Here's something I posted on Facebook on Tuesday. I think it's funny enough to post here. Cheers, and have a great weekend, y'all! I know I'm planning for one...
Here's a bit of what has happened to me this evening.
- I receive an e-mail which is supposed to reach somebody@pivvich.com; my e-mail domain is pivic.com. This e-mail is sent from another company than "pivvich", which I've made up for this example.
- The e-mail contains an original e-mail at the bottom, where Person A states something work-related. It's a completely work-related e-mail.
- One of the recipients of that e-mail has forwarded it to other people, including me (by mistake) and has consciously excluded Person A, adding that Person A is gay, in no unclear terms stating this as a bad thing to be.
- One of the recipients of that e-mail replies to all and makes some comment about Person A being as "tight as Anderson Cooper".
- Other senders - replying to all - also chime in with further thoughts on Person A, e.g. informing others that Person A is "a little fag".
- One sender remarks that Person A is using work time for personal business.
Right. I thought about all of the fun they were having during work hours, using business e-mail accounts, before deciding to have some fun, too. The companies they work for must approve of what they're doing, right? I mean, they couldn't be hypocrites.
Person A _must_ be abusing work hours as private time, because...somebody says so. And how _dare_ Person A be gay?
Well. I was feeling left out at this point. So, just as "gay" can mean "happy", "gay bash" could possibly mean "gay party", right? So I decided to party some with my new-found friends.
- I do a tiny spot of research to find out who the happy senders are, simply by using their e-mail addresses and information in the company e-mail signatures, and I make a special bash-day effort in trying to find e-mail addresses to their managers, CEOs and human resources people.
- I forward the last sent e-mail that I have received to those who have merrily bashed away, but in the hidden recipients list. Hence, nobody but me could see who was receiving this e-mail. In the e-mail, I added that it would reach the recipients' managers and other persons of interest at their companies.
- I then obfuscated _everybody's_ identity inside the e-mail conversations and made sure that all the managers', CEOs' and human resources e-mail addresses were included in the hidden recipients' list.
- To finish off, I added technical details on how the senders' e-mails can probably be traced by the companies' IT staff, should the validity of my e-mail be contested. This way, I added, the affected companies could quite easily find out who had been sending what.
Since then, all is very quiet on the e-mail front, and I guess the bash is over.