Oberlin Confessional Examined

Here we have another previously published article. Unlike my other pieces of work on this site, this one contains strong language and may not be appropriate for all readers.

It’s a Thursday night and you’re sitting by yourself in your room feverishly refreshing the Oberlin Confessional website… again. You are pretty sure that if you make enough posts boasting about how experienced you are or how big your penis is, someone will be willing to randomly meet you and have sex. Either that or you can masturbate to the thought of someone else getting that lucky while reading the erotica someone posted that has bumped your personal ad to the next page.

Is it possible to find random ass on the confessional? Are other horny, willing Obies lurking waiting for you to welcome them into your midst? Are you really the only person avoiding writing your politics paper to look up lesbian porn on DC++? We at the grape decided to go undercover and find out. Of course, as there is no way of verifying whether two posts are by the same person or even by the person they claim to be by, this could lead to some sketchy consequences.

I’ll admit that I’ve been tempted sometimes to arrange to meet someone off the confessional. Of course, this is coincidentally also at 3am while piss drunk and a lot of things seem to make sense then. Nonetheless, we did still attempt to stage some (sober) encounters.

Our several attempts to lure fellow students into Wilder, Dascomb, South, and North Quad were unfortunately unsuccessful. Luring someone to have random sex with you in a public place is not as easy (thought twice as awkward) as one would imagine. Perhaps these students are really not half as horny as they claim to be. That or they’re too awkward to leave their rooms and change out of their Captain Planet Pajamas. Most of the people who seemed interested backed out at the last minute pretending to be too tired or lazy to move to our suggested location.

Oberlin Confessional creator Harris Lapiroff stated, “I have not heard, with any certainty, of any sexual hookups made over the confessional, although there are a fair few people on the confessional who claim to have achieved it.”

He credits this phenomenon to junior Sean Nagamatsu, who has become a semi-legend on the confessional for Nagamatsu’s Law, which states that due to its anonymity, no one ever hooks up on the confessional.

“The reason this site hasn’t worked as a personals service is that anyone who uses it that way is instantly suspect. As the expression goes, there’s a big fat elephant in the room, and it’s the fact that you’ve resorted to soliciting dates/hookups/cuddles/sex on this site. OBVIOUSLY there’s something seriously wrong with you,” one confessor argues.

Not all confessors find this behavior to be shady. Another person posts, “I don’t see why it’s a question of desperate enough. People go to parties and leave with strangers. Why not take that to another level? [There is the] anticipation. How isn’t that hot?”

Nonetheless, Lapiroff admits that he does “have some experience in just meeting random people to hang out with on the confessional.”

Lapiroff continued, “Personally, I once saw a fellow advertise that he would be sitting in Stevie, reading a book, wearing a grey shirt, and that if anyone wanted to talk to him, they could.

So I and a few friends went and met him. It was pretty cool—definitely a fun experience and he was a nice dude, but I confess, we didn’t exactly become friends or anything out of that.

Nonetheless it was a cool experience.”

He also noted that he has “a friend who said that when she was alone one night she managed to meet some folks through the confessional to take a walk with. She said that was good.”

Several confessional users admit to using the OC to find smoke buddies late at night though none of the people who responded to these boards admitted meeting this people on a regular basis.

One confessor said, “I think the other two are more complicated. Smoke buddies only require that you have one thing in common and are both not really obnoxious people.”

Lapiroff also said, “Personally, I think meeting up with people is one of the most redeeming qualities of the confessional. It’s one of the reasons I choose not to delete it (so far). I’ve said in the past that I think I’ll move on to more benign projects for a while, and one of the project ideas I’ve been tossing around is a website for Obies to meet up with random people anonymously at any hour. Not necessarily to hook up (but not necessarily not to) but just to, you know, meet. I think it’d be awesome if more Obies got out and just met some random other Obies once in a while.”

And for the question everyone has been wondering about.

Me: Have you ever posted a fake confession as someone else to create an online argument?
Harris: Nope
Damn, so maybe that’s just me then.

Previously Published December 2006