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Scott Farmer is an idealist. A romantic, even.Which makes this story harder to tell.

Scott and Katie, both seniors at Glen J. Davis High School outside of Columbus, OH, had been going out for three months prior to their senior prom. It was one of those deep-seeded friendships that blossomed into romance as the end of high school approached. Katie admired everything about Scott: his position as editor of The Draconian (the school newspaper), his starring role in the Spring production of Anything Goes, and his calming smile. While the rest of the class was asleep during the Honor Roll Lock-In, the young couple snuck away to make out in a corner of the gymnasium. They were an item everyone in school talked about.

Prom was held in the large banquet hall of the downtown Columbus Marriott. Teachers and administrators ensured that the evening’s festivities stayed PG, but six blocks away, the La Quinta Inn was booked solid for the night, overflowing with senior after-parties. The topic of getting a room had come up between Scott and Katie. Perhaps it was the social pressure or the young romanticism that pushed Scott to make a reservation using his friend Mitchell’s credit card.

“His mom just remarried so they gave him a credit card”, says Scott. He and Mitchell drove two towns over to buy condoms, fearing they’d be seen. They kept the prophylactics in crumpled Wendy’s bags in their bedrooms. Like thousands of high schoolers every year, Scott and Katie fully expected to let the excitement of senior prom sweep them into losing their virginity.

As the final slow dance ended in the basement of the Marriott, Scott and Katie walked the six blocks to the La Quinta Inn and up to their rented room. Almost immediately, the ravenous teens started making out, removing their clothes, and lying together in bed.

Yet, an hour later, they were still lying together in bed, still a pair of virgins.

Through the thin walls, Scott and Katie listened to Mitchell and his date moan. “Do you want to?” asked Scott. Katie said yes. Reaching inside the greasy and stale Wendy’s bag, Scott pulled out the condom and slid it on.

Scott asked Katie three more times, just to make sure. Each time she said yes: She wanted to have sex. And then Scott did nothing.

He kept on trying to form new sentences or words as he worked through it all in his head. Is this right? Am I doing this only because it’s prom night? Is she the one? Without a word, Scott removed the condom. The moment was over. They stayed up all night, just talking about the summer and college. After the sun rose, and they got breakfast with their group of friends, Scott took Katie home.

Almost 20 years later, Scott is still a virgin.

2.

I first heard about Scott Farmer, the 36-year old virgin, eight months ago. My boyfriend the caricature artist had just broken up with me; I was heartbroken and confused. We were on The Track. We had met each other’s parents, taken trips together, and even moved into a condo with a shared lease. When it all fell apart, I found myself sleeping on the couch of a friend who worked with Scott’s sister. In the midst of a back rub and ‘things aren’t so bad’ pep talk, Scott was brought up as a prime example of how much worse things could be.

I was surprised that Scott agreed to let me interview him, but I soon found out that his virginity is fairly common knowledge. “I don’t really tell people, but anyone who talks to Peter or my sister finds out pretty quickly. It’s kind of like saying I’m HIV positive, like ‘keep your eye out,’ but I don’t know if this is worse… I bet people who are HIV positive are happier than I am”.

He stares into space for a moment. “I don’t mean that”, he says, unconvincingly.

Scott works from home as a copy editor for a blog network that he didn’t want named. Suffice it to say, Scott spends his days correcting punctuation and fact checking snark-laden posts intended for Brooklynites, women who like “look books,” geeks, aviation dweebs and homeschooling mothers. His dream is to publish a series of novels about a hard nose detective named Chantilly Rose. A few pages into one draft and its abundantly clear: Chantilly Rose is the anti-Scott. Despite the name, Chantilly is confident, self-assured, even egotistical. “I used to deny Chantilly had any relation to me, but I mean, it’s so clear. Women throw themselves at him, and after a while they’re gunned down so he can move on to the next one.”

Scott began writing fiction a week after prom. He tried to keep in touch with Katie that summer, but she left for Venice with some friends and returned in no mood to deal with “high school boys.” Just before heading off to the University of Wisconsin in the fall, Scott learned that his best friend Mitchell had slept with Katie. Worse, they were going to make it work long distance. He hasn’t spoken more than a few cursory words to either of them since, and declined a monogrammed invitation to their destination wedding when the coworker he’d been courting backed out. “I kept on joking that we were going as an item, and eventually it weirded her out. That’s when i started working from home.”

He arrived in Madison in the fall of 1993. Tucked amongst the sessions at college orientation was a frank discussion by SASE (Students And Sexual Equality), an on-campus wellness group that, among other things, hammers down the agreed upon definition of rape and consent. At the end of the talk, condoms and stern handshakes are handed out in abundance.

Scott’s response was fear. “I kept on hearing things about consent, unwanted sexual advancements. It felt like if I made any gesture towards a girl at all, I would be kicked out of school. So, you have to be confident, but you can’t be pushy. I still feel trapped.”

Despite his fear of becoming a sexual predator, Scott quickly fell in with Laura, a coed who shared his dorm floor and a statistics class. They gushed over the recently released August and Everything After by the Counting Crows. They saw A Bronx Tale during a Saturday matinee and made out a little in the back row. A week before Thanksgiving break, only one unanswered question remained: when were they going to have sex? Reuniting in December to resume classes, the question still hung cold in the Wisconsin air. Laura, for her part, was trying to answer it: soon.

On nights when Laura would stay over, Scott would feign headaches or tiredness before rolling onto his side for the night. One night he accidentally knocked Laura off the bed, bruising her butt. As winter break neared, Laura assumed Scott’s lack of sex drive more about being uninterested in her, not just emotionally unprepared. The night before Laura was to return to Milwaukee for Christmas, the unanswered question fell out into the open.

“She asked why I didn’t want to have sex with her,” says Scott, “I knew I was going to lose her, so I tried to go for it.” After some over-the-sweater heavy petting, the two landed in bed together, with Scott reaching for one his orientation condoms. He stared at it the shiny wrapper, so easy to peel open. Except, to reach the condom inside, you’d have to rip the word CONSENT right down the middle. He stared a moment longer, then dropped the condom back into the drawer of his nightstand.

Laura stormed out and the two didn’t speak over the holidays. When winter session resumed, the two avoided each other in the hallways. Eventually, Laura transferred to another dorm.  “I mean, we never officially broke up, so… y’know…” Even now, Scott wonders aloud if he should “maybe call her again?”

“I was worried we were moving too fast, that I wouldn’t be good at it, that I wasn’t ready, that it wasn’t special enough,” says Scott. He pauses, as if he’s had an epiphany. “I guess I’ve always wanted it to be special and romantic. Not in some dorm room while my roommate Duane sleeps in the bunk below us.”

Scott spent the remainder of his college years primarily alone, aside from his volunteer work with the campus’ SASE Walk program, where he would spend his Friday and Saturday evenings escorting groups of girls safely across campus. “I admit that I thought I’d meet some cute girl who fell in love with how courageous I was being.” Mostly, Scott met much taller, drunk women that he’d lend pizza money to.

“I have this philosophy that if I am good and stay quiet, people will give me things,” says Scott, “But that’s not how life works. It’s why I don’t like video games. At some point you have to be proactive and go after the bad guy or the reward, and I’d rather cheat at solitaire.”

Scott graduated quietly in four years. He declined to walk during the final ceremony and left Madison shortly after. He doesn’t speak with anyone from college, which isn’t surprising when you see the stack of manuscripts on his bedroom floor. During the golden years of most people’s lives, Scott completed three novels: “Chantilly Rose: Framed for Regicide”,  “Chantilly Rose: Doomed from the Chart” and “Chantilly Rose: Bullets & The Mayor.”

3.

Peter Leslie is a bartender and Scott Farmer’s closest friend. He’s funny, exceedingly charming and almost defiantly confident, thanks to his handsome good looks and an over-abundance of muscles. When I contacted him, he asked that we talk as he did some grocery shopping.

“When I see a woman, the only thing I have on my mind is sex. Nothing before or after,” Peter tells me as he checks melon ripeness. “When Scott sees a woman, he thinks about how to talk to her, their first date, when they’re going to have sex, what happens afterwards, what if they get married, whose house they go to for the holidays, what brand of laundry detergent they’ll use. He’s doing too much math when it’s all very carnal.” Peter holds up a melon to compare to my breasts. “Nice.”

The unlikely pair first hit it off when Scott was in Peter’s bar with a date. Peter noticed Scott’s social failings and tried to throw him a line or two from over the bar. At the end of the night, the date left with Peter; he and Scott have remained close ever since. “I’ve tried to get him laid, ” says Peter, “I have sent the skankiest girls after him. I’ve persuaded the sweetest, most innocent girls, too. He is incapable of closing. I did everything short of having a girl force herself on him. Hell, if I could get him to leave his apartment and go to Vegas, I’d even try that.”

Peter confides in me that he’s hopeful Scott’s detective novels become successful and maybe get optioned into a film franchise. Of course, Peter himself would get cast as the star. “I am Chantilly Rose. I’ve got the build and the attitude.” Listen to this, he says, before assuming a smoky air. “‘Listen, darling, you hear anything, you give me a call. My name? Oh, it’s Chantilly Rose.’” He drops the character, clearly pleased with his performance. “See? Nailed it.” Peter may not have the chops to play a leading man, but he is the absolute definition of a ladies man. I was almost taken in by his offer to ‘lay it on [me]’ at his bar, but the mystique wore off once I began to hear all of his sordid tales for myself. “I actually wanted to challenge myself,” says Peter, over a late lunch. “I wanted to see if I could tell you exactly how I operate and still have you go home with me. Oh well.” Within ten minutes, he’s talked our single-mother waitress into a date.

“Peter is amazing. He’s incredible.” I’m with Scott at Peter’s bar, watching him operate on the female clientele while serving drinks. “I wish I could have one moment in my entire life where I wasn’t afraid to proposition a girl…Like, propose something…Not propose to her, but, like, make an offer for her…I mean… y’know?” Scott exhales and takes a sip of his free vodka Coke, courtesy of the man behind the bar who just snorted a Jell-O shot off of a blonde’s chest. “I wish I had one moment where I wasn’t afraid of women.”

Scott opens his wallet and pulls out a dry, cracked square of plastic. Stamped across the front, in all caps, is the word CONSENT. He tells me that he’s been holding onto the same condom since college not only as a reminder, but to use victoriously when the time comes. He’ll be vindicated, he says. When I point out that it’s expired, he crumples.

At my tipsy suggestion, Scott and I go to Walgreens to get condoms, which he has never actually purchased himself. Back in high school, it was Mitchell at the register; in college, he never moved past the handful that he was given at orientation. To Scott, the entire process is overwhelming. It takes four minutes to enter the condom aisle, and another six to get him in front of the display.

“I hate condoms. Not like that. I look at them and they’re just staring back at me saying ‘not for you, you don’t need us.’ It’s like an illiterate person browsing books. They’re insulting me.”

4.

A year and a half ago, Scott was miserable. After a two-week relationship with a friend of his sister’s that included (in order) coffee, lunch, dinner and the movie “For Colored Girls”, she had stopped responding to his text messages.

“I know she knew my situation when she agreed to go out with me, and it didn’t bother her. I think she could tell that I kept on wondering if she was the girl it was finally going to happen with, and the whole thing just turned her off. They can all tell. I’ve been out with six women since college, and it doesn’t matter if they know about my situation or not, they can all tell that’s what I’m thinking. Women already know that guys are always walking around, thinking about sex, but with the added layer of being a virgin, it’s just too much.”

Feeling “rejected by the entire world,” Scott didn’t leave his house for two weeks. He resigned himself to the notion that not only would he never have sex, he would never be with anyone in any romantic capacity. “I’d rather be alone than be with a woman who doesn’t want me. And I don’t think I’ll be able to get a women to want me because I come off as such a loser.” When Scott finally emerged from his emotional cocoon, he left his house in a chocolate stained pair of Hanes Beefy sweatpants. Scott believed he had hit rock bottom. Yet, for him, there was one more step to go.

After 36 years as a virgin, Scott knew that all of his relationships had teetered on the notion of sex. All of its questions and presumptions made everything so complicated. Was it going to happen? When? How? Would he do it right? How long should parts stay wet for? It was too much for him to handle, and he decided to seek help from a professional.

Across town at the La Quinta Inn, Scott arranged for a female escort. In the room, with the money on the nightstand, Scott dove into the details. “I wanted to know how many times…’it’ … could happen, because I figured I would need a few times to figure it out”, he tells me later. He paid up front for two hours, unlimited “times”. Yet, despite the business-like nature of the evening, Scott began to shut down. The escort, sensing Scott’s struggle, took it upon herself to get things started. She stripped and lay her naked body over the bed. Across the room, Scott sat in the desk chair in his boxers, looking at her, wide-eyed. She suggested he have a drink, but didn’t want his first time to be “under the influence”. After ten minutes of slow, silent gyrating, the escort turned on TNT and began an episode of Law & Order. One hour later and Scott had not so much as swiveled in his chair. Half of his time was gone. Part of him wanted it all to be over, wishing he could just get drunk and finish the ‘solution’ he had paid for. But the other part of him, the big, burning part of him, was scared.

“I waited so long, built it up so much, that it just couldn’t end that way. It was like I drove my virginity out into the woods and was going to shoot it in the back of the head. I didn’t want to execute my virginity, I wanted to set it free.”

Eventually, the escort left. Scott waited around for a few more minutes, provided his own solution, then headed out. A few days later a $45 charge appeared on his credit card from the hotel for sheet cleaning and accessing one of the ‘premium’ video options. Scott hasn’t been on a date, flirted, or been with a woman since. He has resigned himself to the notion that he will always be a virgin.

5.

Back in the condom aisle, I finally help Scott purchase a 3 pack of name brand condoms. A little tipsy from the vodka Coke, he expounds on what a waste of money it is for him to have condoms, which only worsens his mood. I help Scott back to his apartment, and he lazily lets me in. I was curious to see how a 36 year old single man decorates, and I was surprised. There weren’t superhero figurines or movie posters everywhere. Scott explained everything is from a single page in a Crate & Barrel catalog. He wanted the apartment to look nice to any girl that may come back, but he never uses any of it, no one ever comes over but Peter. Scott’s bedroom is sparse: A bed in the corner with a single pillow. “All I do in there is sleep. What?”

I go through Scott’s DVD collection while he stumbles back and forth. “I cannot imagine any scenario in the next fifty years of my life where I will be really happy,” says Scott. “I have fleeting moments of happiness, and then I remember this huge hole in my life where I should have someone’s love.”

After some digging, he pulls out a manuscript and begins to read from ‘Chantilly Rose: Dames & Doom’. It’s his latest draft, where the detective, after a passionate night with a widow, implies that they’ll never meet again, despite the fact that he’s inseminated her.

“This guy, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want a wife and a family, and I want it all. I want to make breakfast for people who love me. I want to book plane tickets for a family and wake up in the middle of the night because someone had a nightmare. And I’ll never have it because, God fucking damn it, I can’t even make whoopie with a hooker!”

It occurs to me, sitting on a couch that was purchased for the implicit illusion of maturity, that I haven’t had sex in over six months. This living, breathing story, Scott Farmer, so consumed my post-break up life that half a year passed and I hadn’t so much as sat on a working dryer for the thrills. Listening to Scott say “whoopie” grates on me. I’m slightly irritated, a little drunk, suddenly horny, and staring at a 36 year old intoxicated virgin rambling on about wanting a family. I make a move.

Looking back on it now, I guess I wanted to snuff out the torch that Scott had been holding up to the ideals of romance for nearly two decades. I thought, if anything, I could help him move forward. But, most of all, for me, it had been six months.

6.

It’s been three weeks since my night with Scott. In the morning, I woke to a full chocolate chip pancake breakfast, with a wedge of grapefruit and a glass of milk. I wore one of his Oxford shirts, but not because it happened to be laying around. It was folded over the headrest of the only chair in his bedroom, freshly pressed and with a note pinned to the sleeve that read “for you”. As I made my way into the living room, it became apparent that my detached, journalistic curiosity was no match for my pure desire to not talk about what happened. I dressed, he kissed me on the cheek, and I left. We talked on the phone that night, but we kept pausing intermittently and then falling all over each other’s words to fill the empty space. Eventually, I stopped answering his calls or returning his text messages asking to see me again.

Sex is not a test. Rather, it’s an expression of oneself, like dancing or painting or drawing those big-headed caricatures on the boardwalk. We all have the potential to be great at expressing our emotions, but it takes many failures for that greatness to show up. The first time you have sex, it’s special, but not as satisfying or important as once you figure out how to dance beautifully or paint like a master or really nail that delicate forehead on one of your caricature drawings.

Scott waited too long to fail at sex. Like adult braces, it’s something that should’ve been taken care of long ago. Eventually, the fear of failure steamrolled his every romantic move. Scott Farmer is a 36 year old former virgin, but romantically, he’s still 17.

The last communication I ever received from Scott came in the form of a Facebook message:

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about our night, and I realized that I must’ve done something wrong. Please let me know what I did wrong and I will fix it. Whatever you want done differently, I will do it. We never officially split up, so I really think we can make this work. I think we could be something very special. I can change whatever I did wrong, if you just tell me.”

Two hours later, he asked to add me as his girlfriend on Facebook.

Then I deactivated my account. ✦

It was first the Carthaginians who, in cuneiform, asked “how late can we stay out?” and since that time mankind has searched for a balance in the foggy blurry area where laws do not hold firm and fast: Cutting in line when your friend is saving you a space. Having to work an after school job while the other kids get an allowance. Watching the girl you love go off with Brandon because he has the guts to actually ask her out. “Every single day we encounter injustice and battle against the odds,” said Cole Porter, “this leg ain’t real.” And his joyous celebration of life rings out amongst the lands to this day. Follow Minutiæ as we present editorials, articles, illustrations and more in our investigation of Fairness.

In this ground breaking enlightening issue:

• This issue features very exciting contributors including famous television personalities, filmmakers and critically acclaimed authors.
• Learn the origins behind your favorite characters, rooms and killing utensils in Cluedo: Masters Edition.
• Minutiæ has been around for almost 150 years and in that time mistakes have been made and apologies have been issued.
• Thurber, Nebraska is home to Mama Dell’s diner, Cadillac Jack’s bar and Darlene Moffitt’s murder. Follow reporter Chad Wollman as he discovers the truth behind the death of a beauty queen.

And so much more journalism, illustrations, advertisements, infographics, and editorials.

Go consume the issue now!

My name is Fred P. Jackson and I am the Vice President of Emerging Markets of Testing Systems, the premier standardized testing company in the United States today. When the good people at TARK decided to unload some of its subsidiaries because of corporate tax evasion, we quickly snapped up Minutiæ Publishing and transformed the under utilized printing facilities into teaching tool factories! That’s critical for the huge expansion that Testing Systems is going through at the moment.

The theme for Minutiae this month, Fairness, is especially important to us here at Testing Systems. We want to make sure that each and every student gets the fair chance to excel, and we are introducing some very exciting new programs and tools to help with that, because we have to do everything we can for our most important natural resource extractors: children! And what better way to serve the kids of today than by providing the kids of yesterday tools to teach and excel? None. There is no better way.

Therefore, it’s important that schools use all the great tools available to them. Has a teacher only used the Testing Systems Latex-Free Chalk on the special Testing System Latex-Required Chalk Boards? Are the students well versed in Testing Systems’ classic Base Eight math curriculum? Are they able to hold the special Testing Systems Thin #3 Pencils? These are important criteria to hold our schools to if we are ever going to get back into the space race against the Chinese and their ever-thinning pencils.

Testing Systems also wants to make sure that busy principals are doing their best as well. School administrators don’t have time to walk into every classroom, so our exciting Testing Analytical software lets them do it from afar. Now administrators can stay connected, be it downtown while they make a deal to bring nutritious Testing Systems lunches to each and every student, or from the beaches of Maui at Testing Systems’ annual seminars for principals and superintendents. So many choices can be boiled down to reading a simple graph and saying, “is that chart line going up?” (The Testing Systems Analytics software feature only one simple graph, with slide flute audio feedback for student performance).

In fact, Testing Systems CEO Lance Howell just returned from Washington, DC where he met with top Pentagon officials in hopes of serving the educational needs of our proud armed forces. What better way to prepare our men and women for the rigors of war than with standardized tests, Testing Systems brand Steamed Pizza Lunches, and the thinnest pencils proudly shipped to the USA? None. There is no better way. So, please sit down, eyes forward, put on your patented Testing Systems Test Taking Blinders and get ready for the exciting world of Minutiæ! ✦

Gentle people of the Minutiæ readership:

We are publishing this open letter to address the awful accident that took place at our Arkansas printing press facility this past Springtime. Many immigrants failed to remain alive throughout the ordeal. It is impossible to know how so many gears could be spun in so many wildly different directions, yet spun they did.

Now, before we rush to judgement (and I cannot stress this enough) DO NOT BLAME THE GEARS. Gears are what has made this United American country so great. Not only the gears that power our steamed engyned trains, but the gears of our clocks and the gears of our experimental mechanical servants. Not only the gears of industry, but the gears of commerce and a new segregation based on the only value that matters: social class.

Were we without gears, the Irish or Scottish, at a moment’s notice, could bluntly fall our beautiful nation. Without gears, might the people of southern continents force us into a rootbark-based economy. Let us bless ourselves, the fallen immigrants, and the mighty teethed wheels that power this grand collection of states we call home. God blessed thy.

1917

Dear Victorious American Readers: At our converted Hamburg Printinghaus recently, faulty ventilation caused the death of thirty eight of our dirty-finger-nailed Jerry employees, and, I guess, we must address this.

Firstly, we must say that only the tiny hands of motherless children can mash pulp properly. Only that pulp, formed into paper, will hold the economical Turkish ink that we use to print Minutiae. We all make sacrifices to bring important news and reporting to the world. For instance, our editors log long hours holding their hands behind their backs, slowly nodding while peering out through windows overlooking the printing shoppe floors. Our layoutmen spend days on end shuffling around wooden bits of letters, wearing cumbersome leather aprons, goggles and gloves. Therefore, remember, it is not only the motherless children who submit themselves to servicing the greater good. As you read this I grow tired from leafing through the many contract pages required to have a historic riverfront mansion burned and converted into a world class brawling stage.

In this publicly-reported-upon instance, the pulping of paper occurred on a particularly chilling Winter day. To amass savings to pass along to you, the reader, we use the heat generated by the pulping process to warm our paper processing plants. If any heat escapes, then we lose those savings and must raise the price of our published materials. Wouldn’t you agree, dear reader, that it is in the best interests to keep vents closed and the fume-ed heat held within? Exactly.

Again, we can only blame the vents for not being able to separate fumes from heat and we have tasked our Minutiæ Science Laboratory (once they are done drawing up plans for a world-class brawling stage) with creating such a vent. Until then, pulping will continue with tiny and even more motherless children. Think of thy savings!

2011

It recently came to light that conditions in our off shore Korean printing facility were less than humane. Jolly whistleblowers, undercover bloggers and biased unionizers uncovered the facilities that our contract workers were producing Minutiæ (and the all new Minutiæ Day Beds) under. These reports cite several grievances including elevators that tipped over, leaking light bulbs and a general lack of suitable flooring. And, of course, we were astonished that such horrificies saw the light of day.

We blame the one man who we entrusted with the health and safety of our Korean contract workers. This man we only knew as 론 울프 아이 (The Lone Wolf Eye) and he disappeared shortly after the terrifying conditions were reported in the media.  While there were several red flags that should’ve indicated his untrustworthiness (his constant lighting matches off his cobra skin boots, his leaning back in chairs and looking at the ceiling to dismiss concerns, and his frequent inquiries to if we enjoyed “salty tastes”), we were being urged by stock holders (many of whom are no longer American citizens) to sign the agreement for him to look over our Korean printing facility.

We want to make it clear that Minutiæ prides itself on appearing to hold ourselves to the highest of working conditions. From our publishing team’s Cold Stone Creamery gift cards down to the Minutiæ measuring tapes given in lieu of holiday parties, Minutiæ has stated we are committed to a high standard and we will continue to state that we are committed to such a high standard. If anyone sees 론 울프 아이 in a Southern state, please tell him to get in touch with us as we are still eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first shipment of Minutiæ Day Beds.

• A Good Start: A new “comic strip” from artist Daniel.
• On the Scoop: Zippers: A visit to Galliger’s Zipper Repair to get the scoop behind the coolest clothing fastening device around.
• It’s Gotten Better: Read how Boston’s McKintley High School is making America’s historically most humiliating years safer for their students
• The Future Paradox: We learn about science fiction master William Parker Wrothgate’s first new book in over 30 years.
• Odysseus: The Postcards: Archaeologist Dr. Jean Paljeanette III uncovered the postcards the Greek hero Odysseus sent to his wife Penelope while making the journey back home from the Trojan War… And Minutiæ’s got ‘em!
• Inside Boppbopp: Minutiæ dives into the Internet’s hottest and most talked about surface ever.

And much much more. Go grab the issue now!

It’s late at night in Palo Alto and Isaiah Nickson is wrapping up finalizing the newest feature set on his website. The 900 million members have been yearning for more Boppbopp. This new feature will reinvent the Boppbopp brand, says Isaiah, from “a global phenomenon to a human phenomenon.”

Rewind six months ago when Boppbopp was just being launched. “I had the idea one evening, just by myself, that the world is so hectic these days… and then I made Boppbopp.” We all know the Boppbopp creation myth by now. Struggling sandwich delivery boy turned Silicon Valley superstar overnight. He’s dined with Barack, wined with Oprah and slept with the hottest of Hollywood’s starlets (Easy A? Yes). Yet, for those of you who have been living under a rock (and even then you would’ve heard about it on the Boppbopp-osphere), allow me to introduced you to Boppbopp. The exciting new internet surface is taking 140 characters down to one. It works on desktops, mobiles and Boppbopp key fobs. It’s easy to login with just an e-mail address, though now people are logging into Twitter and Facebook via their Boppbopp accounts, if at all through the aging sites.

Boppbopp accounts are symbolized with the ზ symbol, created by artist Susan Kare. Suspicions exist on Popob, an online community built around Boppbopp, that Boppbopp’s founder Isaiah Nickson created the symbol himself.  The suspicions come from the lack of interviews from Isaiah or anyone on the Boppbopp team. However, they’ve allowed me to follow them as they introduce their exciting new features. (Full disclosure: Bopppbopp granted this exclusive look into the development of their new features through an undisclosed agreement with Minutiæ’s parent company, TARK.)

“People are always looking for holes,” says Isaiah, “They want to think there is some darkness to what’s behind Boppbopp. To those people, I have to say I apologize. I’ve heard the rumors and none of them are true.” This is a powerful web surface, and the fiction surrounding it grows every day from the disgruntled ex-employees to New Orleans residents claiming Boppbopp is hindering the rebuilding of their home, in order to discontinue human interaction in favor of a pure online Boppbopp interaction. “I feel bad about the situations of those less fortunate, but I cannot stop people from how they are using Boppbopp. I only provide the surface. I love Black people.”

When Boppbopp started, it was considered a fun diversion from the overwhelming onslaught of tweets and pokes and zoops (from the failed Boppbopp competitor, and now subsidiary, Zoople). In the beginning, users would send boppbopps to each other—not knowing what they meant—as sort of a cute game. Yet, as time went on, users, or pobs, began to assign meaning to the messages, and the Boppbopp land-grab began.

The Boppbopp community is exploding, not only amongst regular internet users, but also with celebrities who have embraced the web service wholly. Justin Bieber is currently boppoppular with 510 million pobs, second only to founder Isaiah Nickson. UK Prime Minister David Cameron started a Boppbopp account last August, but due to national security concerns, his boppbopps are now encrypted.

Even businesses have begun to launch Boppbopp presences. The now classic story of State Farm Insurance using Boppbopp to offer discounts resulted in a 300% increase in revenue. Does anyone remember Geico? They went the way of the cave men. However, great success on Boppbopp has also been met with huge financial failure. Supposedly, American Eagle set up a Boppbopp account, and two days later their business was down 80% after sending out confusing boppbopps like “ზ” followed 20 minutes later with “ზ”.

“Ginger Spangler is a fucking rockstar because of Boppbopp,” says known recording artist Pick, who discovered the Hungarian sensation after falling in love with the lyrics she posted on Boppbopp. In a short time, Spangler has already pressed two platinum records and has launched a sold-out world tour “Spangled.” Even the rowdy boys from the reality show “These Boyz ‘R’ Noyzee” have found success through Boppbopp, funding their own charity that builds schools in Africa. “We love Black people.”

The morning before Boppbopp’s press conference at Boppcon 2010 at the Yerba Buena Center, Isaiah is going over his keynote speech and the exciting new feature: colors.

In an attempt to simplify the huge growth of the surface, four colors are being introduced, created by Boppbopp’s Color Artists in Palo Alto after a seven-month sabbatical to The Ukraine. The secrecy surrounding these colors have nearly made Boppbopp a prison state to work in the previous weeks. Colorblind guards have been standing guard day and night. Nickson can’t wait any longer to tell the world about the incredible innovation.

The keynote speech begins with Nickson covering the past six months, and then the moment happens. The slide turns to the four nameless colors and the room erupts in a mixture of applause, tears and shock. Nickson is unable to continue with the speech as the thousands in attendance, and millions worldwide, flock to Boppbopp to start sending boppbopps in color. The internet comes to a shrieking halt.

Two days later Nickson wakes up a multi-billionaire. Despite the company not being public, estimates say that his 80% share in Boppbopp is now valued somewhere between 4.2 and 140 billion dollars (The irony? Yes). Money like that, however, is sure to attract naysayers and rattle a few cages. Wall Street Journal reporter Clyde Eckhart wrote “we have no way of knowing the true value of Boppbopp. They don’t host ads, they don’t release their earnings. I’ve come to the conclusion that the business is valued somewhere around $650. The amount it costs to host a site of that size and pay for the employees that we know for sure work for the company. They don’t even advertise themselves.”

The huge growth of Boppbopp can largely be attributed to Pobbpobb, the grassroots user community that has grown up around Boppbopp. “Hell yeah I love Boppbopp,” says Pobbpobb founder Nyle Goodwhyld (pob name Born2BGoodwhyld). “I started Pobbpobb because I saw the potential that this surface would have. It has brought people together in extraordinary ways. In the past six months, I’ve been all over the world, meeting other pobs, starting grassroots campaigns to raise awareness.” (It worked? Yes). Pobbpobb has the largest Boppbop dictionary and compendium in the world, and is constantly being expanded to include new terms, which has become especially difficult with colors. “I was there that day when Isaiah introduced the colors. I blacked out. And when I woke up I was in an oxygen bar back here in Leeds.”

Pobbpobb has been especially helpful in naming the new colors. They were released by Boppbopp without official names or meanings, and it’s been up to the user community to assign them. There is ‘Re,’ ‘Fa,’ ‘Ti,’ and ‘La’ (the names have since been trademarked by a company called Enterprises), and the grassroots campaigns (such as Banksy’s unforgettable boppication of the Lincoln Memorial) have secured the new colors’ place in the world.

There are suspicions, though, that Boppbopp itself started this grassroots user community. Several graphic designers have formed a coalition to create unofficial Boppbopp badges, stickers and decals for water bottles. However, there is mounting evidence that Boppbopp started this user-generated coalition. Organizations such as P.A.ზ. (People Against Boppbopp) have sprung up all around the world. “We are not associated with Boppbopp.” There are rumors that P.A.ზ. is a Boppbopp-backed organization.

All these rumors lead back to one man: Isaiah Nickson. “I hate to have to say this, but I’m going to set the record straight. Our pobs simply love Boppbopp, and that’s why there is this outcry of support for us. There are no conspiracies, there are no secret organizations in the Underworld, and there is no dark side to Boppbopp. Gay people aren’t even allowed on Boppbopp. The longer story, well, that doesn’t fit into Boppbopp’s brand strategy.”

The naysayers will go on and on about the inconstancies of Boppbopp’s story. Boppbopp has recently expanded to larger Palo Alto offices, however, an official address is not registered with the city or state. It is unclear if Boppbopp pays taxes or generates revenue of any kind, positive or negative. The only official employee of Boppbopp is Isaiah Nickson, with everyone else being freelance or an independent contractor. Yet, when I sit down with Nickson, he hands me page after page of an employee roster (Good enough for me? Yes).  

But not everything is cheery in the Boppbopp-osphere. “All I did was set up the surface,” Nickson says, “it’s up to the pobs to shape it as they see fit. Sometimes there are bad pobs, but we hope they don’t spoil the entire surface.” Kids are being expelled from school from sending inappropriate boppbopps. Stories are surfacing everyday of relationships crumbling from miscommunication over Boppbopp. The blackish Boppbopp color ‘Re’, is considered to be a sign of polite affection, like a tap on the shoulder, on the West Coast. However, disparities across the country and the world have led to differing understandings of ‘Re’, such as a strong disinterest or a medical emergency (Local 911 call centers are currently integrating Boppbopp geolocation into their systems after public outcry that it could have prevented the infamous suicide incident of Kevin Gregors).

“Kevin kept on sending ‘Fa’ boppbopps, but he had just moved out to San Fransisco and we thought that was good,” says Kevin’s mother Liane, “but he had gotten mixed up with some new people who had other understandings of the Boppbopp colors. We were flying out to visit him when he smashed his head through the computer monitor. To this day, I can only describe the entire incident as ‘Ti’.”

“Not to be defensive,” Nickson says, “but we followed up with that incident and discovered that there was no one named Kevin Gregors, and when we tried to get in touch with Liane, she had mysteriously disappeared to Argentina and was refusing to answer our questions. We were horrified at the story, but that’s all it is. It’s a story. Fiction.”

What’s not fiction is the tremendous financial and cultural success of Boppbopp. “Kids in Africa, boys in England, girls in Kansas, all over the world it’s Boppbopp, and we don’t see that ending any time soon,” Isaiah says between boppbopping on his Boppbopp key fob, “Boppbopp won’t rest until we’re able to pinpoint each member of society, corral them into resorts, and begin the cleansing systematic production of the ideal human specimen. It’s why I started Boppbopp in the first place: I love Black people.” ✦

(Ed. note: We tried to print the color palate of Boppbopp, but our printers were not capable of reproducing them. Minutiæ also sends our heartfelt prayers to the families of the reporters who wrote this piece. We hope they are located soon.)

(Pub. note: Look, sometimes people just get up and go and don’t leave a note. Let’s go back to bed.)