How A One-Word Email To 29,000 UCL Students Led To The Funniest Reply-All Thread Ever
Last night it looked like the president of UCL had sent a one-word email in error to the university's entire student population. It wasn't from him, but that didn't stop students hitting reply-all some 3,000 times.
And perhaps most controversially, had signed up to the official Coldplay mailing list.
Maybe because the band's most famous song sounds a bit like "bello".
The end result: This is what the students' inboxes looked like this morning.
The university helpdesk warned people not to abuse the all-hands email address. But even that warning got mocked:
The person who sent the original email popped up again this morning.
One wag suggested the university IT staff look here for someone to help.
You could only sympathise with the people asking for the emails to stop.
Someone used it as opportunity to look for love.
And buried amongst the madness was this confession.
This is exactly what happened at New York University in 2012 when people realised they could email 40,000 students at once, thanks to one student's error.
Update — 12.05pm: The university has posted this series of updates, in which it said the email list has been closed and that students have received an apology.