Remember the time Jacob and I said Facebook isn’t actually destroying humanity, because people are intelligent and increasingly sophisticated at interpreting the internet? Well, a funny thing happens when you write a pro-Facebook editorial. First, you get a zillion friend requests from editors, bloggers, etc. You feel like you have to accept them because you just said Facebook is cool, so you’d be a total hypocrite if you didn’t! But in your heart of hearts, you suspect people may not be quite as sophisticated as you hope; deep down, you know that “superpoke” and “business contact” are two concepts that ought never interact. Yes, our culture is evolving to keep up with the internet. But, um, we might not be all the way there, yet. We’re kind of cyber cro-magnon.

After unlocking his left-leaning profile to a Fox News producer, Jacob wasn’t allowed to go on the air. Then, a few days ago, this chick I had to email for my new job freaked when she saw “IvyGate” listed under “networks.” She got internet-pissed at me and caused a minor hubbub. She wrote me this nutty email where she called me an un-American alien, which I would call racist, but I can’t remember if I unlocked my pictures for her or not, so maybe she doesn’t know I’m Asian. After the jump, Rachelle’s email, including these sentences:

In case you missed the memo, they are going to represent the United States, YOUR country, in Beijing this August. Your lack of support for our athletes and the Olympic spirit is a disgrace

Look, I love the Olympics as much as the next spandex junkie, but this chick needs to get a grip. It’s an athletic competition featuring teenage girls ribbon-dancing on floor mats, not a war zone.

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Remember identical twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Harvard ‘04, the ones who claimed four years ago that Zuckerberg stole Facebook from their original site ConnectU?  Yeah, they’re still desperately seeking justice in the form of cash and shares, with ongoing litigation regarding their settlement with Facebook and the value of the stock.  But lately it looks like these suckers are back in the news for another reason.

Only this time Zuckerberg definitely won’t be stealing their thunder, or their gold.  The Winklevoss twins will be rowing as a pretty pair in this summer’s Beijing Olympics.

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Oh, Facebook. Why must you, like the girl in my English seminar who eats her feelings, return from Summer Break twice as wide as when we last parted? New Facebook, you are not hot. Not even a little bit, and Bwog agrees with me. Per Bwog: “A preference of New Facebook is no longer an acceptable option for anyone, ever.”

But fear not, Facebook-addicted Ivy Leaguers: the fattening of Facebook will seem insignificant compared to the impending loss of Scrabulous. The apocalypse is nigh! Sweet baby Jesus, hear our collective cry: “Please, God, I have so little: Don’t take Scrabulous, too!”

And, to make matters worse, as I sat at my desk with tears rolling down my cheeks, panic swelling beneath my Barnard T-shirt, no fucking clue as to how I would survive next year, I came across a gem of an article on TheDartmouth.com which can only have been written by a Facebook atheist.

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There I was this morning, reading my LA Times over coffee like most New Yorkers, when suddenly I was struck with a bolt of recognition. Nestled among the garbage about the impending war with Iran and the collapse of the US economy was a brilliant opinion piece about Facebook by IvyGate’s very own editors, Maureen O’Connor and Jacob Savage! Did they plug IvyGate? Do Yale kids season their steak with cocaine?

Our intrepid editors come to the happy conclusion that all those incriminating photos of us on the internet won’t actually be much of a problem because there will be incriminating photos of EVERYONE doing EVERYTHING. Not mentioned in the piece is the notion that, God forbid, one NOT post pictures of oneself drunkenly screwing a dog, but at this point, it’s probably fair to accept heedless exhibitionism as the natural order of things and work our way out from there.

The full article, including a disquisition on the morality of printing salacious, though possibly irrelevant material, is after the jump.

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“The true story of two best friends- geeky outsiders at a prestigious Ivy League University- who wanted nothing more than to get into one of the elite fraternities on campus, so they’d have an easier time getting laid.”

Thus poetically begins Ben Mezrich’s proposal about creating Facebook with Mark “I Just Want to Help” Zuckerberg as “dorky,” fencing-loving, Adidas shower shoes-wearing Harvard undergrads.

Gawker warns,

The book may not be the most rigorously factual account, as Mezrich’s Bringing Down The House… was debunked by the Boston Globe as “not a work of ‘nonfiction’ in any meaningful sense of the word.”

Rolling Stone’s recent profile of Zuckerberg is a bit more specific about his motivations. Facebook began as so many other brilliant ideas do, with drinking alone on a Tuesday night (ah, college). Recently dumped and feeling bitter, Zuckerberg wrote on his blog, “Jessica A— is a bitch.” (Does anyone know who Jessica A. is?) That night, he created Face Mash, a site for students to compare their classmates’ pictures with those of farm animals and rank them in terms of attractiveness. Charming! Read the rest of this entry »

Penn students who decided to extend their stay in Philadelphia (for whatever reason) got the chance to see the Transformers sequel being filmed on their campus.

But they’re pissed about it!

Apparently, even though it’s filming at Penn, rumor has it that the actual setting for the movie will be Princeton, where they’ve also filmed. Naturally, Penn students are upset to have their 15 minutes of sort of fame snatched from them by Princeton of all places, and they’ve even taken the fight to the streets Facebook.

“An Open Letter to Michael Bay from the University of Pennsylvania,” a group of almost 200 sprung up as a place to air out such sophisticated complaints as “Seriously, Michael Bay? Seriously? Princeton???” Even a Temple student was mad enough to join.

And what exactly does Michael Bay have to say for himself? Well nothing, but one of the producers told the Daily Pennsylvanian that neither school’s name would appear in the film.
And one of the Facebook group members claims that Penn itself denied them the rights to use the name! Et tu, President Gutmann?

Regardless of what name actually ends up on screen, this makes three Ivies where Shia has made movies after the latest Indiana Jones filmed at Yale. (No love for Harvard, Shia? Maybe you can make a cameo in How High 2.)

Pics of Michael Bay, Shia, and his costar Isabel Lucas (should I know who that is?) on set in Philly after the jump.

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Certain things: death, taxes, pre-frosh baring their innermost secrets on Faceook, never seem to get old. Remember back when the now-esteemed Class of 2011 discussed their favorite drinks with the world (consensus: beer is gross, but foreign beer is like okay)?

Well, members of the Class of 2012 are not so different than their intrepid predecessors: they still like to talk about how much they love mojitos and margaritas and that “jager = good taste” (!!!!) and that they hate beer because it “smells funny and looks kind of funny too.”

Indeed, worried that Princeton is for squares, Mary-Jane Smith (what a clever pseudonym!) writes in:

I made a fake ID (ok, the name’s really lame… whatever) Do a lot of people smoke weed? And since the 17- 19 preview is near 420, will there be a lot of smoking? Because personally I smoke at least once a week and I was wondering if anyone else at Princeton did the same…

Still the vast majority of the 2012’s have moved on to a more important subject: themselves. They want to answer the most burning of questions: in this, the most competitive of all college seasons, how did they get in?  We’ll let them tell you themselves:

You guys think you have tough choices! Ha! Listen to this… I got into Harvard, UPenn, Yale, Brown, CalTech, Stanford, MIT, and Dartmouth. Unfortunately, I somehow got denied from Cornell, which I really liked, but I was in all likelihood overqualified. This was unfortunate.

One Yalie on how “funny” life can be:

omg its so funny. like i got accepted here, but waitlisted at harvard and princeton. i mean what the fuck

After the jump: the academic records you never wanted to see.

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• MetaEzra: Cornell continues to top every single off-beat rankings list, this time for community service and social mobility.

• Cornell Sun: Cornellians also top the “oh shit RIAA is ruining my life” list, as 16 students from last May’s file sharing fiasco get slapped with new lawsuits.  Elliott Back offers a few more four-letter words.

• Associated Press: Facebook’s newest rival, Playboy U, gives a whole new meaning to “poke.”

• Insider Higher Ed: How to make a college student like a textbook: Just add pictures!

• Columbia Daily Spectator: Somewhere, Nellie McKay is smiling.

–MAUREEN O’CONNOR

• Newsweek: Facebook “is as much a part of campus as finals, iPods and beer.”

• Huffington Post: Newsweek is as cutting edge as our great-aunt Hilda who wears orthopedic shoes.

• Time: Red Bull and video games are Princeton’s new cocaine.  No, seriously.

• The Dartmouth: Rich alumni group launches public attack on trustee board policy, starting at the New York Times‘ home page.

At 12:54AM on August 11, 2007 a blog entitled Facebook Secrets went live.  Which would have been cool, but it was just a bunch of computer code garbledy-gook.  Luckily, college has this habit of turning out computer scientists along with its IvyGate editors, so we have since ascertained that said garbledy-gook was actually an unauthorized leak of Facebook’s main source code, prompting questions about the mega-popular site’s security.