A year after sending troubling push notifications to students through his popular course scheduling app, Coursicle co-founder Joe Puccio is apologizing to users, saying that a mental health episode triggered the incident. Puccio, who has been reaching out to student publications across the country to relay his apology, said that he was experiencing a manic episode at the time he sent the notifications.

One year ago, in February of 2022, Puccio sent out millions of notifications, including “Twitter dies today,” “I love you” and “I’ll shut up if you open the app, tap nudes, and follow the instructions.”

During the outburst, Puccio was quoted in a Motherboard article explaining that he was trying to wake people up to the dangers of capitalism. Coursicle would return to normal “once it feels like we’ve accomplished what we want to accomplish,” he told the Motherboard reporter.

According to Puccio, more than 10,000 students at NYU use the Coursicle website and app, which allow students to input the name of an NYU course and have it instantly appear in a digital calendar. He said that the biggest consequence of his actions is that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s affiliate high school temporarily blocked the app for students on the school’s wifi.

coursicle, are you ok? pic.twitter.com/VFjBJRhNWN

— chardorn ? (@char_dorn) February 8, 2022

Dan Ahmad, an NYU sophomore who regularly uses Coursicle, said that he experienced Puccio’s breakdown on the app first-hand, but he’s continued to use it. He said that he received various bizarre notifications on Coursicle at the time of the incident.

Ahmad also said that he reached out to Puccio on Twitter and Reddit after having read multiple lengthy rants across social media, and offered to talk with him to help clear his thoughts.

“My conversation with him was limited because he insisted he was fine and that all messages with him should be done in public for others to see as well,” Ahmad said. “It was clear that he was in distress, but there isn’t much you can do for someone you don’t know in person.”

A Coursicle employee is now in constant contact with Puccio, who was hospitalized following the incident, but has since recovered. The employee can block his access to the company’s servers to prevent similar incidents in the future, he said. Puccio has also published an apology essay on his blog.

“My hope is that this essay will assist in the fight to destigmatize mental illness, while also explaining what happened to our users,” Puccio wrote in an email announcing his apology to several WSN editors. “NYU students use Coursicle and were likely affected by the outage and notifications, I imagine it’d be illuminating to your readers as well.”

I just want to see my schedule ?

— Chandler Cagle (@chandlercagle_) February 7, 2022

Puccio said that he wants to use the apology as an opportunity to teach people about mental health issues. 

“I want to use this as an opportunity to evangelize and elucidate people on mental health issues,” Puccio said. “It’s a very candid essay which tries to demonstrate to people what these illnesses do so that if you recognize it yourself, hopefully, that will build empathy.”

Ahmad, the NYU student, thought Puccio’s apology was satisfactory. He said that people tend to turn a blind eye to mental health issues and that Puccio’s online following is the only reason he received the help he needed.

“We all knew that Puccio was having a mental breakdown,” Ahmad said. “We swiped away his notifications and continued to use his app. Having read his apology, I’m just glad that he’s doing better.”

Contact Yezen Saadah at [email protected].