Logging into your Eli account and entering “Bulldog Chat” on the Yale admitted student website for the first time is like running into a game of double dutch. Conversations swing like ropes around you—the curious fellow prefrosh intimidating you almost to the point of complete inaction—and players jump in and out faster than you can say “one, two, buckle your shoe.” Collecting your thoughts, you prepare for your grand entrance. All these people have been holed up in the chat room for hours. Have they never heard of being fashionably late?

Wary of making a bad first impression, you flip through your Rolodex of emergency conversation topics (iCarly, your dog, your Furby, Roe v. Wade), but realize that none of these will cut it in a chatroom full of future world leaders. Of course, you want to avoid being the section asshole before you even enroll. And then it hits you: What’s the one thing that you share with these people? That’s right: a spot at Bulldog Days. You spend the next five minutes squealing (or typing in squealish tone) about the panel discussions, bazaars, and Howard Deans that await your arrival, and then the awkward silence returns. Now you’re desperately hoping someone else will do the legwork. No one does. In search of new material, you start stalking these chatters on Facebook. You ask Jenny what high school she went to, already knowing the answer, and proceed to play the mutual acquaintance game. This works for a while, but it’s hard to sustain any sort of conversation with Jenny when your comments are lost in a sea of other chatters, using the same crutch as you. Just when you’re running out of things to say, Ken (you know, the one on the sailboat in his profile picture) logs on. You’re throwing virtual elbows at the virtual horde of bulldogettes, vying for the honor of greeting him first. Your heart is pounding faster now, and your mom calls you for dinner. And then it happens, the one outcome you feared most. Ken has left the chatroom.

Such was the experience of Janine Chow, JE ’15, a frequent visitor of Bulldog Chat last winter, who managed to find a charm and humor in the palpable awkwardness. While conversations were mostly confined to experience on Student Council and gripes about the esoteric policies of the College Board, Janine was forging a meaningful relationship with one of her future classmates. Amid the clutter and chaos of the chatroom, Janine and her new friend conversed about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Janine was in California and her friend was in Ohio; this was a cross-national meeting of minds, a transcendent experience that would surely foretell a rich and fertile friendship when these two eager pre-frosh eventually came face to face. Indeed, the conversation continued when the two ran into each other at Bulldog Days. And while conflicts over Palestinian statehood and settlements on the West Bank remain unresolved, the story of Janine and her avatar-turned-human pal stands as a hopeful omen.

The Bulldog Chat feature of the admitted students website allows these high school seniors to represent (even reinvent) themselves by creating a profile that details their passions and quirks, projected major and favorite television show. Once this online persona is satisfactorily touched up, the student can chat with future classmates. While it remains to be seen whether the newest batch of prefrosh will flock to this social hub, recent years have seen a shift away from Yale’s officially endorsed online hangout spot in favor of a far more attractive alternative, a Facebook group created by the students themselves. In December 2010, students admitted early to the class of 2015 took social networking into their own hands, a move that left the Bulldog Chat to whither into a virtual ghost town. On Facebook, students initiate conversations more organically, in the comfort of a familiar turf. Students post onto the group page and, in the sort of community that can only exist on the Internet, receive “likes” affirming the fact that their blend of trepidation and excitement is shared by future Yalies just like themselves. Particularly enthusiastic pre-frosh plan to meet up in cities all around the world. Some voiced concerns that students without Facebook accounts would be excluded from activities. But most social networkers viewed these attempts to bring discussions back to Bulldog Chat as a step in the wrong direction.

The eventual extinction of Bulldog Chat is the result of a generation-wide gravitation to one central social network. But there is a more specific force dragging meek prefrosh away from Yale’s online home. His name, of course, is Ken.