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A SECRET MESSAGE FOR YOU, THE DEVOTED READER
--------------------------------------------

So you want to know the real truth?  The real reason that there is a Rembrandt
fan page here instead of something more topical?  Something that perhaps some
of you took advantage of and are now surprised and saddened when it's been
taken away from you?

Well, actually, probably not.  I would imagine that anyone who cared enough
to look at the source code for this page was a real fan.  You're probably
someone who I was proud to help be juvenile in a mature manner; someone who
doesn't live in a frat.

Awwwwww, did I badmouth frats?  Well, for your sake, the person who cared
enough to read the source code, here is the final RumorsDaily column:


The Rise and Fall of a Rumors Site
by Brian posted on 3/7/01 at 3:02 pm


So this whole monstrosity started two and a half years ago with a silly idea
of starting my own little mini undergound news site.  There were a few
piece of information floating around the student body and I felt I could
pull together enough information to make a website work.  I had friends
placed all over the school in the perfect positions to feed me information
and they were mostly willing to cooperate (especially while the site was
still just a small goof).  I had people in the Senate, in the Daily, in
Programming Board, working with the Administration... everywhere that you
needed to be in order to get the latest information.  I was able to get
most tidbits of information out online before they made it to the general
populous.

This was fun.

But after a while things started to change.  Not bad at first, just
different.  Suddenly the site was getting too big and administrators
and student leaders were getting very tight lipped within their own
meetings.  People became more wary of giving me information and the
supply slowed.  Fortunately at this point I started adding other content
in the form of weekly columns.  The columns which originally allowed for
interesting and often unheard student opinions were, in my mind, a great
success.  They never drew the same level of readership as the front page,
but I was always extremely happy with their unique viewpoints and the quality
of writing (except of course for that one masturbation article from
The Crazy Monk).

So as the purely original content began to slow, side content began to
pick up the slack.  As the columns began to slow down in terms of rate
of output, the newly added forum picked up their slack.  Ahh, the forum.
This was a result of Crazy Monk asking for it over and over again until
I finally set it up.  It was a great idea.  The forum started out as such
a beautiful thing.  Sure, it had it's share of homophobia and racism,
but in the beginning most of the immaturity existed as a parody of
itself.  It usually wasn't pointless personal attacks, it was usually
a kind of self mocking use of popular criticism.  It was usually very
clever and, I thought, endearing.

A lot of people did not agree with this sentiment.  The forum became
many people's targets.  They didn't like that I allowed someone to
call Larry Harris a "black asshole."  They didn't like that the tone of
the forum was often dark if not outright hostile.  I personally found
the hostility usually came from corners of the campus intelligentsia
and that made it special.  It wasn't merely frat boys with gutter mouths,
it was actual anger over real issues and it was being expressed without
names and without fears.  It was beautiful.  I loved the forum at
this point, I was so proud of it.  (Side note, I've twice been
overtly threatened with law suits over the forum.)

But that was last year.  This year has been different.  This year the
web page simply became too popular for it's own good.  Slowly, but surely,
the demographics of the page shifted.  It was no longer the campus
elite reading and responding amongst themselves in a way that they
could not do in public, instead it was the campus riff raff reading
and responding as they unfortunately do do in public.  The witty
banter began to disappear and in it's place was a movement to
insult everyone, regardless of privacy, personally, and to
call anyone and everyone who wrote anything "gay."  The torrent of
homophobic and racist comments grew exponentially along with (and
take from this what you will) the number of posts where frat boys
attacked other frat boys.

I personally saw a link between the apparent increase in frat usage
of the page and the decline in general quality of the page.  The
signal to noise ratio grew out of hand. I was asked to, and
seriously considered implementing, a block on any forum
posting that utilized the word "frat" or the name of any fraternity
on campus.  Not only were these threads stupid, boring and abusive,
but they were mostly repetitive.  Gosh, how many times do I need to
read how "gay" AEPi is before I get bored of it all.  And when you've
bored ME, the most ardent follower and supporters of the forum,
perhaps something needs to be done.

Hell, even the secret service showed up in my room early one
morning because one dimwit on the forum decided to threaten Al
Gore's life.  The worst part about this, however, was later in
the day when this dimwit called me on the phone and asked me to
take down a story I wrote about the secret service showing up. I
didn't use his name, but he began to make me feel sorry for his
plight, until I remembered what this dimwit had done to me.  I had
the SECRET SERVICE in my room because I granted this dimwit the
freedom to write whatever he chose.  He chose to threaten Al Gore
and I payed the consequences.  This was the gift I was granted
for my kindness and generosity in giving the students an open
forum, people who blame me for thier idiocy and expect that I
will honor their demands after they've caused me nothing but
trouble.

I began to crack down as the masses chose to pass over meaningful,
or at least humorous, discussion in favor of discussions of who
is the ugliest girl, how stuck up Jessica Biel is, what frat house
is the best and who is the gayest.  Particularly I began to more
seriously enforce one of the only rules I've ever asked the people
on the forum to consider; not to discuss people who have not made
themselves public figures at Tufts.  If someone stayed out of the
Tufts spotlight, I always felt they deserved to stay that way.

And people did not like this.  Oh no, they did not.

I received many insults throughout this whole two and half year
experiment, but until recently they were never so cruel or so
agressive.  They never before had the opinion that they were
entitled to my work and that anything I did that they did not
like was unfair to them.  And it was the insults and attacks that
I did not understand.  I'm doing you a favor by creating and
maintaining this website.  I'm losing money on the deal, I'm
giving my time and my energy to it... and yet everyone feels that
it belongs to them.  That I owe them something... that their NEED
to insult Jessica Biel is more important than my simple request
to leave her alone.

And so today I fight back the only way I can.  If you feel that
I'm a jackass who doesn't deserve to be in charge of this webpage,
now you've got your wish.  I no longer am in charge.  I suggest
that anyone who insulted me for my extraordinarily loose policies
make their own webpage and allow people to talk about whatever
they please on it.  You can talk about how much you hate Jessica
Biel.  You can talk about how ugly all those girls were at the
party at DU last night.  You can talk about everything that I've
asked you not to.

Today you win.  Good luck to you.

Oh, and by the way, Larry Harris was The Fox.


PS. It took the first one of you half an hour to write me after
I posted this, how are you all finding this message?  I didn't
really think anyone would read it.

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<HEAD>
<TITLE>Rembrandt Brown, from Sliders</TITLE>
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<BODY BGCOLOR="BLACK" BACKGROUND="rembrandt.jpg">


<CENTER><FONT SIZE=+4 COLOR=WHITE>Rembrandt Brown</FONT><BR><I>(<BLINK><FONT COLOR=RED>from Sliders</FONT></BLINK>)</I></CENTER>
<P><FONT COLOR="WHITE">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You may remember Rembrandt Brown, aka the Crying Man, from the hit telelvision show
<I>Sliders</I>.  He was the glue that held each episode together with his witty rejoinders and spectacular
<A HREF="http://www.cleavantderricks.com/video/crylikeaman_DSL_cable.asf.wmv">singing skills</A>.  I don't know why this show
had such a difficult time finding it's audience, it clearly worked so well on so many levels.  It's not easy to
accurately depict the world of inter-dimensional transport, but this who did it with brilliance.

<P>Here are some pictures of Rembrandt, the Crying Man, from <I>Sliders</I>:

<P><CENTER><IMG SRC="slide-remmy-title.gif"><P><IMG SRC="remmy-6-col.jpg"><IMG SRC="cleavnew2.jpg"><IMG SRC="remmy-1-col.jpg"><IMG SRC="remmy-2-col.jpg">
<IMG SRC="remmy-3-col.jpg"><IMG SRC="remmy-4-col.jpg"><IMG SRC="sssliders.jpg"><IMG SRC="bluestnd.jpg"><P><IMG SRC="slide-remmy-title.gif"></CENTER>

<P>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And to those of you who argue that he was only there as a token black charachter,
I must once again point out <A HREF="http://www.cleavantderricks.com/video/crylikeaman_DSL_cable.asf.wmv">his talent</A> that
must not be derided in such a base fashion.  Please keep your race baiting arguments to yourself.  Thank you. Oh,
and if you can be bothered enough to read between the lines, and get to the source of the matter, perhaps
you'll understand what's really going on.

<CENTER><BR><I><FONT SIZE=-1 COLOR=BLUE>Posting Rembrandt Brown pics since October, 1998!!!</I></FONT></CENTER>

<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><CENTER>You are Rembrandt fan number <STRONG><FONT FACE="Arial,Helvetica"
             SIZE=-1>2243</FONT></STRONG>.</CENTER>
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