Piazza to add “Unhelpful” button for those hair-brained suggestions

Oct. 28, 2021, 8:38 p.m.

In a recent star-studded promotional video, Piazza, the purported virtual classroom message board that’s actually a front for selling student information to recruiters, announced that it would be adding an “Unhelpful” button to its website for those especially hair-brained suggestions.

“We conducted a thorough investigation of the posts made on Piazza and concluded that most of them were actually useless,” said Piazza spokesperson Samuel Doldrum. “So, in order to better allow our products — I mean student customers — to indicate their dissatisfaction, we added this new button.”

In a recent survey of Stanford students, most were supportive of the addition. “As a raving narcissist,” said freshman and self-described computer science co-term Jessica Sizzlebaum III, “I really value every outlet to remind other students that there is nothing they have to say that I don’t already know.”

Faculty, on the other hand, were more equivocal about the change. “As a high-voltage déclassé worry-wart, giving students the ability to indicate when my answers are unhelpful may expose my inability to actually teach the class,” said anthropology professor Morose Mooney.

Upon conveying those concerns to Doldrum with a request for comment, he replied via email that such feedback was unhelpful.

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only. 

A chronic anachronism, Ben enjoys well-punctuated texts and oatmeal cookies. He's also majoring in psychology, so he knows how many fingers you're thinking of holding up. Spam him at bmidler 'at' stanforddaily.com.

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