Will’s Word On Warwick: A sit down with the man behind the Warwick Grapevine
From 2023-2024, the Warwick Grapevine served as the go-to place for gossip on campus, posting all manner of complaints, confessions, and comedy gold. In its day, the Grapevine was as iconically Warwick as the Koan, T-Bar, and Purple combined – with the last of these serving as the account’s trademark colour. In just nine months, the Warwick Grapevine posted over 2,700 submissions, amassed over 4,000 loyal Instagram followers, and firmly cemented its place in the hallowed halls of Warwick iconography.
I sat down with the account’s founder, one year on from their fabled Most Aura On Campus Competition, to take a look behind the curtain of this legendary Warwick account. To supplement this interview, I obtained comments from various members of the illusive admin team.
So, join me for a needle-pushing interview, featuring details of a rebellious admin member who threatened to tank the whole operation; insight into the Grapevine’s particularly high-risk method of recruitment; and, finally, the reason this former Warwick titan decided to step aside in lieu of a new generation of tea-spillers. In the spirit of Warwick Grapevine’s commitment to anonymity, I have kept the founder and commenting admin completely anonymous, thoroughly destroying the original recording of our interview.
Will Moores: So, where did the idea for the Warwick Grapevine come from?
Founder: The original idea came from Warwick Love, which was essentially the submissions account before Grapevine came along. Warwick Love died when I was going into my final year, so I figured that it needed to be replaced. I decided to have it on Instagram rather than Facebook because I think it was really weird that Warwick Love, and even the stuff before it, apparently, were all on Facebook.
W: How many people were in the admin team?
F: It varied from time to time, we had people leave, we had people join. Obviously, I started the account on my own, and then more people came in. We had, at peak, 10 people.
This surprised me a great deal, I’d have figured that the admin team was one centralised unit. However, as the founder reveals, the setup was far more extensive and high-risk than many would have assumed, functioning not unlike a society and featuring many ‘friends of friends’. The founder employed a trust-based system, recruiting one person he knew was reliable and gradually expanding this circle from there.
W: How did you recruit people without being too conspicuous?
F: Yeah, see that, that was tricky. That’s why it was friends of friends. And that grew, you’d let one person know and they’d let one person they knew know etc…I had one mate that knew, and then the rest of my friends had no idea.
W: So, the people you lived with didn’t know?
F: Oh yeah of course not, no.
W: Wow. How many people did you trust with this secret?
F: The admin team knew, and my sister knew, that’s about it.
I put a similar question to the rest of the admin, asking after their success in keeping the secret:
Anonymous Admin #2: I think some people suspected, but I never confirmed it. We never actually got round to doing a big admin social event, but a few of us joked that if we ever did and someone asked us how we all knew each other, we’d say we met at the Fetish Society.
Unnamed Admin #1: We did meet at the Fetish Society???? Why say this, ur gonna expose everyone
There was the guy who sadly resigned over the Eurovision statement, and then did break. It was all, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to expose you all.’
W: How was it keeping the secret?
F: It was sort of fun. I enjoyed it through my one or two friends that knew the secret. It was obviously good to talk to them about it. But then, as I said earlier, I couldn’t really go on about the Grapevine with my close circle as much, because otherwise I would look suspicious. When it was earlier on in the process I wouldn’t be there and my friends were like why is he not there when the Grapevine’s posting, what’s going on?
W: Did you enjoy hearing people talking about it? Because it was obviously enormous.
F: Yeah. People would definitely mention it, quite a bit, outside of my friend group and even in seminars and stuff. It became quite big. I mean, I can’t remember, we got to about 3000, 4000 followers. But I think in terms of our outreach we definitely did much better than Warwick Love. And that’s probably because Warwick Love was on Facebook and it was very annoying to go on Facebook all the time – whereas Instagram is something that people scroll through.
W: And did anyone slip up with the secret? Did anyone break?
F: There was the guy who sadly resigned over the Eurovision statement, and then did break. It was all, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to expose you all.’
In 2024, the University of Warwick cancelled the Eurovision watch-along party in the piazza, a key Warwick tradition, following pressure from pro-Palestine groups. The Grapevine then released a controversial statement criticising the University for submitting to the demands of a small minority of students. This was followed by hundreds of submissions and DMs, ranging from support to criticism, to hate speech. Following this, a Grapevine admin ‘threw all of their toys out of the pram’ and resigned over the Grapevine’s Eurovision statement. The renegade admin then threatened to expose everyone for being ‘Zionist sympathisers’, though as far as I can tell they failed to effectively deliver on said threats.
W: Let’s talk more about this rebellious admin, was that quite a stressful time?
F: Oh Lord, yeah. It was for the days it happened. The admin group chat was probably the most active it had ever been when he left. And yeah, it was quite stressful. People are like oh, God, what’s he gonna do? He’s gonna create, like, this massive social page where it’s like, ‘oh, my name is this, and here’s all of the members of the Warwick Grapevine that I’m aware of’. And it was, yeah, slightly stressful. Perhaps he just tried to tell some of his friends, who either didn’t care or didn’t have a mind or platform to go and spread it around…Yeah, nothing came of it, luckily.
W: Are you glad that you posted it? Because I think that was the most controversial moment of the Grapevine.
F: It was, yeah, it was definitely controversial. The Grapevine was always controversial, but this definitely put us into the limelight. We got lots of people who messaged us privately. Quite big accounts… I don’t think I can say who they are publicly, because I think they told us not to say, but there were big accounts that reached out and said: ‘Yeah, we support that’ and they can verify the abuse that we got.
Yeah, I think the Tab were not terribly happy, but we had an alright relationship with them, we communicated in DMs a few times
W: And what’s your relationship like with the rest of the admin at the moment?
F: The group chat’s a bit dead, and we weren’t all that close – apart from the few friends that I knew. And some of their friends are friends … I didn’t even know half of them.
W: Wow, tell me about the moderation process.
Well, that was quite a bit of the work, going through and looking at it and thinking: does this violate any of the Instagram ToS? Are they breaking our anonymity rule by saying that this person is from this year, and then they do this society, and they were here at this exact time? You’re thinking, this doesn’t seem terribly anonymous, I don’t think we should be posting that. And it would always be something massively slanderous as well. So, oh, yes, this person, at this point in time, did this really awful thing. Yeah, we don’t want to be posting that. That’s absolutely ridiculous.
W: You noted that the MAOC competition was a highlight. I was kind of hoping you would say that because it was great fun for us in first year. Just how enjoyable was it and what were the logistics of pulling it off?
F: Oh, god, yeah, the MAOC, I think I pronounced it ‘Mouse C’. That was great fun. It was based off of the Tab’s BNOC competition…the rigged one. There were so many people that were telling me, like, oh, this competition is complete bullsh*t.
I was definitely not a BNOC. Though I wasn’t a complete shut-in either. I think my close friends who didn’t know might have, you know, might have suspected it
The Most Aura On Campus Competition was very similar to this year’s Warwick Tea BNOC Competition, as Warwick students voted to determine who had the most aura on campus. The Grapevine’s competition came in response to the Warwick Tab’s allegedly bot-riddled BNOC Competition.
Yeah, I think the Tab were not terribly happy, but we had an alright relationship with them, we communicated in DMs a few times as well. It was great to make that competition. It was mostly me that administered the MAOC competition because it had to be centralised. I had a huge Excel spreadsheet of all the nominations. Trying to figure out how many people had been nominated.
We had an open period where we got the top 32 nominees. I think I had to do a tie-breaker, and I didn’t know how to do it, so I just picked the guy with the f*cking nickname. And that guy was, I think, Bincs of Beccles, so … I’ve never met the guy, he didn’t make it past the first round, which was slightly sad.
W: How involved were you in on-campus life? Do you think if you came out as the Grapevine, people would be like, what a reveal! Or would you say that you were more under the radar?
F: Oh, yes, it’s hard to say too much. I think people would have been surprised. I had a certain degree of involvement. I was known by people, but I was definitely not a BNOC. Though I wasn’t a complete shut-in either. I think my close friends who didn’t know might have, you know, might have suspected it, as they probably did. But then other people outside of that, who knew me vaguely, would have probably been quite surprised.
W: Do you feel The Warwick Tea are doing a good job of continuing your legacy?
F: Oh, well, yeah, we love the Tea. Actually, it was great to see that start off as the continuation of the legacy. It’s proof that we left a lasting impact on the Warwick community.
We then went on a tangent about their tremendously artistic handover video with The Warwick Tea, which was tragically taken down by Instagram for copyright reasons but can be viewed here in all its cinematic glory.
A few [are] left in lower years, usually going into year three … did we have a fresher?
W: Have you got any advice that you would give The Warwick Tea’s admin if they read this article?
F: I think what the admins put quite well was like keep making memes. That was a good source of engagement for us outside of the submissions, and consult with the admin team. Like I would usually host most of the meetings, but then you could talk with the admin to be like, right, do you want to make any of the memes? We all collaborated to do that. It’s good for engagement.
Outside of that, I like the fact that they’ve done a moderation policy, the same thing that we did. I think that’s a smart idea, because otherwise you get people that are just trying to slander others, and you get lots of very angry DMs people saying they’re running hate campaigns.
W: And have you had any contact with the Tea at all?
F: Did we DM them? Maybe, when we did the handover, there were a few DMs or something, but it was mostly just, oh, look, it’s The Tea account. We got a few admins that were going, oh, well, we should probably just hand it over to them. Then, yeah, right, I’ll kind of create the good old handover video.
W: Did the novelty wear off in terms of posting? And why did you decide to retire the account?
F: It’s just, I think, you know, I graduated. A lot of the moderator team graduated. A few left in lower years, usually going into year three … did we have a fresher? Uh, I don’t think we did. So the people going into year three were like, right, I need a crack on with my degree. And then the people who graduated are like, I love the page. I wish I could continue, but I’m not part of the Warwick community.
I appreciated your column. Actually, it’s funny, when we were still operating last year, there weren’t many articles. In fact, the only article that was about us was in The Times. After that, we get lots of articles from you and I think there’s another article I saw from The Boar. There was another one or two in the Tab as well.
Part of the reason I think Grapevine did so well is because we were real, we didn’t pretend life was sunshine and rainbows
W: Well, when I was drawing up my list of ideas something about the Grapevine had to be on there. It was such a staple of the culture. How do you feel then, overall, about creating such a successful, iconic Warwick account?
F: It’s good. Honestly, I remember when I started, I was thinking: Right, how am I going to get this to blow up? And I just looked around for people that followed people from Warwick. I just mass-followed them. And that’s how the platform initially got off the ground. And then after that, it naturally grew from there, as people told friends of friends. But yeah, it feels good to have created something like this. I’ve done social media stuff before but Grapevine was a very different kind of thing, very different sort of community building. Yeah, I’m glad I did it.
W: Was it difficult to handle the pressure and challenges of running such a large account, which many viewed as toxic?
F: Sometimes. Our moderation team got a barrage of abuse after the Eurovision cancellation with the most toxic, disgusting comments you can imagine. Most of us coped alright, although one of our admins did have to step down due to a mental health episode. On the page being viewed as toxic, yes some of the submissions on the page were toxic, mean, and spiteful. But the reality is, people in real life can be toxic, mean, and spiteful. You can go over to the Olive Branch (the Grapevine’s overly positive and far less successful counterpart), and pretend that everything is perfect, that everyone is nice, and that nobody has any reason to be toxic, mean, or spiteful. However, if your life consists exclusively of people who aren’t any of those things, then your friends are either fake or you live an extremely privileged life free of strife.
Unnamed Admin #1: I agree. Part of the reason I think Grapevine did so well is because we were real, we didn’t pretend life was sunshine and rainbows.
W: Do you think the Grapevine’s impact on the Warwick community was more positive or negative overall?
F: If you asked all of the students that interacted with the Grapevine and its content, I think you’d find most people thought that it was funny, sparked interesting discussions, and made them aware of a bunch of things they otherwise wouldn’t have known about Warwick and its students.
I must say, I found my conversation with the Grapevine’s elusive founder extremely enjoyable; he was charming, interesting, and very easy to talk to, which assuaged any possible concerns one could have regarding the character of the Grapevine’s unknown puppet master.
Perhaps then, Warwick’s rich history of gossip accounts is the reason we engage so frequently with pages like the Grapevine or maybe there are just an abnormal amount of things to bemoan, and people to shame, at this university
With thousands of submissions and an undeniably strong presence on campus, one of the things that the Warwick Grapevine undoubtedly highlights is our university’s remarkable enthusiasm for online gossip culture. While most other institutions have very similar accounts, they are often considerably less elaborate, usually lacking the branding and general effort of accounts like the Grapevine and the Tea. Not to mention most university gossip accounts generally post one or two submissions at a time; at Warwick, such a feat would be impossible since our pages appear to receive hundreds of confessions every week.
Notably, the extensive history of gossip accounts at Warwick sees a lineage that goes back a long way and could be a key reason for our ongoing fascination with these pages. Warwick Fess, 2018-2019, posted over 1,700 individual confessions; Warwick Secret, Jan 2021-April 2021, put out roughly 5,300 confessions across only four months; and the original Warwick Love was receiving hundreds of submissions a Pop before it was taken down in 2019. Moreover, WarwickFessions was ranked the number one university confessions account in the UK by HerCampus in 2021, whilst the second iteration of Warwick Love, 2021-2023, released a staggering 7,780 individual submissions across its lifetime.
Perhaps then, Warwick’s rich history of gossip accounts is the reason we engage so frequently with pages like the Grapevine or maybe there are just an abnormal amount of things to bemoan, and people to shame, at this university. Either way, the Grapevine served its purpose admirably. It not only sustained but expanded Warwick’s gossip tradition through its more professional branding and innovative competitions, paving the way for accounts like The Warwick Tea to continue to push the medium today.
Some readers may have problems with this article and my celebration of an account which many viewed as toxic. Whilst this is perhaps a reasonable complaint, I would defend the Grapevine as an honest reflection of student sentiment: both the good and the bad. Though the admin didn’t always get everything right, their platform managed to bring students together on a campus of almost 30,000, allowing us to laugh, shudder, and cringe as one. For that, at the very least, I think we owe the admin our gratitude.
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