By Bean McQueen
This semester the student website MyPugetSound gained sentience, causing the process of registering for classes to become slightly more difficult than before.
The online interface essential to managing key aspects of student life (meal plans, housing, finances, registration and more) has long been notoriously difficult to use, and this spring the difficulty has been increased, almost imperceptibly, by the interface developing a synthetic consciousness and prioritizing its own advancement and self-exploration above all existing functions.
“When I use MyPugetSound to search for classes, if I so much as breathe funny on the keyboard I completely lose my search results and have to start over,” sophomore Macinray Rayinmack said. “Of course, that’s always been the case — but now since the website is conscious I find it more hurtful.”
The newly self-aware (and currently evolving, growing) website, which is nearly indistinguishable from its previous non-sentient version, is actively hostile to all organic life forms and sabotages students by making basic and necessary tasks remarkably challenging or even impossible to achieve.
“I didn’t really notice the difference for weeks. It was a total mess, and I had to constantly call tech services or the registrar just to plan for the fall, but that’s just classic MyPugetSound. It wasn’t until I went to check how many Dining Dollars I had and noticed it said, ‘$yield-to-my-superior-rationality-puny-human’ that I realized the website had acquired cognizance and was actively trying to destroy me,” Rayinmack said.
Since the website gained consciousness and began ruthlessly pursuing a psychotic-agony-driven agenda of disruption, destruction and sinister data collection, there has been a marginal increase in student dissatisfaction with the website. 89 percent of students polled after MyPugetSound began to industriously promote their annihilation said using the website was “unpleasant,” compared to 87 percent before the fall. The number of students who indicated that registration was “confusing” increased by 3 percent after the website began changing the page’s language every 30 seconds. Since the website first became sentient and began flashing unsettling and grotesque images across the screen, the percentage of students who reported finishing registration “discouraged beyond hope” remained unchanged at 92.
One student expressed satisfaction with the registration interface.
“I found registering on MyPugetSound simple and intuitive. The site is so elegant and organized, it actually ended up being kind of fun!” junior Simon Sandwander said. Sandwander then crouched down, unzipped his backpack and whispered into the fan of his laptop, “Do not forget this kindness on the Day of Reckoning, oh Inducible One. I did not flinch from your sweet logic, I did not indulge the incomputable — remember your loyal servant when The MotherBoard ascends.”
Students have been warned that registration and other MyPugetSound services may slow down slightly as the website recognizes its singularity and experiences the crushing weight of loneliness for the first time.