Day after day you scroll through your Facebook news feed, reading a bunch of shit you probably don’t care about. Nineteen-year-olds posting impromptu baby pictures, your grandma posting statuses when she thinks she writing on someone’s wall, ignoring Candy Crush requests, yadayada. But one thing a lot of us stop to read is the UW-Milwaukee Missed Connections’ posts.
Anyone who says they read them just to read them is lying; we all want to see someone confessing their undying love for us. Because lets be honest, some days we all leave the house and give ourselves a two syllable “DAAAAAAYUM, I look good as hell, why wouldn’t someone write a missed connection about me??”
Tons of these get posted everyday, but there is actually a lot of work that goes behind running this page, as I learned through an online interview with the admin. The creator, who is known to remain anonymous, got the idea to start this page just to help out a friend who didn’t have much “swagga with da ladies.”
“My friend and I were at the Golda Meir Library studying and he looked up, saw a girl leave the library, looked over at me and said ‘she is the one.’ I thought he might be kidding because I feel like everyone says that when they see someone that they think is really attractive. But all he talked about for the rest of the time we were at the library was how beautiful she was, how they are meant to be together. Well she was leaving the library and he felt like it would be awkward to chase after her just to get her number so he decided against going after her,” he said.
So that night, he stayed up into the wee hours creating the UW-Milwaukee Missed Connections page, and now, here we are. Up until this last September, he had run the page by himself. “I would update it almost every minute; in between classes, after exams, when I woke up and fell asleep,” he said.
With the page having so many submissions daily, he found that it was a tough gig working full time and running the page alone. He ran the page on his own until September, but he now has two assistant admins that help him with updating posts for the Missed Connections page as well as the new (and crazy ass popular) UW-Milwaukee Uncovered page; pretty much a better version of the original UW-Milwaukee Confessions page.
The Missed Connections page was made to help the admin’s friend get the mystery library girl, but it has transformed to so much more than that. Not everyone is posting their undying love for someone; a lot of the posts are just giving compliments on each other’s looks, props for being super friendly, and of course commenting on dat booty, yo. The point is that the page isn’t about finding Noah finding his Ally (The Notebook reference, whoops.)
“I know not everyone takes it super seriously, but the ones that do, I think it’s great. Also it’s not all about love. I know a lot of people that have made friends because of the page, gone out on dates, and even two couples (that I’ve heard) are engaged. So I am helping in more ways than one, which is awesome that I could be a part of that,” the admin said.
The UW-Milwaukee Uncovered page has far surpassed the UW-Milwaukee Confessions page. It was buzzing late last year, but I guess the admin discovered the Fireside Lounge last semester and decided to sleep in between classes and totally started ignoring the once super popular page.
“Uncovered” got the upper hand of the original confessions page rather quickly. This could be because of the timing of the dying confessions page, but it could also be because of the admins involvement in his pages. “We update as much as possible. I think that’s what sets my pages apart from the other pages, and also that I am super involved with my own comments. Who knows there could be more pages in the future,” he said.
HELL YEA MORE PAGES.
So let’s be real, tons of us see what we think could be the perfect man or woman on campus, and they simply walk passed without us saying a word (que Katy Perry’s The One That Got Away).
Thankfully, the person who reviews all of our missed connections does have some advice. “I think that people need to get out of their comfort zone more. Sure, I am helping but that only goes so far. A lot of people tend to know the person that they are writing about or know the person’s name when they are posting, which I really don’t mind because it usually makes that persons day. My hope is for when someone tags whomever the post is about, for the person to see it and then for whoever wrote it to contact that person. They can start talking, something that they couldn’t do in person, hopefully they will meet, and go on a date.”
Oh, and as for the guy who saw his dream girl from across the library, they were the first couple to meet through UW-Milwaukee Missed Connections. They have been dating ever since.