Digital Campfires or Digital Rot?
Photo by Mōhai Peloso
How Fizz reshapes student and non-student interaction, trust, and belonging on campus.
Nearly everyone on this campus knows what Fizz is; over a third of the Pacific community has Fizz installed on their phones. For those who are outside the campus community, or choose not to involve themselves with the deep social scene that our tiny campus has - Fizz is a social forum (much like Reddit), that markets itself to college campuses nationwide. The only difference between it and a forum like Reddit however, is that Fizz keeps its users anonymous. It is this anonymity that makes Fizz a net negative to our campus culture.
To the point, Fizz's anonymity basis does promote positive interaction, and there is a side of Pacific’s sect of Fizz that does, with silly AI videos of our very own Burns Tower blasting off into space and landing on the moon, or jokingly selling discarded trash found on our sidewalks. However, this small tree of positivity casts a ginormous shadow.
When people are given anonymity to say what they want, they will do just that. For the past two years, Fizz has been a hub of toxicity, gossip, slander, and sometimes outright bullying, affecting both students and non-students alike. It is this side of Fizz that is causing the slow death of the culture on this campus.
To demonstrate the negative side of Fizz, I sat down with Raven, a local musician who rose to campus prominence for livestreaming their singing and ukulele talents by The Grove in McCaffrey Center. Raven has seen the negative aspects “first hand with Fizz. The amount of hate I got on Fizz was unjust, and if people have issues with me, either bring it up to me directly or go through the proper pipelines.” Raven was asked by campus officials to stop performing on campus this past December. Though Fizz played little part in their departure, the community’s hate-train reaction certainly soured their view of Pacific as a whole, with countless users spreading lies and slandering their image on the app. In Raven's situation, people “were saying loads of untrue things, things that if you actually knew me would be totally wrong,” they commented, after their situation spread to Fizz. “If you knew my content, my political biases do lean one way over the other, but my personal beliefs have nothing to do with my content. I had been playing down at The Grove for years, with little issue.” Raven’s story is one that the Pacific community should heed, as the campus already has very few local Stocktonians that interact and enjoy the campus as much as Raven was. Raven’s story can be found on their Instagram @ravenbuildscosplay.
Next, I discussed Fizz’s impact with Lina Decker, a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority on campus. She said that Fizz “definitely has its impacts regarding bringing people down. It’s especially prevalent within Greek life. People want to do anything for that dopamine rush of ‘I’m interesting and people like me.’” Decker’s statement proves true, as a member of a Greek organization myself, I have noticed the influence Fizz holds; it is a factor in every social play we make as an organization.
In regards to Raven’s situation, Decker commented, “People collectively calling for the downfall of someone through a phone screen scares me more than it should. I feel that if people didn’t have the mask of anonymity they wouldn’t be saying the aggressive things they do.” Decker believes that the culture on Fizz is purposefully toxic and downright ignorant, as a screenshot that she provided shows a message timestamped at 8:25 p.m. on Friday the 23rd states “I wish more students had Fizz… I’m here for the drama.” Decker also commented on Kappa Alpha Theta’s relationship with Fizz, stating the irony that “Fizz will go after every other organization outside of Theta. Theta is kinda left on the sidelines eating popcorn.” A wise and respectful play on the sorority’s part.
Decker’s humane stance is mirrored by that of fourth-year student Majed Obaidan. Obaidan is heavily involved in Greek Life with organizations Beta Theta Pi and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. Obaidan was around before Fizz was introduced to Pacific in 2024. Obaidan stated that he feels “like it’s built on this idea of putting the school at risk of cliches, where a lot of people are motivated to build on mob mentality.” To him, Fizz’s impacts on campus were “mostly negative” and that he believes “it affected how people communicate, it broke the need to deal with situations in private.”
Obaidan even spoke on his experiences of dealing with Fizz in his organizations, believing that Fizz has “had a really negative impact, certain things get pushed out into the open and prevent things from getting solved. The school has had to step in, which speaks detrimentally to how students are able to express themselves.” Obaidan’s point of view, as an established member of the Pacific community, and as someone who has seen what campus life was like long before Fizz was even an afterthought in people’s minds, should speak volumes as to its detriments.
What can be done? How can we as a community help patch these wounds? The purpose of this article is not to call for the University to remove Fizz from our campus, but rather to make those of us who allow it to seep in and influence our everyday interactions aware that when you give people a mask to hide behind and the ability to say what they wish, they will do just that. Just because you are not being targeted now, does not mean you will not be targeted in the future, and that anonymity you hide behind will go from a protective shield, to a sharp dagger. I do not believe that Fizz itself was designed to be used as an inherently negative platform, however that some are so unbearably naive to be aware that what they are contributing to does little on the positive side for our campus. As a community, it is time to make this change.