Op-Ed: I’ve Started Flirting with the Drunk Gnome that Lives Inside AppalNet. Here’s Why You Should Too…
May 8th, 2023
BOONE, NC - With this most recent registration season firmly in our rearview, I found it my journalistic duty to make the App State student body aware of an ongoing issue with the university’s use of online portals.
We’ve all encountered the gnome. We’ve all sent the frantic email to our program director - “I swear, my registration PIN was correct, I swear!” But no dice. It’s too late. The director fails to see your email, fails to acknowledge the inefficacy of the PIN, and as a result, you miss registration for that class section you really wanted to avoid having to take a Friday morning section - all because of the gnome.
The gnome is ever-present on the pages of AppalNet. Why else does the main site look like it was designed in the late 90s in the wee hours before Y2K? The gnome. Why is it all kind of hard to read? The gnome. Why does it look like that? Like if you scrolled down, you would find an old post from a Warrior cats roleplay forum with a bunch of broken hyperlinks? The. Gnome. He’s even made his presence known on AsULearn, dabbling in other programs (it was here that we caught a rare photo of him, which is featured above). Why else do you think you can only edit a forum post fifteen minutes after you’ve posted it? The gnome.
Who is the gnome? And why is he drinking? Why has he made AppalNet the site of his most recent home (and most earnest saboteur endeavor)? Our investigative reporters have been hard at work, trying to splice out the reasons, but so far, none have been found. The only thing we know for sure is that flirting with the gnome is the only way he will stop sabotaging your registration. For future reference: he’s not great at flirting, but he does like it when you’re mean to him.
But it goes deeper than that. Wanna know why App State makes a million different websites, constantly linking off of one another? They’re trying to escape him. Wanna know why they abruptly implemented dual factor authentication? To try and stop him. Wanna know why they keep adding more and more websites, more and more passwords to remember, Duo push notifications to approve? Because none of their methods have been successful so far.
So hold fast to your credit card information. Stop sending nudes over your App State Gmail account. For the love of God, stop paying tuition until we figure this out! Because everything you do, he does. Everytime you watch a movie on AsULearn for one of your classes, he watches too. Each time you get a parking ticket, he knows. And we all just watch the App State login credentials piling up, overwhelmed, helpless, and afraid.
We’ve all encountered the gnome. We’ve all sent the frantic email to our program director - “I swear, my registration PIN was correct, I swear!” But no dice. It’s too late. The director fails to see your email, fails to acknowledge the inefficacy of the PIN, and as a result, you miss registration for that class section you really wanted to avoid having to take a Friday morning section - all because of the gnome.
The gnome is ever-present on the pages of AppalNet. Why else does the main site look like it was designed in the late 90s in the wee hours before Y2K? The gnome. Why is it all kind of hard to read? The gnome. Why does it look like that? Like if you scrolled down, you would find an old post from a Warrior cats roleplay forum with a bunch of broken hyperlinks? The. Gnome. He’s even made his presence known on AsULearn, dabbling in other programs (it was here that we caught a rare photo of him, which is featured above). Why else do you think you can only edit a forum post fifteen minutes after you’ve posted it? The gnome.
Who is the gnome? And why is he drinking? Why has he made AppalNet the site of his most recent home (and most earnest saboteur endeavor)? Our investigative reporters have been hard at work, trying to splice out the reasons, but so far, none have been found. The only thing we know for sure is that flirting with the gnome is the only way he will stop sabotaging your registration. For future reference: he’s not great at flirting, but he does like it when you’re mean to him.
But it goes deeper than that. Wanna know why App State makes a million different websites, constantly linking off of one another? They’re trying to escape him. Wanna know why they abruptly implemented dual factor authentication? To try and stop him. Wanna know why they keep adding more and more websites, more and more passwords to remember, Duo push notifications to approve? Because none of their methods have been successful so far.
So hold fast to your credit card information. Stop sending nudes over your App State Gmail account. For the love of God, stop paying tuition until we figure this out! Because everything you do, he does. Everytime you watch a movie on AsULearn for one of your classes, he watches too. Each time you get a parking ticket, he knows. And we all just watch the App State login credentials piling up, overwhelmed, helpless, and afraid.