“This site is like bathroom stall doors for the twenty-first century,” someone writes at BoredAtLamont.com, a newish social message board site where students post anonymously. Indeed, the site features a broad spectrum of comments: the mundane, the intellectual, the random, the emotional, but mostly the patently offensive.
BoredAtLamont is one of nine “Bored At” Web sites, the first of which was started this February by 2006 Columbia graduate Jonathan R. Pappas. But why subject library dwellers to the rants of others?
“It was a little bit of being bored,” says Pappas. “Actually, it was mostly being bored. I’m constantly creating new Web sites, and I thought it would be interesting if I threw this site up and see what happens.” He started with a Columbia version, and after redeveloping the site over the summer, released the Lamont Library version.
Since then, his Web site has been graced by posts such as: “god i’d be so productive if i could just fuck someone right now,” which garnered 13 agreements from fellow posters.
An Oct. 26 post on the popular website IvyGateBlog.com funneled more and more viewers to Pappas’ sites. “That was really the first thing that got it going,” he says. Since then, he’s rolled out versions at Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Stanford, and UPenn.
But does he have time to read all the scandalous posts?
“I don’t really keep up with the conversations and things,” he says. “So much going on, I can’t keep up.”
And with posts like “the crimson sucks,” FM will follow Pappas’ lead.
