A week ago, an Instagram page called @fauaffirmations published its first post. It simply read, “I WILL SWIPE MY OWL CARD IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION” over a background image of the FAU Stadium. The page took off in the coming days, accumulating over 2,000 followers in one week.

The owner of the page has stayed anonymous since their first post but recently sat down with the UP to unveil themselves as Connor Birkhimer, a freshman history and English major from Tampa.

Birkhimer had no idea that the page would go viral on campus.

“I was like, this will get very few followers, and I’ll delete it in two weeks. But that won’t be happening now,” he said with a laugh.

The page posts FAU-themed affirmations, which are statements that enforce that something is true. By stating that something is true, it is widely believed by psychologists that it will come true, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Birkhimer created the account after seeing the Florida State University affirmations account on Instagram. 

“I was bored on [a] Sunday night and I was like, I’m gonna make one for FAU, I feel like we need one,” he said.

Birkhimer’s original posts were inspired by things he saw or experienced on campus daily.

“It’s just stuff that I notice or I think about a lot walking around campus, like those iguanas. I hate them. I do not like the iguanas,” he said. 

His dislike for the on-campus iguanas resulted in his second post on the account, which received 189 likes. 

Since then, Birkhimer’s posts average around 354 likes and feature affirmations submitted by his followers.

“It’s not stressful, but it’s kind of a lot,” he said. “My main Instagram is not that popular, so I’m not used to having hundreds of likes.”

His direct messages were flooded with requests for affirmations, so Birkhimer set up a Google Form for his followers to send in submissions. The form has been filled up with 222 requests as of Sept. 7.

“I think it’s cool that people are following me because they genuinely like the content I’m posting. It’s fun to be a little anonymous, I think it takes away some of the pressure of “performing” on social media,” Birkhimer said.

Social media plays a complicated part in Birkhimer’s life.

“I’ve always thought of social media as more of a neutral territory than positive or negative. I think it can be beneficial for making friendships or promoting your business, small scale stuff, but there is a certain disconnect from the person you are online and how you act in the real world,” he said. “It’s definitely fun sometimes but I value authenticity and social media doesn’t provide that.”

However, Birkhimer said that his social media page has allowed him to make some new friends at the university without negatively affecting his academic career.

“It hasn’t affected my classes or my school life at all, to be honest. My classes are definitely of higher priority than my Instagram. I’ve made a couple friends through the account, so socially it’s been pretty good for me,” he said. 

Birkhimer is open to working with organizations and clubs on campus to create collaborative affirmation posts.

“I’ve been thinking about asking different orgs if they wanted to collab[orate] in some way for a while, but I’m still figuring out how that would actually work,” he said.

Birkhimer does not have any long-term goals for his account as he doesn’t know if it will maintain its popularity.

“I’m hopeful it’ll last longer than a month, but I don’t know,” he said. 

Students can find Birkhimer’s page on Instagram, @fauaffirmations.

Kendall Little is the Managing Editor for the University Press. For more information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected] or tweet her @klittlewrites.