Don’t you hate it when you sign up for a newfangled social media app and your ideal handle is taken? Especially if you’re a college bro trying to nab his fraternity’s handle so you can post videos of epic beer pong battles and sadistic hazing rituals or whatever else frats do, I don’t know, I’m a grown adult who didn’t have Greek life in college!
Behold, this 21-year-old TikTok user Zoe who ingeniously made her handle “sigmaphiepsilon,” a.k.a the fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon, as a joke. Apparently, the frat boys were real mad and several asked Zoe if she could change it. “This person is from that frat and wants me to change my username,” she says in one video. “I’m down to do that, if you pay me,” she says laughing before directing commenters to her Venmo name.
But @sigmaphiepsilon wasn’t alone. In the comments, several other girls jumped on board the frat TikTok train and changed their usernames to fraternity and sorority names like Phi Beta Phi, Delta Sigma Chi, and Pi Delta Phi. The girls don’t really seem interested in squatting on the handles for cash, and are more in it for the troll, which makes it all the better. For this, they are my 2020 shero.
The troll feels especially delightful in a year when Greek life has never been more in crisis. After decades of allegations and charges of racism, sexual abuse, and even causing death in hazing rituals at American fraternities and sororities, 2020 saw several branches at colleges shutter and members grapple with what it means to support such a system in the “Abolish Greek Life” movement. “The national organizations are always going to prohibit any real change,” a senior at Tufts told The New York Times about trying to reform his former fraternity. “We’re just going to see history repeat itself over and over again.”
But while they continue to exist, college kids might as well fuck with them. After all, there’s a particular joy in watching these girls tell a bunch of the most entitled people on the planet that there are some things they can’t have.