TIPspam

TIPspam is a massive chain of e-mail spam in which various TIPsters discuss random, often meaningless topics.

How to create TIPspam

The following is a detailed description of the process of TIPspamming.

1. Gather a list of all TIPster e-mails you are aware of - or, in the case of the TIPspam this year (2007), create a Facebook group titled "People who want TIPspam" and get TIPsters to post their e-mail addresses in said group

2. Create a mass e-mail to every member of the TIPspam. Actual content is not necessary.

3. Upon receiving TIPspam, respond by clicking the "Reply to all" button on the e-mail, thereby sending your response to every e-mail address included in the spam

4. Respond to every single individual response, whether it is at the end of the thread or not. Best accomplished in GMail. If this is done correctly, those hapless souls will have their inboxes filled with sometimes hundreds of e-mails, not many of which actually talk about something.

History of TIPspam

Sometime during the school year after the end of TIP '06, , , and Emily Rose created the first TIPspam thread, sending the messages to every single TIPster whose e-mail was on hand. This prototype of the TIPspam had a few key flaws:

1. They did not receive consent from the recipients, and so received many angry e-mails from unwilling participants begging them to stop sending the spam

2. After a month or so, the only people actually participating in TIPspam were those three, and their conversations were mainly Existentialism inside jokes

3. They ignored the vast number of e-mails from unwilling participants, some of whom had not returned to TIP that year, and continued to plague people with the unwanted, despised spam.

These flaws led to the end of that prototype spam a few months before the start of TIP '07.

The aftermath of TIP '07 was the second rising of the TIPspam. As most post-TIP communications had migrated to Facebook by then, Smith Mathieu had the idea to create a Facebook group titled "People who want TIPspam". The idea behind this was to fix some of those fatal flaws that had led to the downfall of the prototype - that is, Smith and various other experienced spammers made sure to make clear to all members of the group that the spam would be sent to their inboxes. The e-mails were posted under the discussions of the group, and so the TIPspam of '07 was created in the post-TIP state of depression.

The Current TIPspam

This new, improved TIPspam has fixed the fatal flaws of the prototype - talk has migrated from meaningless "hee" and "*poke*" chains to words like "Cthulu" and discussion of Italian model Fabio. Martini, Adam, and Rose are not the only participants this time around, and because the e-mails had been gathered on a volunteer basis, no participant can send angry e-mails begging to be taken off the list.

The current TIPspam is over 300 messages long and has roughly 10-15 participants, roughly half of which are active respondents.