“Have you ever seen a baby? It’s a swirling mass of nonsense.”

This quote was hiding in the depths of my phone for months before I uncovered it last week, as I was aimlessly scrolling through my Notes app. It was part of an entry where I recorded the strange things I heard on the street. Below it was something I heard on the bus.

“I’m going with my dad on Friday” *long pause* “If he really is my dad.” 

Looking through these entries made me think of the TikTok trend where people post things centered around their Notes app.

“When I open my Notes app to find my passwords, but instead find the most gut wrenching piece of literature ever written.” 

These TikToks share the crazy things the creators have buried in their phones. Belonging is found in comment sections filled with screenshots and cuttings from young peoples’ own Notes apps. 

Under one of these videos, user @username8235554 posted a long paragraph, which started as follows:

“I’ve loved her for fifteen years. It started… in kindergarten, I didn’t know what love was back then…” 

More of these confessions followed from other users finding camaraderie in the unique ways the app can be used.

In a TikTok with over 100,000 likes, user Maddy Macrae shows herself trying to find her shopping list on her phone and ending up on a Notes entry from years ago. It showed the beginning of a long, heartfelt paragraph.

“I wasn’t going to say anything. I really wasn’t. But then I remembered you used to say, I ‘bottled things up like a shaken Coke’ and I don’t want to explode at the wrong time, so here it is.”

The post-breakup confession that follows is a shockingly insightful, surely unwelcome, look into Macrae’s past. She quickly scrolls back to the note she was looking for, a shopping list with only one item—eggs. 

“[It’s] like a time capsule,” said Whitman student Melody Rodriguez ’27.

For Macrae, that’s exactly what it is: a look into her past life and a connection to her past self.

This trend has become immensely popular because of its commentary on something TikTok likes to remind us doesn’t exist, an “original experience.” Thousands of users post experiences they’ve had to prove that someone out there has had the same one, and they are almost always right. There might have been a point where we all thought we were the only ones with weird things in our Notes apps, but the sheer amount of unique posts included in this trend has proven that idea bunk.

This trend, and the weird things I found in my own Notes app, made me wonder what those of my peers at Whitman look like. I interviewed students around campus, and the results were as unique as I expected.

Some responses were confusingly simple. 

Paris Tilgner ’27, said “popcorn. Clinique bag.” 

“Just a dinosaur [emoji],” said Alex Kelly ’29.

“[My Notes app is] a place of literary treasure… if only [I had it] here,” said Max Davis Colon ’29.

Multiple different Whitman students had shared that their Notes app held different quotes from their friends as a way to reflect on memories.

“[It’s full of] quotes from my friends I think are funny… [like] ‘Imagine being killed and having to dance the honky tonk’ and ‘my scalp feels very loved,’” Ellie Lehman ’28 said. 

“‘Sometimes I fake cry too close to the sun,’” Rodriguez said. “Context? We don’t know.”

Isabelle Gandarilla ’29 showed that she has a list of animals she sees on walks. 

“I named them Fabio, Bill, Travis… and then Gerald… we found him in the house. And then we have Steve the slug,” Gandarilla said.

Next to each of these names were pictures of the animals and descriptions of her interactions with them.

Watching Whitties look back through their notes, rediscovering entries from years ago, I witnessed a lot of surprise—and confusion. 

“I have a note where I was writing diss tracks on my little sister,” said Deniz Bean ‘27. “All of these are incredibly terrible. I’m dissing her cleanliness and her hairy legs, mostly.” 

“I had a dream where I was in different housing for international students,” said Sofia Maldonado ’27. “Wait, what am I even on about here?” 

“‘She goes from never snacking to only having her eye on one chip’… what does that even mean?” said Maldonado. “Oh, that’s a metaphor! She goes from never being interested in guys to having the biggest crush on somebody.”

In other cases, students would simply use their Notes app as a way to remember specific ideas, no matter the topic.

“[This one’s] just a title,” said Bean. “‘Sleepy Joe—name of a decaf coffee company.’ Isn’t that a good idea?” 

Despite the bewilderment that came from this activity, it felt wholesome seeing the laughter and smiles that came with looking back through notes. It seemed like the Notes app was a place where students could be truly themselves, and looking back through them connected Whitties with the stages of life and people they were when they wrote the notes. 

This is especially true when comparing the Notes app to other online platforms like Instagram. Mirel Zaman highlighted this in an article for Refinery 29. 

“Whereas looking through old social media feeds tends to make me feel outside of myself, reviewing old notes makes me feel closer to myself.” 

This is one reason why it’s hard to imagine I would have gotten the same reactions if I’d asked students to read me captions from their old Instagram posts. The need for perfection in social media creates a disconnect between the user’s real life and their online presence, and looking back through someone’s feed is a reminder of that disconnect. In a Notes app, such a thing doesn’t exist—there is no one there to judge, and therefore no need for perfection.

In a world where we curate social media feeds for the judgment of an external eye, the Notes app is one of the few places where internet users can be their true, vulnerable selves. 

This element of vulnerability is a clue to why users of the app would be unsure about sharing their entries to somebody else. I asked Whitties how they would feel if someone took their phone and started looking through their notes without permission.

“I would feel homicidal,” Kat Oalican ’29 said.

This feeling seemed to be the consensus across the students I interviewed. Brandy Williams-Gurian ’29 neglected to share anything from her Notes app.

“[It’s] kind of a sacred place,” she said. “It’s [full of] all the things you leave unsaid to other people… it’s kind of like an extension of my brain.” 

Williams-Gurian reflected on what her reaction would be if someone tried to read through it without her permission. 

“[I’d] hit them…what’s in my Notes app is breakup messages, ‘we need to talk,’ a message to a professor and crash out paragraphs,” she said. 

In other words, it doesn’t include anything she’d want other people to see.

It seems as if the Notes app is one of the only places, besides, perhaps, a physical journal, where someone can express themselves exactly how they would like to without fear of judgment. Perhaps that is one reason why people like Hemi Koh ’28 use it to prepare messages without the risk of anyone seeing it. 

“I imagine people aren’t watching as I’m typing, but just in case they are, if I’m taking my time thinking it through, I don’t want them to know that,” Koh said. “I want to copy and paste, and instantly hit send.” 

For those who use the app this way, the message is sent when it is good enough for the scrutiny of the recipient, its drafts deemed imperfect being left to linger in the Notes app for no one to see but the user. 

Whitties are using their Notes app in creative ways that help them express who they are and make things they’re proud of. Just never look through someone’s without asking, though, or you may end up with some broken bones.