When Olivia Hodges is finishing up a late night bartending at The Houndstooth on the Strip, she unlocks her phone and begins to let the stress of bartending for college students melt away. She’s not checking traditional social media apps like Twitter, but is instead getting a laugh by opening up The Chive.
“It’s a feel-good website, and it restores faith in humanity sometimes,” Hodges said. “We get angry a lot at work because it’s easy for things to get a little hectic towards the end of the night, and if you can just sit down and go ‘ha’ in 20-minute giggle intervals, it’ll get you through the day.”
Hodges and her fellow bartender Casey Butler said they have been Chivers (or Chivette for Hodges) for almost three years and have seen the app and the website grow tremendously since joining.
“[The Chive] started out just doing advertising to make money, then they started Random Acts of Kindness. They’re not sure how it started, but they’re really all about that now,” Butler said.
Part of The Chive is galleries under different headlines with a diverse range of topics. From “Monday Motivation” to “Daily Afternoon Randomness” to “Cat Saturday,” the posts are meant to be uplifting and give a laugh. Though the app is what Butler describes as a “good way to waste time,” it also serves more of a philanthropic purpose than that.
“Random Acts of Kindness” can range from people posting pictures of $100 tips for their waiters when the bill was only $5 to extensive fundraisers. In one instance, The Chive set a goal of $50,000 to help a wheelchair-bound Chivette fix her two-story apartment to be more accessible that eventually raised $450,000 and helped build the Chivette a new house.
The Houndstooth will host a Chive Meetup on April 26, with a first-time cover charge going to the Wounded Warrior Project. The bar has had The Chive’s beer since it was brought to the South and will be selling it at the event. The black lager is a recent staple for The Chive and has sold out almost everywhere it’s been.
“People are driving hundreds of miles to buy a six pack of beer. It gives you that full taste, but the beer itself is not heavy,” Butler said. “There’s been a huge explosion in here lately, and people are always asking about the meetup. If you’re not gonna spend $5 on this beer to help a solider, I’ll guilt trip you.”
The Chive is also popular among students, and there is a Tuscaloosa Chive Facebook group along with an Alabama state group. Meetups are held around the country as well as internationally.
Byron Solomon, a freshman majoring in history and journalism, said he has been to meetups in Rammstein, Germany, Virginia Beach and Boston, Ma. The Chive is popular among the U.S. military, and coming from a military family, Solomon said he found out about The Chive while on a base.
“It’s probably the greatest site in the world,” Solomon said. “It wasn’t intended to be a social networking site exactly, but that’s what it’s escalated into. It’s a place you use to ward off boredom, and now it’s turning into a community of people where you can get together and have a good time.”
Another association with The Chive is actor Bill Murray, who attends Chive events and serves as a kind of mascot for the site. Some recognizable Chive T-shirts feature Murray’s face or bear the site’s motto, “Keep Calm and Chive On,” or KCCO.
“KCCO is just a loaded statement for me. It means to keep going strong and to remember other people,” Solomon said. “Bill Murray is our mascot/role model. He’s such a great, humane person.”
One aspect of The Chive that tends to ward off new members, particularly female members, is that some of the galleries, like “Girls With Tattoos” or “Mind the Gap,” are made up of pictures of women, oftentimes revealingly dressed. Solomon said these galleries are not necessarily what they appear to be.
“It’s not like rap songs, where they make women seem like an object. It glorifies the beauty of women more than it objectifies them,” Solomon said.
Hodges, a Chivette herself, said she understands why women are put off by these particular galleries but said beyond those, the site is inspirational and a good, outlet.
“I think it’s easy for girls to dismiss it because of that, and it’s an immediate shut down,” Hodges said, “but it represents more than that. I always ask girls, ‘Well, what about Random Acts of Kindness?’ and most of the time they haven’t made it that far.”
From social meetups to charity fundraisers, Solomon said The Chive is more than an app or website.
“Whenever I first looked at The Chive, I was very skeptical because of all the things they have on there, like women, like that it was some man site like Spike TV, but then I really got into it and saw this is something more,” Solomon said. “It’s a social networking site without being a social network, and don’t knock it till you try it.”
