Students United by Internet, Soul-Crippling Boredom
If students had a rallying cry today, it would probably be "We're bored as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore!" And where are the legions of bored people congregating? Online, naturally.
The anonymous chat site Bored at Butler -- a reference to Columbia's Butler Library -- launched last fall and quickly became Columbia's id. Students don't vent; they fume. The discussion doesn't devolve; it starts on the ground level. No subject is off limits, from racial stereotypes to sex positions to whether the girl in the green sweater in Room 209 is a virgin. You'll also find the occasional nonstop solicitation. This conversation excerpt is pretty representative:
"sex now?"
"I'd be game"
"but alas"
"where is everyone else"
"we're all guys"
Now the site's creator, Jonathan Pappas '06, has used the B@B template to create Bored at Lamont for restless Harvard kids and Bored at Bobst for NYU. Pappas thinks the Columbia site's popularity was "difficult to recreate elsewhere" since it's the result of a "culture specific to Columbia." But wait, what's more universal than sounding off online behind a comfy veil of anonymity?
"The goal of these Web sites was to create a forum for truly free speech," he wrote in an e-mail. "Taking away inhibitions results in a colorful display of extreme brilliance and extreme ignorance." Take it away, comments section.
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October 26th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
eh…brown (and others) has the jolt for that..
October 26th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
we need a bored @ uris for cornell. i bet it would take off. make it happen! now that facebook sold out, we need something distinctly college.
October 26th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
definitely need bored @ sterling for yale. especially now, with all these people procrastinating during midterms.
October 26th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
need bored @ baker for dartmouth – we would kill it here
October 26th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Yeah, I’ve seen the conversations on Bored at Lamont…they’re really lame. The Butler conversations are actually interesting, but, for some reason, the Harvard ones come across as entirely too philosophical.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
bored @ uris could also be for columbia –> uris is the business school
October 26th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
BORED @ FIRESTONE! Princetonians are dirty…
October 26th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
Wow, amazing how here at Brown we’ll never need something like that because we’ve had a widely-used chat site for years. Ahead of everyone else… like in every other domain.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
We need bored at Uris. And Olin… and Kroch, and Carpenter, and Malott….
Come to think of it, what building isn’t a library at Cornell?
October 27th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
The Jolt > Jolt imitators.
October 27th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Yeah, the Jolt definitely does that for us. Where else would we get our 4AM daily fixes of “I’m in the SciLi. Sex?”
October 29th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Bored @ Bobst has kind of failed to take off. They need to do some marketing, because it could be even better than Bored @ Butler … NYU kids are the crazy creative ones, after all. The solicitations for sex would be funnier, anyway.
October 30th, 2006 at 1:37 am
NYU kids are creative? Flamboyant is not the same as creative.
October 31st, 2006 at 1:11 am
ha, i think the sites are catching on a little. especially at yale and dartmouth.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:30 am
oh please oh please. bored at williston for mount holyoke. if nyu can have one, the seven sisters can too. besdies, mohos spend waaay too much time in the library. moving in during finals (literally) anyone?
November 13th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Oh man, please please please make a bored@green for Stanford. Always getting shafted out of all the ivy fun, instead we stir up arguments on the Daily’s comment pages…help us channel our energy!
December 11th, 2006 at 2:59 am
Brown kids are such pot head posers. Get a life!
December 11th, 2006 at 4:24 am
Wow, well said, Tim.