked back to the time I spent managing the confessional in college as that point in my career I wanted to go back to.
TS: Is there anything else you would like us to know?
SX: If I had one message to Smith students, I would say — this might sound weird because I own the site and can control the code — but I don’t see it as mine. I see myself as the janitor. I’m just here to clean things up and make sure things work and screw on some light bulbs if you need it. It’s really your space. I want people to realize it’s your neighbor who’s writing that thing. It’s easy to become disconnected, but realize that it’s designed to be private, a space just for you.
