“Sorry, world. We tried.”

The days following Kerry’s concession speech were tough for 49 percent of the U.S. With Bush referring to his narrow victory as a “mandate” and smugly enforcing a one-question rule at his victory press conference, there seemed no salve for the prospect of being ignored for another four years. A sense of disenfranchisement crept over the blue voters. It was all the more disappointing because things had seemed to be going so well. Faced with four more years of Bush, what was a liberal voter to do? Certainly no rational response would suffice. One man from Georgia snuck into the construction area at the former World Trade Center site and killed himself with a shotgun, apparently in an act of protest.

A Los Angeles student named James Zetlen also had a crazy idea: He built a Web site featuring a picture of himself holding up a sign that read “Sorry world (we tried) Half of America.” Zetlen, a neuroscience student at the University of California at Los Angeles (USC), invited others to send their own apologetic pictures, which he promised to post as well. He told his friends on several online message boards about the site. Late on November 3, sorryeverybody.com was born.

Word of the site coursed rapidly through the blogosphere and by friends emailing each other – the online equivalent to word-of-mouth transmission. Dozens, then hundreds, of disappointed Kerry voters churned out their own remorseful portraits. On November 4, Zetlen’s student account at USC, where the site was housed, was accessed 2.1 million times; 82 percent of the school’s Internet traffic that day. The school’s IT administrators cried uncle and removed his site. He moved it to a commercial hosting site. Before anyone knew what was going on, Zetlen was being interviewed by CNN, people were sending pictures from all over the world and at least one parody website had sprung peevishly into existence.

The place where Zetlen did most of his advertising, Dumbrella.com, is a coalition of web comics (including Achewood, which The Free Press syndicated last year). The site features a host of message boards where, as often happens in online forums, much of the discussion has nothing to do with web comics. A large community has sprung up on Dumbrella, with many friendships and even some marriages finding their inception.

When Zetlen’s Web site melted down, a support staff sprung, fully formed, to help him move the site to a server that could handle the load. The contributors, which Zetlen has called his Nerd Herd, commandeered a public chat room where most them have been hanging out for years, and made it into their War Room.

The site is truly a phenomenon. At press time, sorryeverybody contained 2360 pictures, with 1500 waiting to be approved by the Nerd Herd. Charitable visitors have contributed $6170.62 to the cause. On average, 144,392 people visit the site every day. The site has put out a terabyte of data (that’s 1,000 gigabytes). These numbers can only increase by the time you read this story.

“We have Fortune 100 companies that would kill for the type of traffic and exposure you have generated,” wrote Jason Carter, an account manager at Rackspace, in an email to Zetlen.

It takes a lot of man-hours to manage all of this. The Nerd Herd is an international team of geeks hailing from California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Minnesota – one member lives in Germany. They all hold computer-related jobs or are training in that field.

Andy Warhol predicted that in the future, “everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” That turned out to be true, for the most part. It turns out, 15 minutes was too generous. On sorryeverybody.com, you too can step up for a split second of fame as the world scrolls past your picture. (There is the potential for longer-lasting fame: I’ve taped some of my favorites to my office door. And a cottage industry has cropped up around Photoshopping new words onto the penitent signs.)

At its best, the site is zany, incongruous, bizarre. One woman writes “how can I make it up to u” across the region of her breasts not obscured by a bra. A sock puppet is sorry. There are several storm troopers and a Bobba Fett. One man poses with a quizzical expression and a sign that says “Voting 4 bush is like killing a puppy.”

But most of the site, unfortunately, constitutes a procession of Internet clich?s.

First, there are the Live Journal coquettes. Portraits of forlorn boys and girls (most of the pictures are submitted by the highly coveted 18-25 age group) with their apologies Photoshopped into the empty space around their pouty lips and haunting eyes. Sometimes they include some of their poetry. Their poetry could mollify the hard hearts of the most deeply joweled war mongers. If only they would pay attention.

Then, there are the pet pictures. Is there any more staid tradition in internet publishing than the cute pet picture? And what could demonstrate more clearly the things people find most interesting about themselves that others could care less about: politics and pets? Throughout the site, droopy dogs and feisty cats apologize for their owners. A large portion of the pet pictures apologize on behalf of “my two mommies.” There seems to be some kind of kooky trend here with hlesbian couples and their pets. I know better than to get into it right now.

There are also a few pictures of babies and young children standing in for their parents. Actually, there are quite a lot of these. In one picture, three identical babies gape at the camera next to a piece of paper that says “Triplets care three times as much,” which is significant and interesting, apparently. The babies are either nauseating or adorable, depending on your temperament. (One Photoshop parody: “My parents suck! They made me do this!”)

People pose next to their cars, their iPods, their guitars, with no shirts on. One senses that, for many people on the site, apologizing takes a back seat to the opportunity to shoulder one’s way onto a famous web site. It is probably fair to say a lot of people submit out of vanity. It’s a like watching people in the audience of game show looking at the jumbotron and waving at themselves. “Look, ma! I’m on the tee vee!”

Scrolling through the pictures, you are confronted by thousands of people watching you look back at them. There is an undeniable voyeurism inherent in peeping into so many peoples’ living rooms, dens and bathrooms. There’s no doubt that every person who posts to the site goes back to see themselves looking back out at you and the rest of the world. The whole enterprise reeks of exhibitionism, which is probably why the site is so popular with the LiveJournal crowd. A LiveJournal community actually emerged when sorryeverybody.com went down for most of November 6 for a server upgrade. It’s full of girls and boys with perfect hair.

As such, the site perpetuates some of the common stereotypes the right holds toward the left. Zetlen pastes some of the hate mail into the War Room every now and then for the Nerd Herd’s amusement: “Each picture is some freak, pagan, goth, athiest [sic], dyke or fag who has no morals to begin with. Perhaps those that voted for Kerry were wrong and maybe that is why you are scared.”

The reaction from right-wing bloggers ranges from bemusement to outrage. The hate mail continues to pour in and parody pages are multiplying: werenotsorry.com, notsorryeverybody.com, sorryeverybodymyass.com and usaloveitorleaveit.com are all direct responses to sorryeverybody.com. Someone even started a site for reviewing the parody sites: notsorrynoteverybody.com.

“We’re not responsible to the rest of the world for how we elect our president,” says John Petersen, an attorney from Pennsylvania who runs notweresorryeverybody.com, which hosts an essay rebutting sorryeverybody.com and its own gallery of unrepentant voters. “I don’t have a problem with people criticizing and disagreeing with the president. I take issue with the premise that the majority of American voters have something to apologize for.”

Andy Clement, a Systems Engineer from Atlanta, Georgia, runs werenotsorry.com.

“I think [sorryeverybody.com] is great,” he says. “Everyone should have an opinion.” But Clement, whose wife voted for Kerry, says the U.S. has nothing to be sorry about. “It’s our country, it’s our democratic process. The expression ‘sorry’ assumes that we need to seek approval for everything we want to do.”

Zetlen insists the site’s premise flows from wholly benign intentions.

“The site isn’t [about how] we should be sorry or have to be, but that we are,” he says. “An apology is something you lay at someone’s doorstep that they can take or not, and it’s none of anyone else’s business.” But text on the front page of sorryeverybody.com, written by Zetlen, reads: “we’ll say we’re sorry, even on the behalf of the ones who aren’t.”

It’s that part of the equation which, if you voted for Bush, makes this whole silly mess your business. Say you’re at a cocktail party, for instance, chatting with some people who fit your profile for sexual attraction, and you think you’re being perfectly charming. What if your buddy stepped in to apologize for the way you were acting? You might initiate a line of questioning: What were you doing, exactly, that required an apology? More to the point, where does your buddy get off doing the apologizing for you?

The issue taps into a crucial difference between the left and right: to what degree should America feel accountable to the world for its actions? Zetlen’s apology is framed so that his opinion is built into the statement. It’s as much a middle finger to the neo-con agenda as it is an embarrassed shrug to the rest of the world. It is a cunning swipe at the people that elected Bush, and a critique of the war in Iraq.

But others in the Nerd Herd don’t claim to apologize for the Bush voters.

Charles Vestal, a Radio/TV/Film Major at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas started and maintains the site’s PayPal account. “After an election, the group that doesn’t win seems to disappear,” he says. “In a way, the site is a way to let people know we’re still here.”

Zetlen says the site has indeed had that effect.

“More than half the email we get is from Europe. The gist seems to be that what we’re doing is making a big difference in their opinion of Americans.”

Aristotle, who didn’t want his last name published, is a software developer in Cologne, Germany. He wrote some of the software that lets people upload their pictures and lets the Nerd Herd review them for publication.

“It’s reassuring,” he says. “It’s nice to see people saying ‘we really didn’t want that either.’ I knew they were there but it gives it a feeling on a whole different level.”

Many of the site’s pictures feature people outside the U.S. accepting the apologies and offering condolences. Canadians offer up their couches. Two websites have sprung up to host acceptance pictures exclusively: www.we-still-love-you.com and www.apologiesaccepted.com.

“Shoulder to shoulder,” one says, written on someone’s palm. “Don’t give up. With love and support from England.”

One of the acceptance letters is itself an apology: “Sorry for thinking that *all* Americans are ignorant bastards – half of you are obviously OK!” The image is signed “Lol from Anne, Norway.”

Of course, there are pranksters on every front. A shaggy-haired teen peers coldly over a paper that says “You fucked up again!! We hate you!! -Norway.” It’s impossible to tell whether he’s joking or not.

Critics question whether any real diplomacy will come of the scrawled words on sorryeverybody.com’s penitent photos.

“They’re just preaching to the choir,” one anonymous blogger points out on metafilter.com.

Notsorryeverybody.com’s Petersen says “I don’t know if they are really doing anything for foreign relations, because they’re not affecting the government’s relationship with other governments.” He added, “they’re not backing anything up with facts.”

About one third of the email the site receives is described as “hate mail.” One email Zetlen shared, sent by a self-described Democrat, is especially interesting:

“What happened to the party of Give ‘Em Hell Harry Truman? You lunatics really damaged what was once a great party…I am left of center but I believe American sovereignty outways [sic] any crapola coming from the UN.” The email concludes: “I noticed many of you now have placards and bumper stickers with the EARTH. The only bumper or sign I want to see the Earth [sic] is the shot from the moon where on the side would be an astronaut with the U.S. flag on his shoulder.”

Most of the email isn’t so thoughtful. A more typical response: “What a bunch of weaklings on this site. Do us all a favor in the real world…use this site to organize a mass suicide. You are all pathetic cowards who have no idea how to fight a war. If this was 50 years ago, you would all be convicted of treason. Get a life and quit whining.”

Mike McMullen, a computer networking student at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, does most of the grunt work for the site: He sifts through the pictures the site receives, filtering out the pictures that don’t fit Zetlen’s guidelines. Many of the submissions are satirical: there are Photoshopped versions of existing images (“Sorry I’m such a homo!”). There’s also pornography, Maps of the overwhelmingly red U.S. electoral map, and obscenity.

“I’m sick of looking at goatse,” McMullen typed into the group’s chat room last week. (If you don’t know what he’s referring to, you can type it into Google. But I don’t recommend it.)

“There are lots of Photoshops of Michael Moore eating a sandwich,” he says. “Apparently the right thinks we like looking at Michael Moore eating sandwiches.”

The Nerd Herd approves About 40 percent of the photo submissions it recieves. The rest are either too angry for Zetlen’s liking (“I hate Bush!”), satirical or otherwise unusable. At press time, of 7000 photos uploaded, 3000 have made it into the gallery.

Some critics fail to see the humor inherent in the site. In a November 8 column in the Detroit Free Press, Dawson Bell says that sorryeverybody.com represented “a telling example” of the left’s lack of humor. “I couldn’t be sure that the site is not self parody,” he writes, adding: “A real parody site…can be found at: www.werenotsorry.com.” In fact, neither site is a parody. Both sides of the issue have healthy senses of humor – just not about each other. This points to the depth of the ideological division in the country today, something not even a skyrocketing Internet phenomenon like sorryeverybody.com can hope to mend.

Nevertheless, there is pride among the Nerd Herd for what they’ve accomplished. Partly it’s from hard work well done and a sense of empowerment, of having provided their fellows with a forum for self expression in one of their darkest days. A lot of the pride stems also from the exhilaration of becoming literally, and quite suddenly, famous.

“When you’ve got sites parodying yours, you know you’ve MADE IT,” one of the Herd said when werenotsorry.com started appearing alongside the original site in news stories. Every time the site becomes more prominent, someone make a similar statement (“When you’re the first site on a Google search…”).

In the end, sorryeverybody.com may do nothing to bring the left and right closer together. Maybe all it can ever be is a mouthpiece for disappointed liberals. That’s all that some in the Nerd Herd ever expected in the first place. And there are signs the site has fostered sympathy for our nation’s people abroad. That alone may be enough to justify all those ridiculous pet pictures.