Why we can't take our eyes off of #RushTok

10:11Why is #BamaRush so popular, online and off?

With the first fall breeze in the air comes the arrival of a newly beloved season in internet culture: #RushTok.

The hashtag has been used prominently in recent years to chronicle the lives of young women as they try to join sororities in the United States. One school in particular, the University of Alabama, is best known for producing viral content surrounding this mysterious period.

Journalist Anne Helen Petersen joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about the online phenomenon and the ensuing real-time TikTok dispatches of young women vying for a coveted spot in Alabama's elite sororities.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: We are watching people who are about to go to the University of Alabama. They just left high school, and they are making their appeals, if you will, to be like, "I would like to be accepted into this particular sorority." Can you briefly explain the things we end up seeing on RushTok?

Anne Helen: Yes, so to rewind even slightly more, we have to explain rush a little bit. Rush is when hundreds of young women sign up to try to match with a sorority. It's like a series of parties where over the course of 10 days, you go to fewer and fewer parties, but the parties get longer and longer. And after each time you meet people from these sororities and you go through the houses, you write down your favourites. And then the sororities are also ranking the girls that they meet. And then it goes into a computer algorithm, and they eventually all match. Other people have said, "Oh, that sounds a lot like the process of matching doctors to residencies." And that's because it's the same software. This software was developed specifically for rush, and then it expanded into these other matching scenarios.

WATCH | Official trailer for Bama Rush on Max:

Elamin: So that's sororities and fraternities. But then we get to RushTok.

Anne Helen: Yes. I think of two major buckets of videos. The first is OOTDs, or outfits of the day. Usually those are made by PNMs, or prospective new members, and they're just showing their rush outfit, right? The outfits get more and more fancy over the course of the week. There are rules about what the PNMs can say in these videos: they can't talk about any specific experiences at any houses, any specific experiences with any members — so they're actually quite banal. But I think the allure of watching these is seeing all these brands.

Elamin: Yes. Essentially, you're talking here about an ecosystem that is part fashion show and part "I could be one of you. Please pick me."?

Anne Helen: Yeah, the second bucket are videos made by the sororities themselves. They are mostly TikTok dances, but maybe in costumes, usually in front of their sorority houses. And then there's another sub-genre within that, that's essentially skits; oftentimes it's mouthing the words to clips from reality television. And these videos are essentially advertisements for the sorority, saying "This is the type of sorority we are. This is how cool we are. This is the vibe at the sorority."

Elamin: Pretty much every major university in the U.S. has a frat or sorority culture. What is it about the University of Alabama that makes it such a hotbed for RushTok?

Anne Helen: The University of Alabama has the largest Greek system, and I think that's a very straightforward reason why this is the case. But also … the standards of femininity are different in Alabama. Every day, you need to have a full face of makeup, and all this sort of thing. You get a more pronounced version of rush.

Elamin: I'm sure a lot of people are thinking, "Look, it's 2023. We have other ways to find people who are like-minded." Why does gaining entry to these sororities become such a significant event when you're entering this really significant stage of life?

Anne Helen: This is so interesting to me because sorority and fraternity life has been on the decline for a long time, in part because there's been so much bad press — because there's been so much bad stuff! Fraternities are horrible in so many ways.

Elamin: I don't think I can recall a single positive headline that features a fraternity in the last 10 years.

Anne Helen: Which is part of the reason they don't do RushTok — because there's no upside for them. But also I think there's just been a general pushback on the idea that you should only try to be friends with people who are exactly like you, or try to enter into organizations that are really invested in reproducing structures of power. All this stuff is out of fashion. But there is still pushback on that — the anti-woke pushback on these sorts of understandings of, "Maybe we should try to dismantle some of these things."

The other thing that I think intersects with that feeling is that these young women who are rushing now, they were freshmen, sophomores in high school when COVID hit. There's a real feeling that they missed out on significant components of "the high school experience." And so what they're seeking out is their college experience — and a lot of them are willing to go out of state in order to find that…. What they want is not just football, but the biggest championship football team. Not just a Greek system, but the biggest Greek system. Not just parties, but the day parties that are possible in a climate like Alabama's. Right now I think more than 66 per cent of Alabama is out of state. So where are those people coming from? Why do they want to go there? A lot of it is the effective way that Alabama — through their Greek system, through their football, through everything else — has been able to say, "We are the college experience that you crave."

Elamin: What is it about the entire drama of all of these aspects that keeps us glued to RushTok? Why do we keep returning to this very strange online corner?

Anne Helen: Well, I do think there is the reality television aspect of it where you want to see who wins, for lack of a better word. But then I also think some of it is investment in different ways of being…. There's been a lot of effort to try to say, "Sororities are so much more diverse now, they're more welcoming, they do different work than what you think they are like, this isn't just about paying for your friends," blah, blah, blah. And I'm allowed to say all those things because I was in a sorority. But this proves that that's not the case, right? It's still the same regressive institution that it always has been.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Anne Helen Petersen produced by Stuart Berman.