UPDATED with further reporting from Seamus McCarthy
If you are a student at Jesuit, it’s likely you received a strange follow request on Instagram from an account called Fizz Jesuit.
Fizz is an app that was created by two Stanford students in 2020 as a way to connect students in the midst of a global pandemic. Four years later Fizz is in 80 colleges including Stanford, Dartmouth, and Yale. Recently Fizz has expanded into high schools with Jesuit being one of the first.
Fizz is a new kind of social media marketed as a private discussion and news feed where only people from your school are on the app with you. The unique thing about Fizz is that it is completely anonymous. Students can post direct messages, pictures, polls and memes. On posts students can either upvote or downvote posts. You can get points which Fizz calls “Karma” for posts getting upvotes. People who post on Fizz are colloquially referred to as “Fizzers”.
Fizz is new to Jesuit and was announced via Instagram to be coming out on January 23. Most users have taken advantage of the anonymity of the app and post memes of faculty and students.
Steve Deklotz, Jesuit’s vice principal of student life, said that Fizz seemed to be a continuation of a list of Apps that students used to talk with one another.
“It’s the newest version of an anonymous posting platform. So it’s not a new thing. It has a different name,” Deklotz said.
Senior Richie Nadolny was originally unsure of what Fizz was but eventually made an account.
“It’s anonymous and it’s genuine,” Nadolny said.
Deklotz did not have a high opinion of what was happening on the App.
“The general view is [that] it’s generally toxic. I think some people are goofy, but some people can be pretty cruel on [Fizz],” Deklotz said.
However, some students would likely disagree.
“I think it’s good. Like I find funny stuff on there that kind of show my friends and it makes me feel closer with them,” Nadolny said.
Fizz, however, isn’t just a site for funny memes. Junior Will Gilister believes it connects students unlike other social media sites.
“It’s a great app,” Gilster said. “I like how the posts are anonymous, so you can’t see who posted them. But they are true at the same time”
Concerns over cyberbullying
Other students are not as positive about Fizz. Carter Stewart, a junior, is not so keen on the app and thinks it hurts others.
“I think it’s creating a negative impact on the Jesuit community with mocking teachers and other students… Well, they [Memes] might be funny. They are not appropriate for the community and can be putting down others in a negative way,” Stewart said.
Deklotz said that he was passionate about people standing up to bullying and that he believed that Fizz could be a platform for fighting bullying.
“I’m disappointed currently, because I think people could Upstand a lot more than they do. It’s a safe way to be an upstander,” Deklotz said.
Possible Student Government Involvement
Even Student Government reportedly has an account.
The first post of an account labeled as Student Government asked, “What is the worst thing you did while on school grounds/using school materials that you got away with?”
This post was not well received by students garnering 115 downvotes (Dislikes). The comments responding to the post were equally negative with all of them saying “Fed”.
There’s a leaderboard for Karma on Fizz. The current leader at Jesuit is a Fizzer whose handle is “Fizzma”, who has 16,355 Karma. However in a recent post, Fizzma announced their retirement from Fizz with a post on the platform.
“It is with the utmost gratitude that I now announce my retirement. The time has come to pass the torch to the next generation of fizzers,” Fizzma said.
