Please Fucking Stop It With Your Entreprenurial Collegey Websites

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

I really didn't want to write another post about The Hoya, but I feel it's my duty. I'm the only one who seems to care about their independence and their journalistic integrity. And guess what, fuckers? I took Intro to Journalism (ENGL 481-01) last semester and somehow got an A in it without doing half the assignments, so I know everything about how journalism should be practiced.

Our issue today: this article. It's just depressing.

I really can't take these students and their endeavors to try to become the next Mark (FAIL EDIT:) Zuckerberg. I try. I really do. I actually know some of these people and have to interact with them at parties and such and I try very hard not to make jokes about their websites. But c'mon, look at this website The Hoya thinks is a newsworthy event:


Uggh.

Uggh.

Would somebody actually make this their homepage? I assume even its creators don't use it. Imagine opening your laptop in class and someone seeing that as your homepage.

I'm required now to make a list of things wrong with this situation.


1. The proliferation of this bullshit

Okay, you want to wring some money out of the Internet. Look, many of us want to make websites that succeed. But why this kind of website? Why always this bullshit? Maybe somehow one of these pieces of shit thrown at some HTML will actually stick. But I always know it won't. And you must, deep down, know it won't. But you wanting to become a millionaire means I have to hear about this bullshit all the time and read your job offers for "marketing interns" (an abomination somehow worse than the shilling "brand ambassadors" that let a corporation come between them and their friends), who are revealed in this article to be a couple of sophomores.

Let this bizarre Hoyapedia article be a lesson to you: it's a Corp programmer, crying, because nobody will use his amazing Web 2.0 app thing. It is your future if you try to launch one of these bullshit websites.

But at least Hoyapedia and the Corp's other failing venture, HoyaTrade (one of its only listings is, sadly, for Hoyapedia), have some original thought. I swear to God that I have seen this same fucking college student homepage idea three times before at Georgetown. At least one is iHoyaSaxa, and there's another one below. It's not working, folks, because it's a really, really bad idea. Never mind that HoyaTrade and Hoyapedia show that students aren't interested in these kinds of student-culture websites, but the idea of making money off being a dedicated homepage is an idea that reached its prime in, what, 2001? Maybe even last century? Are people out there really searching far and wide for a new fucking homepage that has their favorite links on it? Especially college students? Do me a favor and think about this for five seconds before you plop down money on a new homepage venture.


2. The Hoya enables these people

You know, you don't have to publish this. I realize these people send you e-mails asking you to cover their exciting new Web ventures, but I have a secret: they send those to us too. Yes, they actually write us and ask us to write satire about this crap. And they even sometimes offer money. (For the record, this group never did either, nor would we ever think about doing something like that without vomiting.)

I have to believe there are more important or at least interesting things going on at this school besides these bullshit Web ventures. I just know, deep in my heart, that these things must happen at Georgetown, even if they are never covered by The Hoya, as hard as that is to believe.

We don't need an article on Hoyapedia. Or HoyaTrade. Or College Life DC. Or Debatus. Or any of the other student Web ventures The Hoya has written about that I can't remember off the top of my head.

So why do they do it? Well, one reason apparent by this article, at least, is that somebody involved used to do stuff for The Hoya, and The Hoya is also featured prominently on the CampusLIVE page for Georgetown.

I have a solution: give us a year-end roundup of all the new student Web ventures that have failed in the past year. It'll give us a much more truthful look at these things than the regurgitated press releases The Hoya usually spits out.


3. The Hoya posted almost this exact same article almost exactly two years ago

Here it is: February 6, 2007; the brilliantly named MyKollege.com.

And here is MyKollege.com is in all its glory today.

Now someone at this week's news meeting must have been around back then. So what happened? Did they see the idea for this article and simply forget about the last one? Or, much worse, did they recognize it, yet decide that it should go in The Hoya because the last one went in the paper? I'm assuming the latter. Are college newspapers supposed to print the same stories in cycles, like Nickelodeon Magazine but with even more recycled ideas, or are they supposed to present the happenings of what is in reality a dynamic community?

The irony at this point is too painful, but I have to compare the opening line of this week's article:

It is a common dilemma for the Georgetown student: navigating one Web site for checking your mail, another Web site for posting your homework, and yet another for receiving your grades. However, thanks to the creators of CampusLIVE, a company that has given students the ability to create customized homepages, Hoyas have to look no further for links to all of their educational and social needs.

to the one from two years ago:

For anyone who’s ever had trouble keeping track of all the Web sites they browse, three Georgetown seniors may have just solved your problem.

Is this why you're writing these articles, The Hoya? The thing is, I don't think this "common dilemna" or "problem" really exists, because the homepage thing two years ago, you know, failed. Maybe the author of the new article could have at least mentioned that failure, or if she didn't know about it, am I the only person at Georgetown able to use the search function on their website?

I will make a bet. If CampusLIVE becomes at all a success on campus within the next year, I will quit Georgetown. And if not, I get to have The Hoya.