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Message Bored

by Jesse Andrews
Winter 2007

Undergrads doing time at Lamont Library once procrastinated by sleeping. Now a wildly popular online message board lets them express their feelings, and the result is horrifying to behold. Boredatlamont.com, part of an Ivy-wide franchise, averages 1,000 posts a day—about double Columbia’s boredatbutler.com, the next-busiest incarnation. The site makes no attempt at organization and mandates anonymity. Users may vote “agree” or “disagree” on others’ posts, as with this idea: “i feel vaguely annoyed when my s.o. touches my genitals.” (Agree: 1; disagree: 3.)

Indeed, the message board functions essentially as a giant collective id, chronicling the popularity of reacharounds; annoyance at students who use rulers to take notes ("your underlines don't have to be perfect, dude!"); which is awesomer, pirates or ninjas; and the occasional desperate admission of suicidal depression. The urge to psychonanalyze Harvard students is irresistible; rarely has the sexually uninhibited so cozily dovetailed with the sexually repressed. Boredatlamont.com is even awesomer than pirates (which defeated ninjas, 8-2).