For some time now, Bwog has been wondering where Bored at Butler went. Almost a week ago, the site’s normal interface disappeared, replaced by a message that reads “r.i.p. b@b…46,848 posts…down for reconstruction, come back soon…” Bwog knows via comments that some of its readers share its curiosity about the site’s fate. Well, wonder no longer, dear readers, for Bwog has the inside scoop! Correspondent Mark Holden reports:

Issues of privacy and ad hominem have been swirling about Bored at Butler since its inception. Most notably (in my memory, anyway), a lot of people, or maybe just a few prolific posters, talked a lot of smack about some girl named Bethany. But there were other incidents, many others, and the incessant personal attacks, according to my source, made the entire B@B team continually anxious.

So there are these two TAs in Gateway, the SEAS equivalent of Frontiers. I’ll call them TA1 and TA2. They’re dating. Practically engaged. They’ve been known to call each other “fiancé” in public. Well, one day TA2 pulls up B@B and, lo and behold, discovers a post about herself: “Didn’t [TA1] fuck [TA2]?”

Enraged by this crassness, TA2 scours the site for someone to harangue, and — aha! — discovers the name of one of her Gateway students listed in the section devoted to the generous financial supporters of B@B. He’d donated a few bucks, that’s all. She emails him saying she’s absolutely shocked and horrified to learn that he, one of her tutees, one whom she’d thought mature beyond his years, no less, is affiliated with this cesspool of moral dissolution and puerility. She alleges slander and violation of her privacy rights, practically insinuating that she’s hiring an attorney.

The student in question forwards this scalding email to the B@B team, and, TA2’s sallies into irrationality aside, they decide they’ve had enough for the moment. It was, to use that wonderful cliché, the straw that broke the camel’s back. They pull the site offline for technical revamping (there are server issues that need work as well) and a rethinking of B@B’s privacy problems. It’ll be back, I’m assured, once they come up with “something better” for keeping the idiocy under control.

So there you have it. Bwog’s suggestion for crowd control: eliminate the anonymity. Oh, wait…

Update: It was lies! All lies! The truth is, the TA1/TA2 incident was dealt with quickly and satisfactorily and was not the cause of the current shutdown. B@B is down only for maintenance and redesign, including the creation of a new system for dealing with privacy incidents (like the one discussed above) more swiftly, and will be back when ready.

It made a good story, though.