Chain Letters and how they make life more interesting

Chain letters. Note that we are not talking about those random ‘fwd this or your ____ (fill in with most important body appendage) will rot and fall off, you will suffer purgatory for all eternity, yadda, yadda, yadda’.

I have been a long term sufferer of non malicious chain letters. The physics department at the institute back home had its own mail server. This was very useful in that we could ‘finger’ other users and find out when they have last logged in and all that. Having a closed UNIX server system is very useful to ping computers/write or talk to people/avoid them… etc etc. Sometimes, however, things got hairy. This would typically start with someone sending off a group mail. Group mails originating from some unfortunate first year ‘I have lost my pain’.. (yes.. I have received that mail) started a storm with replies like ‘pain, sure you meant pain and not pen?’, ‘join a lab, you won’t lack pain’.. all the way to distinctly shady replies like ‘pain? Meet me at the Tbrd at midnight…’.. yes, that sort of stuff.

Then there were the Old Building vs New Building battles. These would again start with some idiot sending off a group mail about the institute administration/the department admin/the current national political scenario/conversion of Hindus/conversion of Christians/condensed matter vs astrophysics… and that would snowball into a free for all on studentmail.physics.

And then there were the football and cricket matches between the Old and the New Buildings. Exhortations to the team, wishing the other team slow and painful death, actually promising them the same and other stuff occupied the ether, or rather the wires. Sometimes, the professors would be dragged into the melee, with perfectly hilarious results and egg on everyone’s face.

Another delightful ritual was to wait until some unsuspecting poor fellow left his mail account open and went out for coffee/tea and then send love/hate letters to everyone on his/her account. This kind of sledging kept people on their toes and made everyone more or less mindful of internet security.

Things are different here. Or maybe not. A chain letter at the U of M escalated to the extent that there is a wikipedia entry for it here.