I am very thankful I am enough of An Old to have dodged most of the whole cyber-bullying potential thing in my teen years. My high school experience included minor blips of cryptic LiveJournal entries (mostly my "BFF" at the time throwing shade at a new boyfriend of mine, pretty harmless), but that's nothing compared to the true tragedies inspired by teens harassing each other online now. All this context makes one high school valedictorian's secret Instagram account about classmates that much more refreshing.
This could have easily turned into a digital burn book in the wrong hands. (I only found out this morning that those are horrifying thing that exists, and I suppose that makes sense, considering the cruelty inherent in teens, usually born of boredom and their own crippling self-doubt.) But this, thankfully, was very much the opposite. East Valley High School senior Konner Sauve posted secretly about classmates for nearly an entire year on Instagram—all positive stuff, too. He used the handle @TheBenevolentOne3 to 'gram photos of other students with complimentary, uplifting captions. It could have been really easy to use the anonymous channel to dispel frustrations or otherwise act out but instead, Sauve took the higher road—somehow, among what I assume was a lot of studying. His efforts seem to have made a really awesome impact, a fact reverberated when he went public with his true identity:
If this guy wasn't gonna get so totally laid at graduation after-parties already, he certainly will be now. Sauve really lives up to what his last name resembles: strictly smooth-sailin'. See what I mean with some of his posi-vibing posts below:
"...soar like an eagle, darlin'!" is my new official sign-off. Thank you, Sauve, for your excellent choice in Steve Miller Band references.
This is starting to smack of quite sugary yearbook scribblings. But! That isn't a bad thing. Especially because we have this:
SHADOW F*CKING WARRIOR. To be fair, I'm only taking a confident stab at the middle name here. A HIGHLY confident stab.
Anyway, Sauve's Instagram efforts are hopefully evidence the current class of teens aren't shooting up in the world to embody an additional fleet of slurring, smartphone-tanned grump-zombies. We already have the Millennials. (Hi.) We need something better next, and here's hoping that's what we'll get.
