Good Thing We Like It Rough
You want your first time to be memorable, and damn, Yale Herald, we're not going to be able to forget this if we try. Our first negative review is in, and holy God, does Cally Fiedorek tear us a new one:
In its attempt to dismantle the Ivy monolith, the blog identifies each individual school with a sort of Lamarckian sameness, rarely looking to the world outside to qualify its scathing distinctions between Brown-educated dilettante and Princetonian master of the universe. It is essentially one extended "How many [insert name of Ivy League school here] students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" joke, serving up all the usual banalities of feigned self-deprecation.
As pans go, Fiedoreck's is a tour de force. Well written, carefully organized and irrefutably argued, it's the kind of slap that doesn't just sting -- it makes everyone in the bar turn to look at you as the slapper makes a great exit. Oh, and ice water gets dumped in your lap, too.
It gears itself towards the anecdotal fluff that just happens to fall upon illustrious grounds-but its root in any clearly delineated or easily mockable Ivy ideology is too tenuous to be effective or even humorous.
Ouch! Okay, that one cut a little close to the bone. But it's fine, we're big boys, we can take i--
In attempting to differentiate the privileged mass through petty caricature, mostly founded not on knowledge so much as on the nebulous workings of stereotype, the site forgets its own unimportance.
Jesus, we get it already! Cut it out, Cally, for the love of--
In refusing to apply these facile stereotypes to themselves IvyGate bloggers signal either a certain self-awareness, or a hypocrisy far more worthy of ridicule than anything found on their webpage.
Alright, we're ready, can someone please kick out the ladder?
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October 17th, 2006 at 12:59 am
i looked for that girl’s email address on yale.edu but i couldn’t find it.
hopefully she sees the email i was planning on sending to her: “when you die, the world will be a better place.”
October 17th, 2006 at 8:49 am
We love you anyway, at least for the Vayner coverage.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:31 am
She’s just wrong. You guys are genius. Keep it up.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:31 am
They’re just mad ’cause they’re Yalies and they all got a little humiliated by association with Vayner. Harvard would have done the same if you broke the Kaavya story. Can’t wait ’till you piss off Princeton.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:32 am
>
I have always said that (the thing above). Your coverage of my story has missed the point altogether.
What about the deeper philosophical context of my earthly existence? As I often use to say: “knowledge of things in the world begins with the differentiation of unitary consciousness into knower and known and ends with self and things becoming one again. Such unification takes form not only in knowing but in the valuing (of truth) that directs knowing, the willing that directs action, and the feeling or emotive reach that directs sensing.
[And let me preempt those shameful oversimplifying HATERS tirlessly willing to google every little sentence snippet, by saying Kitaro Nishida was the one to plagiarize my original comment above - which I uttered in a moment of inspiration whilst defeating a recent alien invasion in the rainforest of Cambodia.]
[Also, if you don't get how my comment is at all relevant to the point at hand, you are nothing but a loser and your mental patterns are not ready to visualize 'success'.]
[Oh yes, and Cally Fiedorek is not a self-important pretentious b!tc7.]
October 17th, 2006 at 9:33 am
While she is, as most Yalies are wont to be, absolutely correct, this blog amuses me nonetheless. Now, excuse me while I stuff my gaping maw with pork rinds. Delicious.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:34 am
The thing above somehow got redacted. It was a quote from Cally’s article commenting on the “oversimplifying mantra” of the IvyGateBlog.
(its oversimplifying mantra: “news, gossip, sex, sports, and more.”)
CENSORSHIP WILL NOT STOP ME. IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:37 am
I think she just sounds bitter that you guys have never covered her in a story before now.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:40 am
You guys (ok people) are great. She is so full of herself she is likely to pop and spray her blue blood innards all over her carefully groomed Ivy. I cant wait for you to elicit more reviews like that… it would be a clear and very positive indication of your blogs value to society… or at least us Ivy League alumni.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:51 am
That she consistently refers to we ivy leaguers as “privledged,” etc., she only reinforces the humorous qualities of this website.
October 17th, 2006 at 10:09 am
sounds to me like she hides her insecurities behind a blanket of esoteric prose.
October 17th, 2006 at 10:44 am
Wow, this article is exactly what I’d imagine a stereotypical Ivy-League douche would write.
October 17th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
I elect Cally for a 79th trimester abortion.
October 17th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
C’mon Cally, why do you have to go and make Yale look so lame?
IvyGate, we lurrrve you.
October 17th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
What a pretentious, humorless piece of drivel. And by the way, Cally, it’s spelled “rarefied.”
October 17th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
“Lamarckian sameness”? Are you fucking kidding me? who writes like that?
it’s ok, guys, nobody reads the Herald anyway.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Main Entry: rarefied
Variant(s): also RARIFIED
Function: adjective
1 : being less dense
2 : of, relating to, or interesting to a select group
3 : very high
Fuck you, IvyGate’s Mom.
Fuck you.
I think she’s totally right about you assholes.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
That is fucking hilarious.
She makes me feel what 1,000 Aleksey Vayner don’t- ashamed to be a Yalie.
October 17th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
What is “a Yalie”? It’s an illusion. That’s the point.
October 18th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
She is right about all of it except the humour. It is still a funny blog. I still wouldn’t pay a cent to go to a non-ivy grad school (save Chicago and Stanford) given the choice.
October 18th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
“Lamarckian sameness” — what a silly cunt.
October 18th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Don’t be silly, everyone. She’s pretty accurate. This site is like collegeconfidential for people who have left high school. Don’t deny it.
(I read it just for Aleksey Vayner!)
October 20th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Who is this chick and most importantly, does she have big boobs?
October 20th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
I want her to have my baby.
November 8th, 2006 at 3:14 am
personally I believe that she is absolutely inspired and I couldn’t agree more. Maybe more of you would too if you actually understood it…try taking out Webster and reading it again
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:09 pm
How the heck did she get into Yale anyways? From the way she writes, I’d think she’d get a 2 on her SATII Writing essay, not because she’s all that terrible a writer, but because the collegeboard beancounters wouldn’t decipher what the heck she meant in their allotted 30 seconds per essay grading.
Some people just don’t get the purpose a tabloid serves, online or otherwise. Poking fun at oneself is fun. In the case at point, comparing oneself to either stereotypically despicable institutions or sister schools (which it is depending on your mood) can be very entertaining. Until Ivygate, I didn’t know that there were ivies besides Yale where 11 year old boys on bikes knocked people out and stole purses, all without taking their legs off the pedals.