Castle26: arguably the cornerstone of the North D community. The sixteen thousand strong membership (allegedly free of freshers) have provided an important space to find a random Facebook flatmate, sell your Electric Ave ticket for exorbitant prices and laugh at your mates license being held ransom for a box on return.
However, over the summer, the shitposting began. A page once awash with dry chat about spare rooms in flats was transformed. With the power of anonymous posting fully manifested, chaos began to unleash. Commenters with names that sound like the default replacements for inappropriate nicknames on Kahoot began sharing their deep thoughts to the North D community. The range of nonsense stretched far and wide: brainrot, philosophical bars and gooning discourse quickly becoming the norm.
As a particularly prolific anonymous member liked to call it, this was “prime Castle25”. But as Castle25 became Castle26, and the student quarter slowly began to show signs of life once more, an admin post on February 3rd changed everything. The admins announced that Castle26 was a “community message board”, not a “shit posting page”. “As the group is getting larger, this page will no longer accept irrelevant posts. Please do not post about how you have a hard on or anything along the lines of, as people do not care and find it annoying”.
The response to this post was that of overwhelming disappointment. Not one, but two commenters both agreed that the decision was “literally 1984”. Critic Te Ārohi hit up two different admins of Castle26 to get the scoop on the decision. One of the admins, Charlie*, told Critic that they weren’t “trying to be the fun police”. “It’s a community page, and if someone wants to post something funny, I think that should be encouraged,” he continued. “It’s Castle after all.”
Charlie explained that the admins want to see less “plain stupid, racist or derogatory shit on the page”, with posters thinking they could get away with it under the guise of anonymity. According to Charlie, around 90% of posts that were removed were blatantly racist, sexist or talking about having a wank. From Charlie’s perspective, tauira seem to support the decision. “I don’t think most people really care about the crackdown to be honest. Most of the people I’ve seen complaining have been the shitposters themselves”.
Another admin, Alex*, shared similar sentiment to Charlie. “There are some posts that need more attention like lost items or genuine questions,” Alex told Critic. “These get viewed a lot less due to irrelevant posts blowing up.” Aside from this, moderating posts can be a timely activity for Castle’s admins. “We also have to moderate a lot more, and go through the spam folder, which takes up a lot of personal time,” Alex explains.
Despite the crackdown, it’s never gonna be that serious – we are talking about a student-run Facebook Group after all. Charlie brought up a Castle26 post from earlier in the month, where somebody took a lost ID on a trip around Japan. “I guess that’s technically shitposting, but it would never get removed,” he assures. While the admins are keen to minimise irrelevant posting, Alex still wants members to “go ham on commenting”.
Whether you believe your right as a Castle frother to shitpost has been impeded on or not, it looks like our Facebook feeds will continue to be filled with all sorts of weird shit. Just don’t be a dick, and your anon account should be safe from the wrath of Castle’s admins.
* Names changed