By Stephanie Eisemann, News Correspondent 

“Sometimes, when I get bored I cover myself in vaseline and pretend I’m a slug.”

Fantasies, feelings and fetishes like these and others are revealed on the Facebook page Northeastern Whispers, a page that shares students’ anonymous confessions posted on an app called Whispers.

The Northeastern app has gained more than 500 likes online since the school-specific page was founded in 2011 and has seen an increase in popularity since the first week of January this year, when the page was most talked about.

The posts, known as “whispers,” cover a broad range of topics. Some address the ongoings of Northeastern directly, like the recent post that placed the text “I don’t want spring break to be over! I’d rather be anywhere than sit in on lectures at Shillman!” over a picture of the ocean. There is also a picture of the hockey team, with text stating, “This is Northeastern’s time to shine at this year’s Beanpot. Let’s go Huskies!” that emerged in conjunction to the annual tournament. The style of submissions is incredibly similar to that of PostSecret, a site where text confessions accompanied by a representative photo are posted anonymously.

Jade Su, a sophomore marketing and management major, was hired mid-January to be the campus Facebook manager for Northeastern Whispers, after responding to a job ad posted on the very page she now manages. She explained that her responsibilities for her unpaid internship are to use the Whisper app’s “nearby” location to post the whispers that are close to her and therefore assumed to submitted from Northeastern’s campus.

The nearby function, however, spans from a one to a 25-mile radius, so some of the whispers are being sent from the greater Boston area and not Northeastern students themselves. Su manages what gets sent in and post it at her discretion.

“Sometimes [I] consult with my management if I believe that it’s inappropriate,” Su said. She added that “it’s a social awareness platform” and one goal of the page is to generate discussion on topics people may not want to attach to their names.

“I’m more like the mediator … showing people how much they are not alone in the world and how everyone has similar personalities and problems,” she said.

While whispers are often seen as humorous, others address widespread and serious issues, like relationships, body image and social life.

A whisper from early February posted, “I have a drinking problem, but everyone just thinks I party a lot” placed over an image of bottle of Smirnoff. Still another addressed identity and the sometimes-difficult transition from high school to college by asking, “I was the smart girl in high school. But everyone’s smart at Northeastern. Who am I now?”

Su said this medium is “helpful in the fact that you can see what other people are dealing with, comment and give advice.” She also provides a help hotline that users can contact. The free iPhone app allows users (17+) to like a post as well as respond with their own whisper. Additionally, there is a messaging function that comes for a fee to the conversation initiator, where members can chat with one another. The app also allows users to organize whispers through the “Popular” and “Latest” tabs. These are whispers from the community at large, not simply from the Boston area.

Of course, something with so much scandalous potential is appealing to not only Northeastern students, but college students across the globe. Whisper representative Sarah Attman reported that there are over 750,000 users with 100,000 whispers created each day.

Michael Heyward, co-founder of Whisper, was quoted in The Daily Texan saying, “We developed Whisper as a reaction to the current social networking options. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are great, but they aren’t necessarily always authentic. People use social networking to show others a perfect version of themselves. We wanted to develop a platform that allowed people to communicate in a uniquely authentic manner and be who they really are.”

Heyward also told The Daily Texan that he believes the app is a good way for students to discover themselves.

“Very often the way we form opinions about ourselves is based on how we view ourselves in comparison to our peers,” Heyward said. “We are now living in a time where people don’t form opinions about their peers through physical interaction but through curated profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  People only put good things on those platforms, so everyone thinks everyone else’s lives are perfect.”

Whispers has set up Facebook pages for universities across the country, from nearby Boston University to University of California-Berkeley and many schools in between the two coasts.

Su said that while Northeastern’s page is slowly growing, she was inspired by other coordinators to create meeting groups in real life similar to support groups where people who post on Whisper are free to sit down and talk with other users about their problems and ways they have dealt with them.

She is currently in the process of coordinating collaboration with the student association and while she stressed that people should keep in mind typical social networking concerns.

“People can’t figure out what you said in the past.  So it’s a way for people to speak their minds without any ties.”