You may have recently spotted sayat.me/ URLs on all your friends’ Instagram bios. The question arises, what is Sayat? The principle behind the free service is simple; Sayat is a tool for sending and receiving anonymous feedback. You create a profile, share the URL everywhere you want, and your friends, followers and acquaintances can send you anonymous feedback. It even allows you to publish your favourite comments. Reminiscent of Ask.fm, an app that used the question/answer format and peaked in 2013, Sayat is the hot new trend among teens in the city.
“To a certain extent, it’s some sort of validation,” says Tejas, a high school student, on why people are drawn to this app. Others think that the app’s popularity is a result of peer pressure and mob mentality. “The reason everyone is using it is because everyone else is,” adds an unnamed user. “I use it for my personal entertainment, and to find out what people think about me,” says Khyati, a popular user.
Teens use Sayat for a variety of things, including confessing their feelings, making friends and unfortunately, ‘trolling’ and bullying. Khyati, like most girls on the site, receives a lot of sleazy messages. Almost everyone using Sayat is subjected to some hateful feedback, and for some, it is incredibly harmful.
According to Anusha, a college student, many engage with ‘haters’ because they use this feedback to measure their own self worth. “Anonymous haters are just people who are terribly insecure about themselves and use such platforms to feel better by degrading others,” she adds.
Sayat has some filters in place to keep people from resorting to cyberbullying, along with the message, “Bullying and strong language has no place on our site. Harsh messages can have consequences you don’t want be a part of.” But clearly, given the amount of hate that gets through, users can easily get around the filters.
Fortunately, teens feel that Sayat is a fleeting craze, and that everyone will soon be over it. Daniel, another popular Sayat user, says, “It’s a trend sort of thing. It’ll be around for a while and it’ll die down soon.”
—Anoushka Shyam
