Today, Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms among students, and in recent months, over 20 accounts have been created with the school’s name in front of them. Examples include mthsassparking, mths.posture and mths.shlumped.
As the name suggests, the account titled mthsassparking is filled with pictures of cars in the MTHS parking lot that the account owners have deemed ”ass parking.” Similarly, the mths.posture account features students and staff who account owners deem to have “bad posture.”
These specific accounts began to surface in late September, and as the months went by, more and more were created. Instagram is widely used by MTHS students, and many are aware of the multiple accounts.
Some students find the ever growing list of accounts to be amusing, while others feel that some of the accounts have gone overboard and are detracting from the community’s culture as a whole.
“I think the bunch of MTHS accounts can be funny, but they pose a lot of privacy issues,” senior Lavinia Simkowiak said. “Posting pictures of people online without their knowledge or consent is a huge privacy violation, especially when it’s kids.”
In addition to the accounts posting pictures of bad posture and “ass parking,” yet another, under the name of mths.masklackers, features students and staff alike with masks worn below their noses or with masks off entirely. Still another, under the name mths.shlumped, features photos of students who have fallen asleep in class.
“Sometimes, I stay up far too late reading and then accidentally fall asleep in class,” senior Mackenzie Kier said. “I’d like to not be afraid of showing up on an Instagram page.”
Kier said that she finds some of the Instagram pages to be amusing. For example, she finds the masklackers page does a good job of highlighting the kids that do not know how to put their masks on properly.
“I do like the masklackers one, though,” she said. “The number of kids who can’t seem to wear their mask properly is infuriating, and they 100 percent deserve to be called out.”
However, Kier finds some of the accounts extremely unnecessary, and in some cases, harmful. One of the accounts that was created that she dislikes the most is one entitled mthsbathroomfeet. As the name suggests, this account literally features pictures of what can be seen of a student’s feet through the gap of stall doors.
“I already have a fear of using public restrooms and try to avoid them as much as possible, but if I must use one, I’d like to not have my feet posted on social media,” she said.
Another account, titled mths.confessions_, has also caused a lot of controversy. On the account, confessions from various students are posted, usually about crushes and relationship challenges. However, specific names are mentioned; A student might point out that they have a crush on someone, while claiming to know that their crush already has one on someone else. The use of direct names targets individual students.
“I think it [the account] has outed people as gay before, and its really not okay,” Kier said.
Although all of the accounts follow the same theme of MTHS preceding the rest of their handle, it is unclear whether all of them are created by the same student. For fear of being discovered or having their accounts shut down, no one has associated themselves with the pages.
However, all the pages rely on participation from the community, with requests in each of their bios for direct messages from students with pictures and content.
In order to get more information on the motivation behind the accounts, the Hawkeye sent a direct message to the mths.posture account.
“I saw a TikTok about these school accounts and it made me want to make one myself since it looked fun,” they said.
While some seem to find the accounts amusing, others have found themselves in fear of ending up on them, while still others think there is a line that needs to be drawn.
