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40,000 NYU Students United In Annoyance With Discovery Of "Reply-All" Email Feature
By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 28, 2012
Modified Nov 28, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 28, 2012
Modified Nov 28, 2012
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On Monday night an NYU student who intended to forward a boring email from the Bursar’s Office accidentally hit "Reply-All" instead of "Forward." On most mass emails, hitting "Reply-All" doesn't dump your email into the inbox of everyone cc'd on the list, but in this case all 39,979 students on the list received Max Wiseltier's message intended for his mom: "do you want me to do this?" (Fortunately he didn't use this email to also ask for his Teddy bear and Tetracycline.) But for the rest of the student body, a bumpy roller coaster ride of amusement and aggravation was just beginning!
Max swiftly realized what had happened and apologized his fellow students—all 40,000 of them—but now the entire student body, like Skynet, was suddenly self-aware and eager to talk to itself. And what did it want to discuss? For starters, how Nic Cage looked in the '80s. Also, does anyone have a pencil to share? And eventually: "SHUT THE FUCK UP PLEASE." Whatever happened to "Free Mumia?" As Kelly Weill at NYU Local puts it:
His accidental email and hasty apology triggered a rare, University-wide revelation: We simultaneously realized that any message, complaint, whim, link, video, or GIF could be sent to nearly 40,000 people in an instant.
We had been given a great and terrible power. For a moment we contemplated responsibility, then gleefully tossed it aside in favor of posting pictures of cats. The ensuing hours were referred to as “The Reply-Allpocalypse,” “The Day NYU Broke,” and “Will Everyone Please Just Shut Up.”
The Reply-Alling lasted long through the night as more and more students took the opportunity to pass the mic and crack wise. Buzzfeed has done civilization a valuable service by preserving many of these replies; peruse them at your leisure. And for an explanation as to how this was ever allowed to happen in the first place, the man behind the Allpocalypse has come forward. In an email to NYULocal, David Vogelsang at the NYU Student Resource Center explains what went wrong with some computer jargon that puts us to sleep. The important thing is that Vogelsang is now NYU FAMOUS and is going to be getting so much tail next semester.
Tagged
college
computers
NYU
reply all
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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