Because Bored@Butler – that great giant of anonymous heckling, hookups, and hate – finally got tired of being splattered with your blather. Since yesterday afternoon, visits to the site yield only a message from the site’s creator/moderator, Jonathan Pappas CC ’06, lamenting the “hate speech” and “racist comments” (read: trolls) that have caused him to temporarily disable the forum. Bwog sympathizes.
Though devoid of capital letters, Pappas’ letter is strongly worded and shows genuine interest in the good use of Bored@Butler and other anonymous “Boredat” sites which are down as well. “i will not allow boredat to exist,” writes Pappas, “if:
1. it does not accurately represent the general opinion of its community.
2. it does not have the ability to self-moderate.”
The letter ends with a call for programmers to join the good fight to create the “right codes” (which Bwog can only assume means “spam filters”) so that this problem can “take care of itself.” Encourage thusly skilled friends to help out, or let go dreams of one day enjoying the company of a stranger deep in the darkness of the stacks.
Full text of Pappas’ letter after the jump.
dear friends,
i have temporarily suspended boredatbutler and other similar boredat sites. recently, our community has been under attack by a very small group of people. these people troll the site with the purpose of killing the community with slanderous and racist comments.
i do not condone hate speech or racist comments and i will not allow boredat to exist if:
1. it does not accurately represent the general opinion of its community.
2. it does not have the ability to self-moderate.service has been temporarily suspended until we can devleop the right codes for it to take care of itself. but i need your help.
if you would like to build boredat with me, please send me an email at jonpappas{at}gmail.com. if you are interested, i’d be happy to discuss with you the purpose and the vision of boredat. boredat is built with php/mysql/javascript/xhtml and css. if you know these technologies and would like to code and collaborate with me, in whole or in part, let me know. coding remotely and on your own time is ideal. i am looking for one volunteer per ivy league school to be a part of this project. this will be the founding team. contact me quickly because some slots have already been filled and they will go quickly.
kind regards,
jondated 12/8/09
10 Comments
@Anonymous I’m in the periodical reading room, and had a new pet peeve I wanted to share with people and bored at butler still wasnt there to post it. Is it difficult to create such a website? What is the deal with these 2, 20ish looking south asian guys who walked into the periodical reading room with these very upturned collars? PLEASE
@well I guess people will just have to resort to bwog to leave all their vicious comments! Oh wait…people already do that.
@anonymous Kudos to Jon for taking down the site. The hate speech on it was getting really terrible — not just racist comments but also a lot of homophobia. Sad.
@More importantly Where is cueats?
@it is the troll in its native habitat. I can’t believe that many idiots at this school have enough time to draft these (quite creative) rants. That and they suck at being trolls, you have to be kind of believable to be a troll and this shit would’ve made my ultra-backwards hillbilly neighbors back home throw their hands in the air and say “tone it down”.
@Johnny Bruiser This is an awesome alternative to Bored at Butler: http://www.postregrets.com
@wait so do real people actually use b@b?
@lke it seems hate speech and racism were the major factors in leading to the closing down of this blog. I’ve never visited the site, I’m curious what race(s) were the comments racist against?
@CC 11 no one was spared, but blacks, jews, and latinos were the primary target of attacks. the frequency of the trolling seemed to escalate sharply in the past few days.
@Aron Not only that, but the % of trolling posts went through the roof a few days before. At the end, all the posts where insults. It was one huge flame war.
Can you interview jon, please? Maybe he can give you the exact post that was the last straw.