BootyDrop.com is a website for college students to post their hookup histories for other users to read and rank.
No one likes a kiss and tell – unless it’s funny and completely anonymous, of course.
Founders of BootyDrop.com Kevin Lance and Matthew Weaver said they wanted to create a website where college students could chronicle their best and worst hookup stories in hopes of getting a snapshot of each school’s culture.
“We like to say BootyDrop is the only college community site where [students] can drop their stories in full detail,” Weaver said. “Each university’s culture [is] on their own page. We want to get enough people, to see how distinct the culture is, get a sense of what the school is like and maybe a feel of the university.”
Human sexuality professor Patrice Heller said she doesn’t see how this website can produce a snapshot of any campus’ hookup or party culture.
“There are many who choose not to report and you cannot generalize this to the campus as a whole,” Heller said. “Instead you can view it as a snapshot of this group of students who choose to participate.”
Nevertheless, Lance and Weaver said they hope to encourage as many students as possible to post their stories by keeping the website solely for the college community and completely anonymous.
Lance said that websites including College ACB, which stands for Anonymous Concession Board, and Texts From Last Night, are popular yet extremely unregulated.
“I could completely diss somebody and destroy their reputation [on College ACB],” Lance said. “[Texts From Last Night] is a bit more regulated, yet you couldn’t really tell a story.”
“[BootyDrop] gives you the platform to tell a story, but also protects the poster and anyone involved in the story – you can’t post last names or any identifying factors of those individuals,” Lance added.
To ensure the anonymity of the poster and anyone included in the story, Lance and Weaver said they take great responsibility in screening each post before it goes live on the website and delete any identifying factors while maintaining the writer’s story.
When registering, a user’s ID is computer-generated to further ensure anonymity, and a college email address must be used. There is also a report function where those who read or post can flag a story for offensive content.
“For Facebook and Twitter, the culture of college was destroyed,” Lance said. “When you register [on BootyDrop], you are randomly assigned a student ID and must use a .edu email address to sign on.”
“We want to keep this website college only,” Lance added. “We don’t want to be the next Facebook and Twitter, we just want funny stories by college students for college students.”
Weaver is a junior English major at Indiana University and Lance is a junior business and communications major at the University of Maryland.
They met at Indiana their freshman year in their residence hall, which is where the idea for BootyDrop originated.
“Freshman year, we noticed all our friends would hang out in the lounge after they came back from Friday and Saturday nights and share their stories,” Weaver said. “They would hang out there until the late hours in the morning. We thought, ‘What if we were able to transfer this to the online realm, no matter where they were at?’”
Constructing the website came with a number of difficulties that Weaver and Lance said they worked around. Studying at two different universities and not knowing how to create a website were just two of many.
“It was somewhat difficult but we used Skype and were able to communicate pretty easily,” Weaver said.
Lance and Weaver hired someone to design and program the website after they decided on a name.
“We were fooling around rapping one day, and ‘booty drop’ was just flying around,” Lance said. “[We] had some kind of eureka moment that it fit for the context of our website.”
Since the website’s launch in August 2011, Lance and Weaver have learned basic coding so that they aren’t so heavily reliant on programmers to manage the website’s content.
The website has grown to include 200 universities and it is more popular among southern schools, including the University of Mississippi and the University of Maryland. While Temple does have a page, no booty has been dropped yet.
“I think posting things online is really stupid because I believe personal business shouldn’t be out there on the Web like that,” Antwain Johnson, a senior criminal justice major, said. “There’s a double-standard rule because guys are celebrated for it, and girls are seen as [overly promiscuous] for it, even if it was only one time.”
“If they’re kept completely anonymous then I don’t see a problem,” junior kinesiology major Josh Bedu said. “Though what is the purpose of sharing a story if the people involved in said story are known to no one? It would seem like it’s for attraction or to just hear themselves speak.”
The incentive of posting a story is not only to express your own tale, but also to get ranked. Determined by the combined number of “bootylicious” or “booty fails” a post receives, a user can move up the ladder from “Booty Amateur” to “Booty Master.” After achieving the rank of “Booty Master,” that user will be sent a free T-shirt or sunglasses.
“It’s all a way to promote the site and college kids love getting free stuff, I love getting free stuff. It’s not our website it’s a college student website – for them, by them,” Lance said.
With Lance and Weaver’s senior years around the corner, the future of BootyDrop.com could be swayed in any direction.
“I think of the website as a success already, I love it,” Lance said. “I’ve learned a lesson already: When something goes wrong I have to fix it. It’s interesting, I have no reason to not tell a possible employer about this website.”
“After college, I’m sure it’ll continue,” Lance added. “If not in our hands, [then] in someone else’s.”
Alexandra Olivier can be reached at alexandra.olivier@temple.edu.
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