Ted Cruz officially announced his presidential candidacy today at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and though you could scarcely imagine a safer spot for a Republican to deliver an obligatory and ultimately worthless speech, many of the students in attendance were very willing to see through Cruz's rhetoric.

These days, the best place to get the unfiltered opinions of college students—if you want such things, for whatever reason—is Yik Yak, the app that imagines Twitter in the format of 4Chan and is notably popular on college campuses.

As Bloomberg, the Washington Post, Vox and Business Insider have all pointed out, a whole bunch of Liberty students were savaging Cruz's speech on the app today. Even kids at Christian colleges love to be buttholes.

Via Business Insider:

Via Bloomberg:

It's worth noting that Cruz's speech was during a school convocation, which are held three times each week with student attendance being mandatory. So part of the acid here is certainly because some college kids were being forced to listen to some shit they didn't want to listen to, but nonetheless it's funny seeing one of the most empty gestures in politics—a grand and pompous announcement speech—being shredded in real time.

Of course, the machine has now become sentient. Liberty Yik Yakkers have seen today's rush of press and are now trashing the place, as any self-respecting college kid would:

Surely, his candidacy will only go up from here.

[image via AP]