A quaint irony exists in both the quantity and quality of e-mail flooding the server, from an audience both delighted and disoriented by the site’s in-character approach. Television’s fourth wall had not been broken here.
Of those who made repeat visits, the appearance of a mostly-finished site waiting there for them prompted a few bewildered messages on Noel’s e-mail server.
Who are you? I know you’re not really Noel Crane, so who maintains this site? e-mail me @…
I expected this site to say something like “wow, you really watch tv too closely if you’re actually looking for this website.” …Are you Scott Foley?”
The majority of mail returning to the site was principally complimentary; some notes written by people also “in character” with Kelvin Hall’s residential policy, a friendly wink to the site’s deadpan promotional nature.
I’m a little computer illiterate. Could you come to room 408 to help me with my browser?…Thanx—- I’m 2 doors down on the left ; )
I think it’s hilarious that there is an actual Noel Crane website! …This is great.
Noel…could you please update it? It’s not difficult, you know? There *are* weekends.
An early decision was made to keep Noel off-line as webmaster, principally for cost and organizational reasons. After all, who would be Noel every day?
Who would make time to respond to every playful request for advice, or respond to a legitimate cry for help? A qualified therapist? A former resident advisor?
; – ) Noel…himself?
Lacking an obvious solution for this startup concept, an agreement was established with the producers to portray Noel as a real student with a real website, but the catch was that “his e-mail server would be down”; for legal reasons, Noel would be personally out of touch with his fans, due to an unspecified technical problem. This way Noel would keep harassing his Internet Service Provider, hopefully the volumes of mail flooding in might show a way for the online future of Noel.
At time of writing, the issue of who will answer Noel’s e-mail remains unresolved. Noelcrane.com has been added to dozens of fan sites and logged into hundreds of search engine entries from its beginnings as word of mouth.
The site has succeeded in creating synchronous movement between Noel’s web world and its public peer, Felicity, via a website which continues to inform the show’s character and vice-versa.