Although this trend isn’t exactly unprecedented, a wave of Campo parking accounts has begun to stir up interest on Instagram, prompting controversy over the way these accounts have represented students’ “good, bad, or neutral” parking.
The first account to surface was simply known as “@campobadparking,” which collected nearly a dozen posts of cars parked in unusual or unexpected places, but was quickly replaced by a variation known as “@campobadparkingjobs” within the following week. While this account has been very well looked-at by curious students compared to others, junior Liv Maestre pointed out a problem that many are concerned with: “At first I thought it was funny, but the account started ‘grasping at straws’ with where cars were being parked, and it even posted people’s license plates. I don’t think people feel safe with that knowledge.”
Currently, the “@campobadparking” account is up and running with nearly 200 followers, but soon after its rising popularity came a string of new accounts, with “@campolindoaverageishparking” and a couple variants of “@campogoodparking” in the mix. “It started to become like this little rivalry between all of these accounts,” said sophomore Skylar Swartz, who agreed with Maestre’s point about the exposed license plates. “The accounts aren’t necessarily the problem though.”
“I usually like to double-check that my parking’s good so that I don’t get called out on the accounts,” said senior Evan Okulicz while reflecting upon the trend. “I think they’re helping to improve parking to a certain extent, and they’re pretty funny.”
The “bad parking” trend is in the gray area when it comes to its positives and negatives – people are interested in viewing humorous parking spots while worrying over how exposed their own cars are. Meanwhile, other schools have caught on, with “@miramontebadparking” and “@ahs._badparking” being primary examples, and the identity of the people running these various accounts still remains a mystery.
