What the hell happened to Edinburgh’s Yik Yak game?

A couple of years ago, Yik Yak was the app that everyone around Edinburgh was using. Before Tinder really took off, Yik Yak was the app of the town.

If something funny ever happened in halls, everyone would know about it instantly because someone would anonymously post the story on the app.

look at how many up votes posts used to get

It was also the perfect way of letting off some steam about your flatmates without actually upsetting anyone, or, passive aggressively complaining about the obnoxious ‘yahs’ in halls who made too much noise.

Not only this, there was also the satisfying feeling you’d get when a joke you made got 300 up votes and, despite no one knowing it was you, you still knew that it was funny.

The Yaks in Edinburgh were particularly strong. Even if you lived in London, when you went back home at the end of the semester, the Yik Yak game of your hometown was always noticeably worse than what was going on here.

The ‘herd’ function meant that you could always keep track with what was going on in Edinburgh no matter where you were in the world.

Then there were the classic Yik Yak posts of shitting on the other unis in Edinburgh, with Napier normally being the target of the anonymous hate. It went both ways though as Edinburgh locals would dish out jokes about how posh Edinburgh students were as well, so it was all fairly good natured.

Although at the time people would generally complain about them, the daily posts of desperate singletons looking for hook-ups or relationship advice were actually quite memorable. There was at least one instance of a couple claiming to have met on Yik Yak.

Now Yik Yak makes you create a profile with a set handle name before you post any Yaks, completely ruining the best part of Yik Yak – the anonymity. With that gone, you realise that a lot of the posts are from the same people and to be honest, that’s ruined it.

People very rarely post anything on it anymore. Back in the day, there’d be posts nearly every minute and now you get about 15 a day and about half of them are complaining about how shit Yik Yak has become.

Even though the posts are less frequent, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they should be any less interesting or funny. Unfortunately though, the quality of the Yaks just don’t compare with previous years.

The fall of Yik Yak was as fast as its rise, and now it’s just something that we nostalgically reminisce about. Yik Yak, you could have been so much more.