From the "Not Again" Department: Bored@Butler has internal competition.

For those of you holed up in Purgatory Butler last week for midterms, Bwog'd bet that you saved a tab in your browser for Bored@Butler (boredatbutler.com). The site is an anonymous message board for Columbia students stuck in the library to post their thoughts.

According to WikiCU, founder Jonathan Pappas (CC '06) wanted to see what Columbia students would say if the social filter were removed. An easier approach would be to read Youtube comments, however; even without complete anonymity, there's hardly a filter.

Though the site quickly hosted thousands of posts in the days after its launch in February 2006, it has since degraded into the repetitive drivel of sex-starved students. As of the publication of this article, the current topics included general hate, the possibility of random hookups, and Stephan's hair. More telling are this week's "best": "Oh, I need a blowjob. Really" and a girl reportedly giving herself a breast exam in Milstein. Honestly, Bwog is amazed by the introspection shown by Ivy Leaguers.

Boredatbutler is back, but it's not just for Butlerites anymore. A while ago, founder Jonathan Pappas, CC '06, relaunched the site as BoredatColumbia, in conjunction with duplicate sites at a whole host of not-quite-as-bored schools across the country. Recently, he added listings, which may just fill the void of Dogears and supplement Facebook and Craigslist for your random shit/spontaneous hookup needs.

Bwog had a few questions for the man behind Columbia's id, posed and answered via e-mail.

How and why was boredatbutler originally shut down? What have you been doing in the interim?

Boredatbutler was never actually shut down. Last January, Columbia approached me and asked me to discontinue using the Columbia Crown for the site's logo after someone complained to the administration. It was not a problem and I made the change accordingly. After I graduated, I continued to run the site out of my tiny Harlem apartment until Silicon Valley dragged me from NYC. I spent the whole summer out there building and playing around with the concept of anonymity, meeting some really cool people in the industry, and evolving the site into what it is today: boredatcolumbia.net.

Cheers! Bwog won't have to start the school year without its third favorite study distraction (after Facebook and this craziness). Bored at Butler, which went underground shortly after the end of classes, is gathering input for a relaunch, and wants to hear from YOU! (For the uninitiated in Generation '10: the site, affectionately known as B@B, is what all these library rats are really peering at on their laptops).

Go forth and feed back.

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.

From Bored at Butler:

greek week opening ceremony. There was supposed to be a Tug-O-War tournament, but the first match-up (sigma-chai vs. A-chai-O) was a mess. The rope broke immediately, cause that douchebag of a programming guy from IGC bought a 1/4" inch thick twine rope.

Yeah! It shouldn't even be called Tug-O-War anymore! They should've called it, like, Tug-O-String! Yeah!

The New York Observer has a small article on boredatbutler, a fact Bwog was tipped off to by the flyers posted around Butler containing quotes about boredonbutler from the weekly City newspaper (yes, Bwog is writing this while in Butler--third floor, to be precise--because Bwog is, well, bored).

The piece, incidentally, is by one Doree Shafrir, a student at the J School who joined Facebook four days ago. In that half week, she has accumulated only one friend therein: yes, senior Jonathan Pappas, the founder of boredatbutler and subject of the article. Pappas is now too cool to let non-friends view his profile.

Boredatbutler.com has a nifty new feature that lists the top 100 words used on the site.

As expected, raunchy words dominate the list - Bwog is especially fond of the delicious liaison between the latest top 5 words "sex" (1), "butler" (2), "people" (3), "fuck" (4) and "need" (5) - but there are some notable exceptions. For one, we have no idea what a "heavyweiner" (28) is, and why anyone would be playing with "fire" (87) in the library (it must be all the Lolita references...).

In the end, there's not much that one can do with such a list, until you realize that this makes for a very nice Columbia-themed Magnetic Poetry kit. We took a few liberties with tenses and prepositions, but here are our creations:

From Bored at Butler:

So looking at a hot celebrity is emotional cheating? My gf and I love eachother, and the only emotions I feel when I look at an attractive girl are physical ones. The reason it's not a problem is because we know that our relationship is so strong in every aspect, there is no way we would ever cheat on eachother, because it's not worth throwing that away for physical pleasure. Communication is THE key.

In other words, don't throw away the feelings you have with your girlfriend for hot wild sex with a celebrity you'll never meet. Unless she is a former Secretary of State.

Early Wednesday morning, Bwog correspondent Nina Bell found herself a Bored at Butler Celebrity, if by fame you means people posting, "I just printed a pic of NIna off face book, went to the toilety and jerked off on her nose."

But, in the end, Nina fought back. And won.

Excerpts from the (WAY TOO LONG) dialogue after the jump.

Turns out cell phones, email, aim, blogs, google video and facebook weren't enough to keep us from the books at Butler. Thank God some clever SEAS students (we can only assume) came up with BoredAtButler.com, where we can all leave our anonymous 50¢ worth. Check it out quick; the site's only been popular around 12 hours and already the discussion has descended from disquisitions on whether Barnard girls are actually heavier (one poster claims 2 lbs. so) to random shouts of "PENIS!"

UPDATE: Well, that teaches the Bwog to assume. There, it's just one CC student behind the site. Some of us spend our $35 on booze. Apparently SigEp boys spend it on domain names. - Beth Milton

From Bored at Butler:

I believe that pretty much all the guys at columbia are secretly gay and just don't know it yet. Metrosexuals are halfway there.

01/30/2006 @ 11:33:44 PM

Somewhere on campus, Chris Kulawik readies a rebuttal.
- Mark Krotov