The S(pa)mail* fiasco

*Smail is the internal mailing service of IIT Madras. If you send a mail to students@iitm.ac.in, your mail gets delivered to every damn student’s smail-box. Insti junta know how annoying it gets at times. Others, have fun over the following series of mails exchanged over smail.

Here goes the story:

A Mr. Gogate loses his notebook in his department, but instead of sending the mail to his department group, decides to spam the entire student community of IIT Madras by sending

i left my note book in the aero dept AEDH class room.

if any one finds it please contact. or leave it at the aero dept ofce.

Gaurav Gogate
98********
****, Cauvery
MS Aerospace.

I get annoyed. I decide to spam back- a big mistake that I soon realized (I should have had sent him a personal message). Anyways, following is what I replied to him with a cc to students@iitm.ac.in:

Hi, Gourav, Gogate it from the backyard of SAC. The note book has been buried 10 feet inside ground, and for the purpose of identification of the spot that needs to be dug, a small box which contains a shit mixture (10% crow-shit, rest monkey’s) has been placed over it. I know the entire research community is looking for that notebook, so Gogate it before any one else does. All the best.

Alright, I don’t give a rat’s leg to your note book but I have a serious suggestion too. Inscribe the words of your annoying mail on the first page of all you notebooks (which you still haven’t lost), so that you never have to spam again.

Regards
A non-spammer who prefers blogging.

Alright, it was mean of me to rape him on smail, but he deserved it right? Once again, I realize that I should have had sent a personal message. Anyways, read on the follow-up mails. The first reaction (once again sent to everyone) was by a certain Raviteja, further shouting at Mr. Gogate:

Mail the whole world about it!! You have a better chance of finding it!!

And just when I thought, more students would shoot in mails cursing Gogate, the reverse happened. I got a personal mail by a second year kiddo Vivek:

Hi amrit,

Better you go and get some check up done… if at all you want to send a mail, why dont you send it to him directly… if this is not spamming what is it, Mr.”A non-spammer who prefers blogging.” Get to your senses and if at all you feel the urge to send such a mail and cannot curb it please send it to someone who would not mind it in his mailbox and not spam to everyone in the insti.

Both Gogate and myself were spammers. I accept. I wonder if the kiddo also replied to Gogate (I so much wish he did). Anyways, I sent a quick apology (if you call it one) to Vivek:

Lol. Got back to my senses bro! 😀

Now, just when I thought the story was over, another insti-mate decided to make me feel bad about myself. He wrote back yet another personal mail:

Hi Amrit,

I am a bystander in this case but the crudity and the condescending attitude of your mail has spurred me to write this to you.

However you may feel about a certain somebody spamming the entire crowd for losing a notebook, sending such a insulting mail to an open public forum certainly doesn’t speak much about you. If you had felt peeved at his act, you have every right to vent your fury at him. But I presume that you must have practiced some constraint and sent this mail to him as a private message and not on the general list.

Moreover, the way in which you mock his surname fails to bring out any laughs but it certainly manages to bring utter sighs of exasperation directed towards your ill sense of humor.

Sincerely,
Shrey Ginoria

My sense of humor could be ill, but Mr. bystander’s mail totally threw me off ‘d chair! Lol, who uses terms like “crudity” and “condescending”? Anyways, I replied back a sorry to this guy who could not laugh at the way I mocked Gogate’s surname! Ginoria was followed by a Mr. Rams who again emphasized on the same mistake that I did (by sending a personal mail of course). But made did a blunder. Read his mail:

Dear Mr. Amrit,

If u want convey something to Mr. Cogate u send him personal mail. Why you send a cc: to all?
Hope u understand.

Regards,
Rams.

Alright, I had made pun on Gogate’s surname but I at least didn’t misspell it as Cogate! LOL! Cogate sounds so much like a toothpaste. I offered my sorry to Rams as well and also made him realize his mistake! 😛

Ok. So the story continues. Finally came the mail that I was keenly expecting. Yes, the one from (by then legendary) Mr. Gogate himself! But guess what, in spite of the public rape, he spammed again. Once more, he wrote a mail to everyone, which said:

hi amrit,

i really dont want get into this non sense. still. ur mail has to b replied to.
tell me just one thing– how did u find out the shit – mixture – percentage?
sorry everyone else.

Gaurav.

Besides anything else, I laughed on the fact that this time Mr. Gogate, oops, Gaurav preferred not to use his sirname! LOL! I realized that some people will never learn to stop spamming. I had learned. I sent him a simple personal mail:

😛

LOL. Chill. Pack. I was frustrated over the infinite number of spams that keep pouring in on smail.

Regards
Amrit

And just when I thought that the story was almost over, a ROTFLmax mail popped up from no one else but from insti’s ex gen-sec (or so I assume).

Before you read his mail, notice the number of groups/people to which he spammed:

to: gs@iitm.iitm.ac.in, ac@smtp.iitm.ac.in, in@smtp.iitm.ac.in

cc: amrit@iitm.ac.in, gaurav@smail.iitm.ac.in, chandy@iitm.ac.in

And here goes his mail:

Dear SGS,

I agree with the point raised by responses by some students, Amrit and others, that students@iitm is not meant for posts about lost/found item. Such emails are irritating although they were not meant by the authors to be so. Never the less, they amount to no less than spamming. The easiest thing which people do is to let it go by a simple click on delete button and save the energy for something better.

But what is more irritating is the responses to such lost/found postings. Such responses are sent to students@iitm and even more surprisingly they beat the moderators and reach all students. Just read a reply to one such lost/found post, I am attaching here. It’s plainly disgusting! The student who has written this reply must have been flared up like a hot iron. So the result too is no less than a hate-mail and a spam put together. The reply is a desparate attempt in a fit of rage to demoralise the orginal author by exhibiting his wild imagination and also by making mockery of the other’s surname. According to me the later is not a pardonable offense. This email is a clear indication of the lost peace of the responder’s mind. I wonder if he replies every lost/found post in the same way. If he is doing so then he is doing more harm to himself than any one else.

So I request you and the concerned authority to help him and many others (including me) by
1. installing the discussion forum at the earliest,
2. refining moderation policies (which won’t allow lost/found posts and responses to lost/found posts) and
3. counselling students whose emotional outbursts may cause an extreme irritation among readers and also strain the relations between the original author and the responder over an issue which wasn’t worth a single naya paisa.

In writing this mail, I mean no offence to both the students, Gaurav and Amrit and to the others who have replied in a similar fit of rage. But saying so I must say that such issues should never be allowed to disturb our peace of mind and a restraint must be observed in open expressions made in public. Both students may please note that I am not spamming the mailing list in response to an angry reply.

With best regards
Prasad

————————————————————-
Off. Research Scholar (PhD), I C Engines Laboratory (DoMechE)
Res. Room No. ***, Cauvery Hostel (0 94** *** ***)
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai – 600036

Visit my photoblog at http://myprasad.blogspot.com

Notice the last line of his mail: I have never ever seen a worst spam in my life! 😛 He got a prompt taunt from dear friend Gokul who made the lovely Contraptions design for Shaastra 2005.

Dude, u jus redefined spamming! Congrats!
That’s 6K*5000 bytes of shit.

Gokul

Long live the spammers!