“We Came, We Saw, We Conquered.”

Now, We Are gone.

Uniform to Kanye West. Tim Tams to NRL. Politics to rom coms. It has been an honourable run here at We Are. And with such honour, comes great grief, with which we are upset to inform you that We Are will be shutting down, effective immediately.

“If you look at what you (We Are) have in life, you’ll (We Are) always have more. If you look at what you (We Are) don’t have in life, you’ll (We Are) never have enough.” – Oprah Winfrey on We Are.

“You may say I’m (We Are) a dreamer, but I’m (We Are) not the only one. I (We Are) hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” – John Lennon on We Are.

“We Are aged like a fine egg.” – Ellis K.

“We Are really was the pinnacle of student achievements at school, although its life was short, the impact it made on students and teachers alike is monumental” – Dimitri N

As we (are) reconcile in the loss of our beloved We Are, let’s take a look back at some of We Are’s proudest moments.

1. Our First Comment

While We Are first came into fruition in 2022, the avid readers in the audience might know that comments weren’t added until February 2023, with the first comment from Chelsea, in the class of 2023, commenting on the article “Redcliffe Dolphins Splash into NRL: Will they be the New Premiers?” with the comment “woooooo!!”. Truly an inspirational and insightful comment and the mark of a new generation of We Are.

2. Our First Spam Comment

With the addition of comments, spam comments were also soon to arrive. Of the 208 comments submitted on We Are, 33 (about 16% of those) were marked as spam. They range from hate comments, comments with unverified emails, comments using other people’s emails, fake emails, comments written next to me while the person is laughing and I know that I will not approve their comment, and more. This all kicked off on the 23^rd of February 2023, just over two weeks after comments were released, with a comment submission by a user only known as “Television” on the article “Chinese Spy Balloons”, stating “wow this is so interesting”. What a way to kick off a great list of spam comments!

3. Our Most Viewed Story

We Are is a student media website. Simply put, our target audience are the people of William Clarke College, nobody else. It was never meant to be dedicated to views, but rather to the voice of the students. As such, hitting it big on one of the sites story came as a huge surprise. The single most viewed story of all time on the site is Hope R’s “Why is Ariana Grande Getting Cancelled?”, hitting over 10 thousand views, mostly from the United States.

Moving on from that article brings us to another point – why We Are is shutting down. It’s as simple as this: We Are isn’t bringing in the big bucks. With the cost of living in this economy, it simply isn’t possible, rent isn’t cheap here – and Tim Tams are almost at $12 a pack! While We Are engagement has been at a relatively high these past few weeks, it hasn’t been enough to maintain support from the College, as such, it leaves us with only a few options:

• Flood the site with advertisements to generate revenue.
• Claim insurance fraud by following one of the cooking articles on how to make Tim Tams and getting run over by a Ford F-150.
• Sue We Are readers.
• Bring back Cameron F.
• Leave We Are.

By now, it should be obvious that we (are) sadly chose the final option.

Thankyou for your time as loving readers of We Are.

We Were Yours.

Goodbye.