During the Last fall, Facebook Compliments page has hit the college campuses as a new internet craze.
A Facebook profile, so called Queens U Compliments has been started by four students at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, to encourage their fellow classmates to submit compliments about members of the university, which were then posted to the profile to be viewed publicly.
One of the site’s co-founder, Jessica Jonker said, “We thought it would be an awesome project to spread happiness and positivity to the Queen’s community.”
This idea was found to be successful instantly. After a few days of creating the page, Jonker found more than 200 notifications and friend requests. She said, “I think that was the moment when we actually thought, ‘Wow, we might actually be on to something here!’”
The page had almost reached its 5,000-friend limit, and more than 100 submissions were rolling in every day by the end of the fall semester.
Facebook was a good platform for their idea as it was very easy to reach the majority of their target audience, and secondly, because it allowed them to remain anonymous as the moderators.
“It has been really fun to see and hear firsthand how much QUC has become an integral part of the Queen’s community,” Jonker says.
“The page has proven how much of an impact one single compliment can have on a person’s life.”
After hearing about this, other colleges across the nation were quick to catch on.
Brown University Compliments was launched in mid-November by two students, William Janover and Meredith Bilski. They launched right before Thanksgiving and everyone around were in a spirit to show case their gratitude with one another. Janover says. “We also felt that with final exams around the corner, a positive forum would be a good way to make someone’s day during a particularly stressful time.”
During December, before the exam week, the moderator of Santa Clara University took the same step. She said, “I thought it was such an amazing idea to spread love throughout the community, and I couldn’t wait to start,”
Last December, a student of Stony Brook University started the same and within three hours, it received more than 300 likes. “It’s hard to find unity within such a large group of diverse people,” he says. “The Compliments Page really became the bridge connecting all of us.”
In late December, somebody posted a compliment about Zamir Miah, the man who works the overnight shift at the Dunkin Donuts right off Stony Brook’s campus.
It read: “The Bengali man working at Dunkin’ Donuts on 25A is by far the nicest and most generous man I’ve ever purchased something from. Every time I order something, he automatically upgrades it or throws in a few extra donuts or muffins and never charges extra for them. He’s always working alone at night but is still extremely friendly. I’ve always wanted to approach him or give him an anonymous note, and I wish there was a way that multiple Stony Brook students can get together and give back to him — because I’m sure he does this for everyone as well, and does it with a smile on his face.”
“We took the kindness and community-building off of just the social media platform,” Ahmadizadeh says. “It started on Facebook, but it didn’t stay there.”
These activities have bought a storm in colleges across the country. There are more than 130 student-run college ‘Compliments’ Pages and profiles on Facebook, all abounding with kind recognition of people’s personalities and talents.
“Social media has the ability to transform essentially everything,” Ahmadizadeh says. “It can bring crowds together to achieve one same mission: to empower people to spread kindness.”