ALLENDALE, Mich. — The new GVSU crushes Twitter page has gotten a lot of attention, both negative and positive, from students at Grand Valley State University.
It’s a Twitter feed where you can express your affection for someone anonymously, but the posts were getting pretty graphic when it first appeared.
The creator is a student at GVSU who didn’t want to be identified. He talked to FOX 17 exclusively about why he created the page.
He said it’s all in fun. “I wanted to see how much of a following I could get for it.”
Students immediately followed the Twitter feed in huge numbers.
Within 48 hours of getting it up and running, @GVSU_crushes had nearly 2,000 followers.
“It was insane,” said the creator.
The volume, and the sometimes graphic nature, of the material caught even him by surprise.
Since the site first popped up, he’s been more vigilant about what gets posted. “I try not to post the graphic ones, the ones that talk about body parts,” he said. “I try to keep them cleaner. When I first started off, I gained some attention from posting some of the more graphic ones. As I’ve learned, people have taken offense of that.”
He also didn’t realize the use of the university logo was a problem, and he changed the profile picture to the school’s bell tower quickly after he realized the logo was an issue.
Whether or not you like the crush feed or hate it, it isn’t going away.
Some of the comments first posted on @GVSU_crushes look tame.
We found other Twitter accounts with “GVSU” in the name that were much more graphic than what we originally saw on @GVSU_crushes.
In fact, the creator of @GVSU_crushes says it’s so competitive, other feeds even try to steal his followers.
“I get a lot of times other pages, saying how, you know, they’re better and to follow them over us,” he said. “It’s funny. It’s a war. A crush page war.”
However, as for the high school crush pages now appearing, he feels it’s too much for youngsters. “I think it isn’t too appropriate because people range 13 to 18,” he said.
Because of the controversy and demand, the @GVSU_crushes creator is so secretive about his page, his girlfriend doesn’t even know he’s the mastermind.
He chooses for now, to remain in the shadows behind his keystrokes.
“I want the mystery to be there, the intrigue,” he said. “I don’t want people coming up to me saying, did you see what I posted … so, it being a mystery there makes it better.”
The creator says he’s also using his Twitter feed now for positive promotions of student events, such as an upcoming relay for life event going on at Grand Valley.
