Harvard University's social media pages are weirdly trending on online platforms and have been receiving a lot of talks from netizens. The epicenter? Southeast Asian country, Philippines.
The esteemed Ivy League university based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is stirring a lot of talks in its Facebook page and confuses some social media users as to different testimonies coming from people who haven't studied there were sharing their insights.
Inquirer.net states that this is not a hoax, a technical glitch, or a paid advertisement campaign, and indeed not a hack. Instead, a handful of Filipino social media users who invaded the university's Facebook pages and posts by commenting and pretending to be students of the Ivy League university.
This weird internet trend's roots are not identified and remain unknown. Basically, it just started as a handful of Filipino users in Facebook sharing their "testimonies" during their time in Harvard as a "student," carefully recounting their happy moments and even the weird ones.
The posts and comments made by the Filipinos even attracted the attention of people who might even be affiliated with Harvard or its students, asking whether their testimonies are real.
Harvard University's Social Media Status
Because of the Filipino's engagements, Harvard's Facebook likes grew 5.6 percent over the past week. The Ivy League university gained 336,000 more likes and currently exceeded six million page likes and followers.
Harvard's four social media posts on Facebook gained a total of 18.6 million reactions, comments, and shares collectively. This is a massive surge for the university's Facebook page that is only used to less than 10,000 collective engagements on their previous post in July.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, Harvard's campus is unusually quiet. Posted by Harvard University on Wednesday, July 29, 2020
What's Happening?
Some of the comments and shares that the Filipinos who did not go to Harvard include their sentiments about how they miss the campus. Other testimonies included reviewing for examinations, meeting the love of their life, and even allegedly starting their freshman year there. The profiles of the people who said these sentiments list another school's name, thus voiding them of their affiliation to Harvard.
Filipinos who engaged in the online "gag" to Harvard went as far as engaging comments with foreign national accounts who were merely commenting their opinions about the Harvard post.
In a very different move-in this year, a limited number of students were welcomed to campus yesterday. Photo: Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer Posted by Harvard University on Monday, August 24, 2020
Where did it start?
A quiet campus. Photo: Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer Posted by Harvard University on Friday, July 24, 2020
Harvard's post about the campus that shows an image of the tree captioned "A quiet campus" was the first post that Filipinos started to share and put their captions in. Soon after, each post got weirder and weirder.
Other posts by Harvard were also spammed by Filipino social media users, including its back-to-school limited dorm accommodations amidst COVID-19.
Some foreign nationals questioned this bizarre moment in social media but were given indirect responses that included lyrics from songs and native Filipino languages. However, harsh comments also attacked Filipinos, saying that they have the lowest IQ in the Southeast Asian region.
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Written by Isaiah Alonzo
