The art of the roommate pitch 

It was a match made on 

Facebook. My roommate Maggie 
and I found each other on the Class 
of 2022 page and immediately 
clicked because we had so much 
in common. We had both taken 
gap years. We shared a bedtime 
(11pm to 1am), diet (vegetarian) 
and cleanliness level (we let clutter 
build up when we were busy). We 
were both training for our first 
marathon. We both came from 
small, religious communities in 
the Midwest. We had seven-year-
old brothers. She seemed warm 
and worldly, like the type of girl 
you meet in college. She felt — 
through a screen — perversely 
familiar. She seemed safe. If 
you can choose a great person 
like Maggie, I thought, why risk 
getting stuck with someone who 
blasts Nickelback at 3 a.m., or 
microwaves fish, or leaves toenails 
on your bed, or eats all your snacks 
without bothering to wipe away 
the crumbs?

In the United States, it’s a 

suspense-filled rite of passage to 
move from a childhood bedroom 
to a stuffy 9’ by 6’ dormitory: a 
world of carpeted corridors, hall 
councils and lanyard-wearing RAs 
who exude hollow cheerfulness. 
Increasingly, freshman year of 
college is the first time students 
share a room, and after the 
infamous awkward photo in front 
of the bunk bed, roommates have 
the potential to make or break 
each other’s college experiences. 
Amidst the uncertainty of going 
to 
college, 
uprooted 
students 

fearfully cling to peers who seem 
familiar.

Roommate self-selection has 

risen in recent years. Starting 
around 
2010, 
Facebook 
has 

facilitated 
roommate-finding 

forums 
in 
which 
incoming 

students 
post 
blurbs 
about 

themselves 
and 
message 
the 

people who seem like compatible 
roommates. 

So, what do 18-year-olds say 

about themselves when they’re 
trying to find the Monica to their 
Rachel, the Owen Wilson to their 
Wes 
Anderson 
(they 
roomed 

together at UT Austin), the yin to 
their yang?

It’s not unlike dating apps. The 

posts follow a predictable pattern: 
market-friendly 
biographies, 

chirpy and casual, laden with 

“go blue!”s and “can’t wait”s and 
lists of carefully chosen favorites 
(not too obscure, not too basic). 
Excluding common words like 
“and” and “for,” the most-used 
word is “love.” Everyone is “super 
excited” and “pretty chill.” It’s 
as if one person in the class did 
the homework, and everyone else 
turned in a copy with a few words 
changed.

Integral 
to 
the 
post 
are 

articulated contradictions to the 
likes of ‘I love to go out but I also 
love to stay in’ or ‘I prioritize 
my studies but I also like to have 
fun’: statements so obvious that 
they become meaningless. You 
might as well say ‘I like to be 
awake sometimes but I also like to 
sleep.’ A form of the phrase, now 
crystallized as a cliche, shows up 
in about half of the posts. 

Sometimes, students establish 

individuality 
with 
careful 

divulgences— 
descriptions 

which are quirky enough to be 
memorable, safe enough to be cool 
and always positive. ‘I take an 
obscene amount of naps’ or ‘I am 
a bit of a sunset fanatic and love to 
watch them from a hammock’ or 
‘I’m also obsessed with 7-Eleven 
and Chipotle’ or ‘I have a lot of 
crystals (not meth).’

Certain types of people in these 

roommate 
marketplaces 
seem 

more likely to post than others. 
Students who choose to post on 
the Facebook page are not entirely 
representative 
of 
the 
entire 

incoming freshman class. About 
75% of posts are by females. In my 
opinion, self-described “foodies” 
seem 
grossly 
overrepresented, 

although I suppose I can’t prove 
it. Among those who have posted 
in the 2025Facebook group in the 
past two weeks (I tallied them 
up), the most common major/
career track, shared by 23% of all 
posters, is pre-med, followed by 

undeclared 
(15%), 
Engineering 

(14%) and Business (9%). Though 
the pre-med numbers seemed 
high to me, U-M advisor Julie 
Berson-Grand thinks the number 
sounds about right. In an email, 
she explained that the University 
of Michigan is “consistently in the 
top three of the number of medical 
school applications in the country.” 

I found myself fascinated by 

the odd art of the roommate 
marketplace post and eventually 
got so invested that I tried to 
recreate the posts with artificial 
intelligence. These blurbs are so 
formulaic that an AI model picked 
up on the script rapidly, hilariously. 
I used a number of resources 
including GPT-2 and TensorFlow, 
fed a few hundred posts into the 
AI model, and it quickly started 
spitting out examples based on 
what it had gleaned. The generated 
blurbs emulated the style enough 
to be somewhat believable, but 

they had a sort of chaotic humor 
that one would expect from a 
robot trying to find a roommate. 
Here’s one example: 

I 
(Gryffindor) 
have 
been 

partying all year and we decided 
to go out. There has been a lot 
of talk about basketball and 
basketball related dramas but 
I’m a big fan of Family Guy and 
Friends and Psych — unlike most 
people. My favorite shows are Big 
Bang Theory with greatest era, 
Psych and the office with greatest 
shows. I listen to a wide range of 
music and am very social. I can’t 
wait to go to all the football and 
basketball games and to watch the 
football and basketball teams play. 
I’m considering rushing but can’t 
wait to go to all the football and 
basketball games. My sister and 
I recently committed to LSA and 
will be studying either psychology 
or chemistry. I can’t wait to meet 
all the students and make friends! 
Please reach out to be besties and 
tell us something new! GO BLUE

Instagram – @kateslategamer
Snapchat – kateslategamer
The result had all the parts of a 

roommate post: expected college 
major, 
social 
media 
handles, 

hobbies, taste in movies and TV, 
current slang (‘please reach out to 
be besties’), a ‘GO BLUE’ and even 
their Harry Potter house! But it’s 
eerily, palpably out-of-touch, right 
from the first sentence. Other 
subtle failures are implying that 
Friends, one of the most popular 
TV shows of all time, is obscure 
and 
gushing 
about 
football 

and basketball in an obscenely 
repetitive manner. But some of the 
model’s other posts, while stilted, 
are a little more convincing: 

“Hello my name is Daniel and 

i’m from Michigan. I’m undecided 
with my major but will be doing 
something business related and 
probably apply research into the 
subject. I’m an avid reader, I’m a 
big movie guy and I enjoy lots of 
life activities, but I’m also kind of 
a night owl. I love going out and 
hanging with my friends and can’t 
wait to go to tailgates and football 
games, but I’m also down to go out 
and have fun. I’m hoping to study 
abroad in LSA before my med 
school”

Thursday, May 27, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com STATEMENT

BY ANNIE RAUWERDA

Design by Annie Rauwerda

Read more at michigandaily.com

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