Someone Posted a Photo of Me in a Uni Confession Chat and Called Me a Playboy. Here's What I Think About That.

I never joined my uni's confession chat.

I knew it existed, you hear things, rumours travel fast on campus, but I never saw the point. Anonymous messages about other people's lives, posted without context or accountability? Not really my thing.

Then last week, someone made it my thing.

Here is what happened. I recently went through a breakup. My ex and I split during CNY. It was not dramatic, it was not sudden, it was just the end of something that had run its course. A few days ago, I went out for dinner with three of my girl friends. Normal evening. Good food. Nothing remarkable.

Today, my friends showed me a message in the confession chat.

Apparently, I am a playboy who moved on "fast as hell" and was spotted going out with girls. There was a picture attached, someone had taken a photo of my friends and me getting into my car. The angle suggested it was taken from the female dormitories. Someone I do not know, photographing me without my knowledge, and posting it to a group chat to publicly accuse me of things that are not true.

Then came the replies. Insults. Accusations of inappropriate behaviour. From people who have never spoken to me and know nothing about my personal life.

Let Me Address the "Playboy" Thing First

My ex is not even from my university. She has nothing to do with the people in that chat. The girls I went out with are my friends, people I have known for a while, who happen to be female, who I occasionally eat dinner with, the way human beings do.

Going out with friends after a breakup is not moving on fast. It is called having a life. The idea that a recently single man cannot spend time with female friends without it being scandalous says a lot more about the people making that assumption than it does about me.

I am genuinely not that offended by being called names. People who do not know you can say whatever they want; their words carry exactly as much weight as their knowledge of your situation, which in this case is zero. What I cannot shake is something else entirely.

Someone Took a Photo of Me Without My Consent

This is the part that actually unsettles me.

Not the name-calling. Not the false rumours. The fact that a real human being, someone who lives near or on my campus, someone I may have passed in a corridor without knowing, decided to photograph me from what appears to be a dormitory window, without my knowledge, and submit that photo to a group chat specifically to damage my reputation.

That is not a confession. That is surveillance. That is the deliberate targeting of a private individual for public humiliation, using a platform specifically designed to allow the person doing it to face zero consequences.

I want to ask that person something directly: what were you hoping to achieve? Did posting that make you feel better about something? Did you think I had done something wrong and this was justice? Or was it just entertainment watching someone get dragged in a group chat, seeing the replies pile up, feeling the buzz of having started something?

Because from where I am standing, it looks like the last one. And I genuinely do not understand how a person gets there.

On Uni Confession Chats Generally

Yes, they are widespread. Most Malaysian universities and colleges have one or several. They operate on the premise that anonymity enables honesty, that people will say things they genuinely feel but cannot say openly, and that this somehow serves a social function.

Sometimes that is true. Occasionally, someone uses a confession platform to share something real and vulnerable, and the response is supportive. I have heard those stories too.

But far more often, what anonymity enables is not honesty. It is cowardice dressed as candour. It is the ability to say whatever you want about whoever you want to post unfounded accusations, to share photos taken without consent, to pile on with insults without having to look the person in the eye afterward, without having to justify yourself, without facing any of the social consequences that would normally regulate how we treat each other.

You are not brave for posting anonymously. You are specifically doing it because you know what you are saying cannot withstand scrutiny. If you were confident in your accusations, you would put your name to them.

What This Experience Actually Felt Like

I want to be honest: my first reaction was not anger. It was genuine confusion.

I sat with it for a while, the photo, the messages, the whole situation, and kept returning to the same question. Why would someone bother? Why would you take time out of your day, your actual real life, to photograph a stranger, write a caption, and submit it to a group chat to start something? What is the return on that investment?

I do not have a good answer. I think some people are bored. I think some people confuse generating drama with being interesting. I think anonymity removes the friction that would otherwise make people pause before doing something like this, and without that friction, the threshold for cruelty drops significantly.

To Anyone Who Has Been Through Something Similar

You are not alone. This kind of thing happens more than people talk about, partly because it is embarrassing to admit that strangers on the internet got to you, and partly because there is always a voice in your head that wonders if you did something to deserve it.

You did not. Someone else's willingness to spread rumours about you is not a reflection of your character. It is a reflection of theirs.

Do not join the chat to defend yourself. Do not send messages through mutual contacts. Do not spend energy trying to correct the record with people who were never interested in the truth. The people who know you know you. Everyone else is working with a photo taken from a dormitory window and a story someone made up.

As for me, I am fine. A little surprised that this is how some people choose to spend their time, but fine. My friends were great about it. My weekend was good.

If whoever posted that is reading this, and you might be, given that you seem to be paying close attention to my movements, I genuinely hope you find better things to do with your time. Not sarcastically. Actually.

Life is too short to spend it photographing strangers from dormitory windows.