"Wyatt, your wedding ring will haunt me in my dreams."
"The girl that sits towards the back behind me in my 11 a.m. Sociology class with Bears is absolutely gorgeous. You were walking behind me leaving Ruffner after class today then I was behind you. All I got to say is wow....."
"Leanna Tacik you are such a sweet and kind hearted girl. I love how you are always willing to lend a hand and listen to people's problems. Plus you are a hard worker and that's a rare find. All this packaged with your good looks, I would die to have a girl like you to be with."
These are just a few of the posts on the popular Longwood Crushes Facebook page, a page that allows people to anonymously confess their hidden feelings about people within the Longwood community.
As you can see, the posts range from that boy you think is cute in your psychology class that you admire from afar to sweeping declarations of love.
Students can go on this page and admit things that perhaps they could never say aloud.
This is endlessly fascinating because unrequited love is such a relatable condition.
At some point in everyone's lives they fall for someone that they can't have or develop a crush on someone that they barely know.
Even if you aren't posting on the site it’s certainly fun to read through all the posts of lovesick students trying to covertly make a connection.
So fun, in fact, that the page has 1,918 likes. With an undergraduate population of 4,834, that means that roughly 40 percent of students have liked the Longwood Crushes page.
So who is in charge of this growing social media phenomenon? How did it all start?
While the person in charge of Longwood Crushes wants to remain anonymous, they were kind enough to answer some questions about the page.
"I started this last year (2012) because I saw a lot of other pages pop up for the other schools and everything and Longwood didn't have one," the page’s creator stated, and went on to add that other Longwood Crushes copycat pages have popped up since the start of the original and even at one point were more popular than the first.
The creator admits that at first the page began as just a joke, something they did for fun. The page itself only had 200 likes.
In October 2013, though, something happened, the page exploded with newfound interest from the Longwood community. "It was funny because in two days’ time it reached the thousand mark from just 200 just out of nowhere,” the page creator said.
The creator has no idea why this explosion occurred, but now on a typical weekday they get 30 to 40 new posts that they must sift through, and it’s a one- person operation.
"If someone submits something that's mean, I just won't post it," the creator explained. “People sometimes attempt to submit things that are embarrassing or degrading to other students but I won't allow it to become that kind of page. No matter how many times students resend their message.”
Often times the anonymous creator will hear students discussing the page, not realizing that they are so close to the person who monitors all their posts.
"There was one instance [where] I was around a group of people that I did not know and they were talking about a particular post, needless to say I've read all of them because I post them all. I was the only stranger around this group of friends and they stopped talking because they didn't want me to hear. I thought that was pretty funny,” the creator said.
The Longwood Crushes’ creator is a student, so one day they will graduate. What happens to the page then?
They have a few close friends who they have confided in and with whom they bounce ideas off of.
"I've talked about it with friends before and I think when I graduate I'll just go up to a freshman, talk to them for a minute and say, 'You know, if you want this, it's yours and just let it be."
The creator of the page wants to remain anonymous, both so that students feel comfortable writing to them and for their own social standing.
With the page's ever growing popularity and relatable subject matter, Longwood Crushes is well on its way to becoming a Longwood tradition. Who knows? Perhaps posting on this page will lead to people becoming romantic partners that will last a lifetime or at least a fun date for Saturday night.
