An Instagram user under the name “lhssleep” posted a story to the infamous account Dec. 15, 2023 informing followers that the account would be shut down. The post is still available to view on the account under the highlight “Goodbye.” This marked the unofficial, official end of the account.
The Instagram profile was notorious among students for posting humorous photos of students sleeping in class. The account was run by one person, who is now a senior. The first post on the page was Nov. 23, 2021 of now senior Andrew Johnson, sleeping on a bus on the way to a band competition.
“I posted a picture of Andrew as my first post,” the owner of the account said. “He’s my pookie bear, so I posted Andrew’s picture, and kept the account public. I started sharing the account, and it immediately boosted from, like, three or four followers to around fifty or one hundred.”
After the initial post, many students began to submit images of their friends sleeping.
“I didn’t really have an issue with the page,” Johnson said. “I got posted around five times in the worst possible positions, like the bus one. It got me around 2,000 ladies, though.”
Many months before the owner even announced their plans to stop posting to the account, they made the page private.
“The page was public for the first month it was up,” the owner said. “But I decided to make it private so I could sift through the followers, and so I could pick and choose kids who might narc.”
The account owner has never faced any sort of disciplinary action for posting to the account. This is due to keeping their identity secret, and even claiming to have more than one student running the account.
“Sophomore year, I didn’t really care about any disciplinary actions against me because of the page,” the owner said. “I got ISS, like, ten times sophomore year, but not for the account. I told everyone that I ran the sleep account. I didn’t care if [Principal Joey] McQueen pulled me in or not. Then junior year hit and I realized, like, I’m growing up, dude. I started locking in, and then senior year hit and I really started taking stuff seriously. I wanted to be anonymous because I just portray myself differently now. It started being super embarrassing, how big it had gotten. At max, it had around 1,500 or 1,400 followers. I’m proud of how big it got, but also it’s embarrassing that I was behind it.”
The senior started the page due to a TikTok trend during the fall of 2021.
“I kept seeing these TikTok pages of people, like, totally blowing up,” the owner said. “I mean, these pages were getting 100,000 followers. I wanted that clout. At first I told everyone in my grade it was me, but then people in other grade levels started finding out, and I went completely cold turkey. If people asked about it, I would immediately deny it was ever me, and tell them I was just kidding.”
The owner has had multiple identity cover ups over the years, including claiming to have multiple owners, or that they were never involved at all.
“There was a point where I said that another person owned it,” the owner of the account said. “[There was] another point where I said that there were four owners. I just wanted to keep myself further back from the limelight.”
Many students submitted photos to be posted to the page, but some people got agitated with the owner whenever their pictures were not posted.
“These people were genuinely getting pressed that I wasn’t posting their stuff,” the account owner said. “Like, sending me death threats. There was one that said, ‘I’m going to [explicit] kill you, you [f-slur.] I have screenshots of these chats, but they’re pretty old.”
Although the photos submitted were for entertainment purposes only, were never meant to bully or embarrass anyone, and usually were submitted by friends of the sleeping person, some students were still uncomfortable with being posted to the page.
“My description used to say, ‘If you want something taken down, DM me,’ and, ‘Don’t take it too serious,’” the owner said. “Because there were a couple of kids who would get super angry if they were posted. So that was my policy. If someone wanted something taken down, I would take it down immediately, which also protected me from getting in trouble if kids decided to snitch or something.”
After the owner announced they intended to shut down the account, a student made a new account, ‘lhs2sleep,’ claiming to be the original owner of ‘lhssleep.’ The student claimed they lost the password to the original account and decided to restart the sleep page.
“People are making new accounts already,” the owner of lhssleep said. “I don’t think they’ll ever pass that 1,500 mark, though. The trend is already over. I mean, there’s even an account claiming to be me, the original owner. They said they, like, lost the password or something. That isn’t me. Not to mention the amount of wannabe accounts that came up after I first posted on the account. ‘Lhsbadparking’ and ‘lhsbathroom shoes’ are the main ones I think. It’s just weird, in my opinion. The bathroom shoes page is gross. Don’t try to make parody accounts, just let the trend die.”
The fake account is sitting at 73 followers at the moment.
“There’s that new one,” Johnson said. “But I don’t really care. It was a trend, but it’s not going to come back. It’s kind of dead.”
The owner explained that there were multiple reasons they decided to shut down ‘lhssleep,’ including threats, lack of submissions and new school rules.
“A lot of kids were starting to get in trouble, considering the new phone policy, and I don’t want people to be getting in trouble for a stupid Instagram page,” the owner said. “I also shut it down because of that policy, nobody could submit anything, or take pictures in general.”
The account had reached students and staff alike, and many students believed that the page wasn’t really harming anyone, and used this to justify the lack of administrator intervention.
“Everyone knew about it,” the owner said. “At its peak popularity, which was like 500 followers, there were teachers, and even subs, talking about it. I just sat in my chair, geeking because I had posted the picture.”
The original owner encourages students to just let the sleep page rest and not to stretch the dying trend out.
“That @ is dead,” the owner said. “‘lhssleep’ is dead. It’s a totem in Lampasas High history.”
