Goodbye Overheardrews?

The elusive admin on love, class, and “academic shambles”

There is a chance that you, yes you, have dated Overheardrews. I mean that quite literally — it is possible you may have traipsed down South Street together, or shared a scoop of Janetta’s, or clambered up St Rule’s Tower in the dying light. You wouldn’t know: “It’s not something I bring up on the first date,” the Overheardrews admin, who I’ll call Drew, told me, as we sat on a bench by West Sands on a drizzly day.

He and his friend started it all two years ago for “a bit of fun” — Drew does about “98 per cent” of the posting. Only around six or seven people know his real identity: which is quite staggering, given that last semester he spent an hour a day managing the account. “It started as a laugh,” he said. “Now it’s more of an operation.”  It’s certainly a successful operation: the account gets nearly 400 DMs a week; it has more followers than St Andrews has undergraduates; the amount of ‘likes’ it’s amassed adds up to around half the population of Iceland.

But even still, Drew’s surprised at just how excited people get when he reveals his alter ego. “In my head, it’s not really talked about,” Drew said. He’s a private guy: “I don’t want to take any fame from it.” (You’ll be glad to hear that goes both ways: he doesn’t blab about the dirty laundry you air.) He always does a double take when he hears strangers bring up the account — especially if they're staff.  “I think it was the Catholic Church doing their Easter Service, and the Chaplain went, ‘Have you heard of Overheardrews?’”

Most Overheards are hardly sermon fodder. Perhaps you could get a lesson on humility from one recent submission (“I consider myself nouveau-poor”) but it’s hard to see the moral in others (“Labs blown up! Piss everywhere!”). It’s also hard to believe this is the most academically selective university in Britain when you read posts like: “put the summary into ChatGPT, it'll summarise the summary.” In fairness, sometimes Overheardrews does get philosophical (“Is ketamine vegan?”). 

How does Drew choose what makes the cut? He won’t do anything “too crude” or in poor taste. Even though he’s “desensitised” to nearly everything he gets, some stuff still shows the “extremes” of St Andrews’ “inequalities and ignorances.” He remembered one DM last September that “really shocked” him — Sally’s students were overhead planning a competition to sleep with the “most impoverished female.” Drew, who went to a Scottish state school, pinned the post with a disclaimer: “not for comedic value”. In the caption he wrote, “If you use 'povo' as an insult, or think that not having money is some form of negative trait, kindly go f**k yourself.” The post got 2,000 likes.

Drew stressed that those kinds of posts are the exception. The vast majority of DMs he gets are harmless jokes — 95 per cent of the account is just “something to laugh about over dinner.” Also, often it’s hard to know if the stuff he gets is satire. Overheads are “inherently out of context, so you can’t detect tone, sarcasm, [or] if they’re taking the piss out of someone [...] or if they’re seriously believing what they’re saying.” In general, he tries to assume the best about the people who DM in: he likes to think that around 90 per cent of what he gets is genuine. “There’s a trust both ways,” he said. “I’m a glass half full guy.” (I certainly don’t deserve that trust — I make up half of my Overheards.)

In a few weeks, Drew will graduate. He’s not sure where the account will go next. He’s wary about giving someone else access to years of DMs with peoples’ names attached. He might be running the account a year after graduation, or he might close up shop this term. 

One thing’s for sure — he won’t sell out. He once got a takeover offer from a “corporate,” account but he shut them down before they could even name a price. “I don’t need to get any gain out of it,” Drew told me. He feels strongly that whoever runs Overheardrews should be a local. “That’s why people relate, especially in a tiny town. We’ve all been on Market Street, we’ve all been to Molly’s.”  

After nearly an hour of sitting by West Sands, the wind picked up and the sea got bleak and Drew and I stood up to shake hands. I asked him for his favourite Overheard, from all the thousands he’s read. He thought for a second. Once, he remembered, he posted about someone’s sister being conceived to Champagne Supernova. Sounds like regular funny-but-dubiously-true fare. But, after he posted it, he got a text: “Oh my God, that was me who said that [...] that was my sister.” 

Then, he got a text from the other sister. 

Then, he got a third text: “Yeah, I was the mum.”

Photo colllage by Simon Ezra-Jackson. Credit: @overheadrews