As of May 4, Yahoo Answers has shut its doors to the internet forever. This simple knowledge-sharing platform has been referred to as “one of the dumbest places on the internet” by BuzzFeed News, and even more aptly by Vulture as “populated entirely with Batman villains, aliens pretending to be human, and that one weird neighbor you’d rather climb down your fire escape in a blizzard than get caught in a conversation with.”
How can a basic question-and-answer forum gain such notoriety? To put it honestly and affectionately, because it was a ridiculous, brain-cell-diminishing space on the internet that anyone could contribute to. The Yahoo Answers site was a relic of the Y2K-era internet where social media was in its infancy — and this humble little forum partially filled the gap and allowed people to connect with each other. The result of this chaotic premise was a slew of questions that modern audiences now repost, share, and celebrate for their humor and nonsensicality in remembrance of this great site.
Some genuinely used Yahoo Answers to gain and share knowledge (like myself in high school looking for help with my math homework), others used it for a social media-esque experience, and others capitalized on its ability to post questions so they could engage in some of the strangest conversations this side of the internet. Yahoo Answers truly had it all.
What we’ll remember are the classics: “How is babby formed?” “I made Jesus shaped pancakes, but I burnt them. Am I going to hell?” “HOW DO I TURN OFF CAPSLOCK?” (To which the asker elaborated by saying, “THIS PROBLEM IS LITERALLY RUINING MY LIFE AND TEARING MY FAMILY APART THROUGH EMAILS. I JUST WANT TO BE WHOLE AGAIN.”)
What internet dwellers will miss isn’t the basic premise of the site’s question-and-answer format, but instead the sense of community and culture that could easily be adopted. There was a time when anyone could catch onto the inane question-asking tradition of Yahoo Answers and join in on the fun themselves, but now we’re relegated to remembering the website through chuckle-inducing compilations on BuzzFeed. It isn’t the same when the website can now only be viewed as a static museum. By being a place known for its low barrier of entry, ridiculous questions, and witty responses, Yahoo Answers made others feel welcome to join its masses and contribute the same type of content that made it infamous.
With the rise of COVID-19 and the isolation many people are facing while quarantining, people are craving that sort of connection and belonging right now in non-virtual spaces. Especially students who have had to reinvent their daily routine when COVID-19 shut down campuses across the country. With UFV’s return to in-person instruction in the Fall, people will be looking for that sense of community at school again, and UFV should look to meet and exceed this need for connection.
It’s no surprise to many that UFV is considered a commuter campus. Students typically go to class, commute home immediately after, and fill their time with extracurriculars that don’t involve UFV. There’s little sense of the traditional university experience seen in the media; there’s no after-class pub to visit, few clubs or associations with a real presence on campus, and low participation in events. Older graduates mention UFV being different even just a decade ago, when there were popular and recurring events on the green, and clubs that stood out as active and desirable to join.
To foster that sense of belonging and pride in being a UFV student, clubs and associations need to be supported and better funded by SUS. (They need to have specific funds allocated to them in the budget, for example, which wasn’t seen in the 2019/20 fiscal year.) UFV could also stand to listen to students and find out what will keep them interested and invested in what happens on campus. What events are popular and should be capitalized on? What interest is there in projects like a community garden that would have students connecting with others while spending more time on campus? Dr. Joanna MacLean’s questionnaire for generating UFV’s new vision, missions, and values was promising, but we also need to seek student feedback on how to correct a major complaint of graduates: there’s next to no social life on campus.
The shut-down of Yahoo Answers marks the fall of a forum pioneer of the early internet. It was a place for the weary, the confused, and the tricksters, and it managed to create more than its fair share of meme-able moments. Now that it’s gone, the site reminds us of its unique culture and sense of community — one that we should be looking to foster ourselves going forward as we head back to in-person classes at UFV.
Image: Brielle Quon/The Cascade
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
