The Envoy

By Panagiota Chasan and Nikole Rajgor

In this piece, student reporters Panagiota Chasan and Nikole Rajgor have a conversation with the anonymous owners behind two of Hunter College’s most intriguing Instagram accounts, @huntercursedimages and @huntercollegeaffirmations. Through posting relatable memes about the culture and campus of Hunter, these accounts have brought students together to bond over their shared experiences, and in the process, become viral within the CUNY online community.

First, an interview with @huntercursedimages. In conversation with reporter Panagiota Chasan, the creator discusses how through posting a growing collection of grimy photos and hand-made sticker designs, they unify students by exposing some of the most obscene areas around campus. The conversation has been edited for clarity.

A Conversation with

HunterCursedImages

Photos of the creator of @huntercursedimages, taken by Panagiota Chasan.

Hello! Could you please introduce yourself? 

HCI: My name is HunterCursedImages. I’m a Super Senior, which is like a regular CUNY senior, so year number five, we’re going strong. Major, hm, how much do I wanna tackle on . . . I’m in Human Bio and I added on Media [Studies], so basically I don’t know what I’m doing in college (laughs).

Why Hunter? 

HCI: Their marketing scheme worked, it definitely worked on me (chuckles). This place has sort of a rep for being a biology school when it comes to the CUNYs and I love biology, so I wanted to come to the “crown jewel of CUNY.”

Follow up, are you a pre-med [student]?

HCI: Um, no, it was just general bio interest you know. I’m not in a position where I have to be the first doctor in the family, thank God! (laughs).

What was your inspiration for the account?

HCI: A few friends and I came to the school before it officially opened, you know, just to learn the grounds and [to] not look like confused freshmen on our first day. The school was empty and we started taking pictures of whatever looked weird or funny or downright creepy. 

One day, we were just chilling by the 3rd-floor plaza, and someone had dropped their fruit salad, and there was a boiled egg spinning perpetually on the escalator. Our first thought was “this place is f—d” like “it’s haunted” and so we started posting. It’s slowly morphed into highlighting the conditions, not in a cynical way, but you look around [and] there’s no school spirit here. Everyone’s depressed. It’s Hunter culture to hate the school and to be miserable and I just provide an online space where we can do that.

Has anyone found you out yet? 

HCI: Yeah, the f—ing school! They’re onto me, I’m telling you. They have come to me about this one incident on one day where I had put up a sticker, but it wasn’t me like it was clearly some fan of my page, a fanatic who is obsessed with me and the school. Not me, I’m too busy, I have two majors. I can’t be obsessing over the school! (laughs)

I mean look, at first, I wanted to be anonymous. It is my last year though, so I do need people to replace me because this place is still gonna be filthy. [And] even if we get like a billion dollar grant and Eric Adams decides he wants to build a nightclub in the school and all of this gets wiped, we still need to remember the times [that] we were breathing the harmful toxic asbestos ridden air every day as students.

What’s your favorite part of the account? 

HCI: It’s getting the shock from people that I tell “Hey, have you heard of this account? It’s me!” I do do that sometimes, you know rarely, because I’m sort of on my glory run if you will, with the semester ending soon.

Have you met any other Hunter accounts?

HCI: No. I think it reflects our in-person state [in] that everybody keeps their head down and keeps to themselves.

What does the future of Hunter Cursed Images look like to you?

HCI: One thing the account taught me is [that] people resonate with its purpose and the message. And so I know someone will be willing to keep it going.

For whoever does overtake the account, look it’s not that hard, you just gotta see some broken sh-t, take a picture, write a tacky caption, and then you’re done.

A Conversation with HunterCollegeAffirmations

In an interview with reporter Nikole Rajgor, Instagram account @huntercollegeaffirmations talks about the pressures of anonymity, uniting the Hunter community, and plastic babies. Like HunterCursedImages, HunterCollegeAffirmations blew up in popularity last year for posting memes about Hunter. Most notably, they also left miniature plastic babies around campus as a scavenger hunt. In a computer lab on the tenth floor of Hunter North, they discuss their story publicly for the first time. The conversation has been edited for clarity.

First off, introduce yourself! What is your grade, and major if you declared?

HCA:  I’m a junior and an environmental science major. Okay, and also biology minor. But I haven’t declared that yet. 

Why did you decide to attend Hunter College?

HCA: It was cheap bro (laughs). Surprisingly, Hunter was actually my first choice. I did not want to leave the city.

What inspired you to create the huntercollegeaffirmations account?

HCA: I started the account as soon as my sophomore year started, as my freshman year was online. I was here before, but I haven’t been back since and I don’t have any like memory of it. So the whole process of absorbing this new environment was a shock. I genuinely enjoy my time here. But when you’re new, it’s all overwhelming and there is a lot to complain about. And yeah, that was inspiration. I wanted to complain.

Did anyone know or find out your identity?

HCA: A couple of my friends knew. And then a couple of my other friends found out because my friends are not slick at all. Like, they would text me on the account. And then, in person, my other friends would be like, “Why are you texting the affirmations account?” And, yeah, I didn’t mind because they’re also my friends. But no one really found out against my will, I suppose.

What made you decide to reveal your face on your account?

HCA: So I’m in a club at Hunter. And I just started getting really, really close to them [the club members]. And last semester, it was always kind of an inside joke, like “Oh, who’s the affirmations account?” And none of them knew it was me besides like, two people. And then I was thinking about it. I was thinking about how my friends are going to be graduating next semester, like a lot of them that I really, really care about. And I just wanted to share it before they left because it’s okay. It was a bonding experience.

How did it feel to own such a popular account, but walk around campus knowing that no one else knew?

HCA: It felt weird because I would be walking in the hallways and I would hear people talk about it. Or in my classes, I would hear people talk about it. And they’re just like, “This is so funny. This is so cool.”  I actually really appreciate it because it’s making me feel a bond to my school community and I’d just be sitting there like, “oh, that makes me feel good.”

How do you hope that the account impacts the Hunter community?

HCA: A common complaint with new transfers or freshmen is that, “Oh, this is such a commuter school. There’s no social life.” I noticed that, something that would always bond when you’re meeting new people, an instant icebreaker conversation, would be to complain about Hunter. 

I feel like there’s just a lot of stuff that people don’t realize is a common thread between colleges. And they’ll stress out about it, or they’ll lament about it. But then, once you get to speak about it with other people, it makes you feel better, like okay, so this isn’t just happening to me. I guess you can use my account to start up a conversation with people about Hunter. Yeah, I liked that people were using my posts in that way. 

Last year, you left little plastic babies around the Hunter campus as a scavenger hunt for students to find. Where did you get the idea to do this?

HCA: In my high school, my friend bought a pack of babies. And she gave it to all of her friends like us. And I have all my high school stuff, like letters I got from people or ticket stubs, art gallery pamphlets, all in a drawer in my bedroom. And I had found the box recently, and I opened it and I found a little baby. And I was like, wait, you know, it’d be really funny. 

I had started to try to make my account more interactive. And this is like the stupidest thing. But I remember one day, I was sitting in the sixth-floor library, and I posted on my account, if you’re in the sixth-floor library right now shout “bananas” or something like that. It was something stupid. I don’t even remember what, but a lot of people were doing it. And I would hear people be like, “Why did bla bla say that?” and “Oh, it’s something from the affirmations account.” And I was like, this interactive stuff is kind of fun. So I kind of tied the two together. And that’s how I got the idea.

Some of the plastic babies hidden around on campus. Photos courtesy of @huntercollegeaffirmations.

Important question: do you intend to leave more little babies around?

HCA: No (laughs). I’m so sorry. But no, never again. I have bought probably upwards of 500 by now, and I’m tired of my mom finding them all over the house because like, I would stuff them in my bag. And then sometimes the bag they were in would rip open. And as a result, I just keep finding babies around my place. And my mom is just like, “What is this?” every time she finds one and I’m afraid she thinks I’m in a cult or something. So I never want to see one ever again. I’m so sorry. Everyone keeps asking me that or DMing me, like “When are you gonna put more out?” Never. Go on Amazon. It’s like 10 bucks for 100. 

Do you have any intention of making any other similar interactive experiences?
HCA: ​​ I do have some stuff in mind, I just haven’t been able to execute it yet, because I’ve been really busy this semester. You know, junior year. But hopefully soon. My spring schedule looks kind of sexy, I’m not gonna lie. Like, it’s good. So hopefully next semester, I’ll be able to do so.

What is your favorite thing about owning the account?

HCA: Getting to talk to so many different people. Not gonna lie, I find it a little bit odd how quickly people opened up to me? Especially when I was anonymous, because I would have a lot of people just trauma dumping to me, hitting on me, or just demanding stuff of me like, “oh, post this, this, and this.” And while it’s weird, it’s also cool.

I would consider myself a pretty social person. But because of the way that Hunter is structured, I would probably never meet, a humanities major, because my major is in STEM. I’m figuring out so much new stuff, because of the people that I get to talk to, instead of being confined to my major, which is, I think, pretty small.

What does the future of the account look like to you?

HCA: I had USG reach out to me trying to do a collaboration, but I was still anonymous back then. So I don’t know. I know your question is probably phrased with respect to content. But lately, what I’ve been thinking about in terms of the future of the account is what I’m going to do with it once I graduate. Like, I’ve been trying to think of people that I would want to pass it on to, potentially. But I don’t know. It’s a lot. 

Like, who to trust with that kind of power, if you will.

HCA: Yeah. And then it gets messy because having a platform is such a responsibility. Even if it’s just a meme account. It’s not that deep, but it’s a platform. And the idea of it potentially going to someone that I don’t even know, and whatever they do, being connected to my,  “legacy,” for lack of a better word, that’s intimidating. 

Thank you so much for agreeing to this. I feel like the people were really dying to know these questions!

HCA: I don’t know about dying. I feel like no one really cares. But that’s totally fine with me. I impacted what I impacted. That’s good enough for me.