Coursicle is a popular edtech app that helps college students keep track of their schedules and set up notifications about closed and waitlisted classes. Now, one of its founders appears to be having a very public meltdown and is using Coursicle to send strangely personal push notifications to users. “Thanks for listening, I love you,” one message pushed out at nearly 3AM EST said. Another push notification informed users that “Twitter dies tonight.”
On February 7, people began reporting that Coursicle was sending out strange push notifications. “I literally just installed Twitter last night. Then today coursicle sends out its first notification to me saying ‘Twitter dies today,’” a Coursicle user said on Reddit. “I legit was wondering what my college calendar app was gonna do too. Like it and the Duolingo owl were gonna come to my house and smash my kneecaps.”
For two days, Coursicle’s official website also redirected to a rant about Mark Zuckerberg, John Oliver, and censorship.
“you know how adam was like the original man? I'm starting to feel like the original troll. also wtf is up with john oliver's obsession with adam driver,” the website said. “john make a fucking video you piece of shit I've had to listen to you babble for like 10 years first on the daily show and now in that stupid void it's time you listen to me for a change. oh also ever notice how all the best shows are on hbo? yeah that's because it's fucking member supported instead of fucking ads. capitalism ruins fucking everything it touches.”
Coursicle’s Instagram and Twitter account are also pushing the current crusade. On the morning of February 9, Coursicle.com began redirecting to an essay about cancel culture on co-founder Joe Puccio’s personal website.
“Dude a lot of my family think I’m fucking crazy,” Puccio said in an Instagram video posted to the company’s account. “So I’m telling them to just sit back and like, just relax and they’ll figure it out.”
“We’re not hacked, by the way. I mean, we’re hacked, but I hacked us,” Puccio said in the video while Me! by Taylor Swift played in the background. Puccio also created a trove of documents uploaded to the cloud detailing a breakup and split with Coursicle co-founder Tara Aida. It includes two documents with a combined total of 149 pages that go into excruciating detail about the relationship.
Reached by phone, Puccio said he’s trying to wake people up to the dangers of capitalism in our lives and is following the example of Edward Snowden and Aaron Schwartz.
Puccio told me that Coursicle would eventually go back to normal. “It may be one week? I don’t know. Once it feels like we’ve accomplished what we want to accomplish,” he said. “I needed to turn it off to get the world’s attention.”
The Coursicle Twitter account spent a good part of Monday evening tweeting links to music videos and movies. The afternoon was spent criticizing Twitter for not taking $10,000 to run ads on the platform.
“I just want to see my schedule,” one user said in a response to a Coursicle tweet about its beef with Twitter.
“I know, I'm sorry, We're only going to be down temporarily. I helped you by creating Coursicle, and now I need help, so I'm asking for it,” Coursicle said in response.
“A message for our users,” Puccio told Motherboard. “I just ask you to trust me…if you really go through the content that I put out there, you’ll understand that I am doing so much better than I was before.”
