Concept
CBS New York describes Whisper as "the place to go these days to vent, come clean, or peer into other people's secrets", and that the goal is that of "turning confessions into content".[32]
The app purports to promote online anonymity, and the developer claims this will prevent and combat cyberbullying.[33] In October 2015, Whisper announced a partnership with the Ad Council on the "I Am A Witness" anti-bullying campaign, along with other tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat,[34] and in March 2016, Whisper announced a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League's Best Practices for Responding to Online Hate.[35] The service's anonymity is claimed to have fostered a support network where concern and care among users has developed: according to Mashable, "The team regularly hears from users that the network's community has helped them stop self-harming behaviors."[36] Another premise behind the service was to counter the "best possible self" ego-driven self-aggrandizing "vanity" posting done on Facebook, and as an antidote to the phenomenon of "oversharing" and "too much information" that young users engage in online.[37] Business Insider, Forbes and The Daily Dot have called it "the anti-Facebook",[3][38][39] and Forbes Tech drew a contrast in stating that, "Whisper, even more than Snapchat, is the anti-Facebook."[3] The digital-news website SMU SMC summed up all these points together: "In addition to preventing cyber bullies, Whisper gives users the opportunity to confess to things that could potentially ruin marriages, friendships or result in loss of job, without suffering consequences. You can over share without any repercussions."[40] As described by Adweek, "This is a new type of social sharing, the kind that won't come back to haunt you."[41]
Whisper has also been used as a platform for citizen journalism. In June 2014, amid widespread violence and unrest in Iraq and the Iraqi government's blocking of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, many Iraqis downloaded and used Whisper as a means of acting as real-time reporters, posting news and updates hours before the mainstream media, as well as sharing political views and personal thoughts and feelings.[42][43] It is also used to create text-based memes that appeal to Generation Z Internet users. According to the analytics firm SensorTower, app downloads rose during 2021 as a large number of social media users, mostly on Instagram, started using Whisper to create meme images. In The New York Times article "Text Memes Are Taking Over Instagram", Taylor Lorenz wrote: "Confessional, overly personal messages paired with seemingly unrelated images allowed for an extra layer of humor and irony."[44]
