Columbia Confessions has only been around for a little while, but it’s already generated some weird posts—including one in which a stoner-turned-anti-marijuana-crusader exposes us as alleges us to be a propaganda network.

Columbia Confessions, a new Facebook page where students can submit anonymous “confessions” (or complaints, or inner thoughts, or absolutely inane thoughts on political questions that we have ALREADY HEARD A THOUSAND TIMES BEFORE), is all the hype on campus right now. It’s like Columbia Crushes, but much, much less creepy. It has evolved into a public forum of sorts where members of the Columbia community can freely express thoughts about any topic that happens to be on their minds. PrezBo would probably love it in theory. (In practice, it’s been used to post thoughts such as “Bollinger, Lee. Dislike him. A cheap rehasher… boring and irritating… a claptrap regressive Utilitarian and a slapdash pseud.” Oof. Doubt he’d like that.)

Some posts are depressing. Some are absolutely infuriating. Plenty of them are benign. And some are just downright weird.

This humble publication gets a shout-out in one of the weirder posts on the page. In Post #420 (nice), an anonymous student unloads on a “freshman who ruined [his] night” by talking incessantly about marijuana use at 1020, offering to share with him about the dangers of the drug. He tells a tale that takes place during 2018 Bacchanal, when he smoked some Sativa and his mind began “rapidly oscillating.”

This is where things get weird.

The “good Catholic boy” who wrote this post became convinced that “everything,” from the lectures he attended to the books he read, “was a propaganda apparatus,” But that’s not all: Bwog posts were tools to control minds, too!

So says the “tree”-totaler: “[E]ven the shitposts on Bwog I read… held some deeper, metaphorical meaning. I saw Bwog as being the gestalt in essence, and it was a system to be gamed, and an apparatus for deceiving people but at the same time a secret tool to be used in order to advance personal knowledge in alchemy and philosophy—a place for fellow ‘geniuses’ such as myself to exchange secret information and projects so as to advance our own personal gain, while the proles who browsed the site sifted through the propaganda and got caught up in it.”

The author goes on to talk about how he was suddenly able to interpret Hegel, but I’ll disregard that part of the post, as everyone knows that it’s impossible to understand Hegel.

So let’s go back to the Bwog stuff. First of all, anonymous author, thank you for writing “Bwog” and not “BWOG.” I wouldn’t have bothered writing about you had you made that mistake. Second, I don’t think it was marijuana that you were smoking. Finally, I hesitate to either confirm or deny whether or not what you claim is true.

But damn, guy, you’re onto us.

The “g” in Bwog does not stand for “grape,” as many incorrectly assume—it stands for “gestalt.” (The “B” stands for “Baudrillardian,” as you might have surmised, but I’ll leave you to guess about the “w” and “o.”) And yes, there is a chance that we exist in order to placate the masses and advance our own devious agenda. Do you really think we work around the clock just to post about eating mud and befriending raccoons for the hell of it?

And if you’re already convinced that we spend our time exchanging personal knowledge in alchemy and philosophy, I can’t imagine what you’d think if you saw our Slack.

Anyway, my guy, you really seem to get us and our voice. Feel free to swing by one of our open meetings on Sundays at 9:00 pm in Lerner 510. We promise not to brainwash you (that much).

P.S. To the author of Post #350, who wrote that there’s “no reason to visit Bwog anymore” as “this shit beats Bwogs [sic] comments”: No.

four-twenty via the Columbia Confessions Facebook page