Here’s what you need to know for Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017:
News from The Post
The Athens Police Department fielded a report of a sexual assault. (The Post)
Former state Rep. Debbie Phillips will serve as a director of Rural Action. (The Post)
Good Morning,
Except to everyone who flooded hundreds of inboxes with a thread of endless emails yesterday — including my own.
That’s right: On Wednesday morning, an innocent email was sent to every undergraduate student of the Scripps College of Communication advertising an enigmatic “meeting.”
One of the first replies claimed the meeting was for a fictitious club called “Bisexuals for Trump,” which sent the replies into immediate chaos. (The thread was actually an extra email from an AVW announcement, according to one responder.)
People quickly began replying. One of the earliest emails attempted to quell the coming storm.
“It’s a mistake,” an email from Kyle Henke read. “Stop replying please or we’ll all be flooded with emails.”
And flooded we were. Within an hour, the email had more than 100 replies. While many of the initial emails ranged from requests to be removed from the thread to pleas to stop sending emails, the thread quickly spiraled out of control, sending my (and many others’) inboxes into chaos.
“Stop this madness,” read an email from Garrett McCafferty. If only Garrett had known that the madness had just begun.
After one user suggested that everyone meet in Schoonover Center to become “best friends,” and another suggested attempting to “crash the server,” the thread (and my email account) derailed.
From full scripts of Bee Movie to requests for money, the thread blew up every Scripps undergraduate student’s email.
Eventually, the emails ceased, but not before news of the thread made it to the Athens subreddit.
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Weather
High of 62. Rainy. (Weather.com)
Scores and Game Times
Women’s basketball beat Akron.
You Might Also Want to Know…
President-elect Donald Trump thinks that Russia may have been behind election hacking. (CNN)
A beef jerky maker has been sued after they fired a worker who called 911 to report a severed thumb. (CNBC)
