Unless you were living under a rock last week, you definitely heard about the online multi-college competition started by Victoria’s Secret. It started off very innocently, asking college students across the country to tweet and retweet their hashtags #PINKGAMEON and, down here in south Louisiana, #LSUGAMEON. The winning school would get some free Victoria’s Secret merchandise. Pretty cool, right?
Then they upped their game when it was said that the Victoria’s Secret Angels as well as Drake were going to visit the campus of the winning school. That’s when things took a turn for the crazy. People started viciously tweeting. We all started getting texts and GroupMe messages and Facebook notifications from our friends asking us to participate and reminding us to tweet so that LSU could win the grand prize.
The next day, Victoria Secret took it to a whole new level. Based on the number of tweets, the brand narrowed it down to the four front runners: University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Oklahoma State University; University of Texas, San Antonio; and none other than, yours truly, Louisiana State University – the home of the fighting tigers. And boy did we fight.
Victoria’s Secret started what they called the Crazy Tap Race, the final championship of the competition. The rules were simple: one tap equals one point, and whichever school had the most taps in 24 hours wins. Thanks to the beauty that is social media, the race was on. People found out about it via twitter, Instagram, more texts, more GroupMe messages, etc. Personally, I saw it on friends’ Snapchat stories. Needless to say, I was very confused until I realized what was going on. In less than one hour, everyone on campus was tapping.
There were some differing opinions, however, about the phenomenon sweeping the campus. People reacted in vastly different ways:
Type #1 was all about it. They were the ones who were tweeting about it the day before because they either (a) love the Victoria Secret angels or (b) wanted Drake to come to LSU. So they had been keeping up with it, and started tapping right at 11 a.m., when the tap war started.
Type #2 were the ones who decided that they were too cool or too busy to participate in such a lowly activity. They couldn’t care less about Drake or the Angels, and they definitely did not have time, energy, or battery life to tap their phones 25,673 times.
Type #3 were people like me. They didn’t really care about the prizes at the end of the race, but they wanted to prove LSU’s clear dominance over any other school. These people wanted to win for the sake of winning because, clearly, LSU is the best at everything. Ever.
Type #4 were those that felt obligated to participate due to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). When everyone around them is tapping, they can’t not participate. They couldn’t not be a part of the inside jokes or feel the solidarity of not being able to feel their thumbs. They felt the very strong urge to be a part of the something. Something important – like Drake and the VS Angels coming to Baton Rouge. Obviously.
Many people became dedicated tappers. Others grew bored after 10 minutes. Still others had no choice but to stop due to a dead phone and a lack of charger. Even professors were aware of the craze. Some were even impressed by our dedication to the oh-so-important cause.
Coming from an Advertising major’s perspective, Victoria’s Secret is a branding genius. People were tweeting, texting, and talking about their brand for a solid two days. In order to tap, you had to supply VS with your information and email address so that they can send you further advertisements and information. And both UT and LSU had over 200 million taps. Talk about brand involvement.
Unfortunately, the University of Texas, San Antonio started to pull ahead, and it soon became clear that their lead was insurmountable. And suddenly we realized we could make better use of our time than to stare at our phones for 24 hours. There were exchanges to attend, and friends to see, and Game Day preparations to be made. So, in my opinion, I think it was a fair trade.
So congratulations to the University of Texas, San Antonio! You definitely have some impressive skills. But it’s okay. We tigers down here aren’t bitter. We’re from Louisiana, so we know how to “laissez les bon ton rouler” no matter what. And we still had the best day of the year to look forward to: Saturday Night in Death Valley.
