Email Fool's Day

He was excited to find 150 new emails in his inbox. He was about ready to give up on his dream of blogging but when he opened his inbox this morning, all it showed him was that his patience had finally paid off. Some of them were spam, but he was used to that. He deleted those right away. That still left a good 75 to 100 emails left over to review and see what the heck was going on. Why did it take 6 months for him to receive 150 emails total let alone all in one day? He thought to himself. Before he reviewed all the emails he decided to go into his analytics to see where people went and what caused such amazing action.

He clicked into the website and put his admin password in. Once everything loaded, he found the reason why. Someone had logged into his account overnight and posted the most vulgar article he had ever read. It involved some awful jokes about mothers, cracks and sidewalks, and the rest was just too insidious for words. This was NOT good. He had been working hard on this blog for months. This is his baby, his pet project. Not only was he enjoying the time he spent on this project he also wanted to use this to start making money on the side. His dream would be to write full time so he could travel and do all the things he wanted to without worrying about deadlines and money and all the other rat race things. Now this was all for nought. This one act of cruelty by someone else had completely shattered his dream worse than a large Indian Jones size rock rolling through a fun house mirror maze.

Something had to be done. First things first, he deleted the post. True, the internet is forever but at least it would only be seen by the 80 or so emails that got sent in. Oh no, the emails! What had been such a positive thing just a few minutes ago has now turned into something to dread. He quickly changed his admin password just in case, then went back to read the emails.

They were much worse than he feared. They started off pleasant enough. "You should be ashamed of yourself!" and "You kiss your mother with that mouth?" were the two most popular phrases. After that is when things started to get worse. One told him to go jump off a bridge and there was one that went into excruciating details about what he should do to himself for atonement because he was going further than Dante's 9th circle. With each click of the mouse and line of each email, his heart sank into the pit of his stomach and his mouth became an arid wasteland of despair.

He couldn't take anymore. He turned off the monitor and sat back. There was no going back. He was ruined and he hadn't even really started. His name was on everything on that website and this would haunt his writing career forever. He looked at the clock. It was 10 am on a Thursday. He knew he didn't have work today. In fact, all he was going to do was work on the blog, do some brainstorming, and maybe do some shopping if he needed anything from the store. What he needed right now was a good, stiff drink.

He got up and sauntered off to the kitchen. His empty plate with remnants of omelet on it was left in the sink from his breakfast this morning. He wondered what the eggs would do in his stomach as he poured himself a small glass of whiskey. Normally, he didn't drink it straight up. Or this early in the morning for that matter. He had always prided himself on his self-control and ability not only to control himself but his environment as well. Since his environment was out of control today he guessed it was as good a time as any to lose himself a little to some good whiskey.

He slammed the whiskey to the back of his throat, hissing as the alcohol sizzled its way down to his stomach. He stared at the empty glass waiting for the warmth to spread through his body and ease the ache he felt at the shame of losing his dream to one stupid article like that.

The burn of the alcohol subsided as he started feeling the tingle from the inside out. With the alcohol quickly working its magic through his body, he poured himself another. The first one was the panacea to staunch the flow of misery. This one was going to be the magic potion that stitched everything together.

With renewed vigor, and a slightly hazy field of vision, he stumbled back to his desk. He sat down and turned the screen back on again. There were no new emails coming in which was a good sign right now. He set his drink to the side as he finished reading the emails. He took a sip of his drink as he clicked on the last email. He had to keep from spitting it out as he read the subject of the email: Email Fool's Day!

Oh no! Somehow he had forgotten that today was April 1st and sometimes companies like to pull pranks to try to connect with their customers or something like that. The rest of the email read,

"Dear email customer,

We know your blog life can be stressful so we put together this April Fool's Day campaign for you. First, we used the info you provided to set up an article on your blog that would never show up on your website. Then we sent a series of emails with increasing intensity to build up the tension of having something so off brand on your website. Then for the coup de grace, we included this email to explain everything and let you know that nothing bad actually happened.

APRIL FOOLS!

The article was all fake and never actually showed up on the website for the public to see. We hope no one would actually say such awful things, especially about one's mother.

We hope you enjoyed our little prank and thank you for using our services."

He was astonished. Never in a million years could he have thought of a prank such as this. Not only was it so elaborate that it was unfathomable to put into practice, but the content was so horrendous that it wouldn't even be dreamt of in the most terrible Tim Burton nightmare. Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Jack Skellington combined couldn't have come up with a holiday prank so cutting and disgusting as this one.

Being the lightweight he was, the one and a half drinks had his inhibitions completely out the window. Immediately, he set to work responding to the email.

" Dear email company,

No, I have not, will not, and could not approve of your April Fool's Day campaign. This is someone's dream you're playing with and all this did was crush those dreams into pieces. Luckily, I read through all the emails to see the explanation of your dastardly scheme. How many of your customers would not have the constitution or masochistic tendencies to put themselves through all that?

You should be ashamed of yourselves and I hope you know you just lost yourselves a customer."

He hit send without another thought. He knew he had to find himself another company to work with to hold his subscriber lists and email campaigns and all of that. But first, he had to go throw up. He guessed eggs and whiskey don't mix.

The next day, he went to check his blog again. Luckily, there was no backlash on the website and nothing else bad happened overnight. The article truly must have been a fake since the real analytics showed a complete lack of visitations from yesterday. Certainly not enough to generate the 150 emails he got yesterday.

With that reminder, he opened up his email to see if there was anything new. There was only one email but it was one he was expecting. It was an apology email from the company about their Email Fool's Campaign. Turns out that a number of people thought it was real and started to delete their websites and do all sorts of crazy things. According to the email, no one was hurt thankfully, but they realized how terrible the idea was and could have caused far greater damage than what did happen. The apology came with the offer for several free months of premium services for anyone negatively affected by the campaign.

As tempting as it was to go for free stuff, he knew it wasn't worth it. Any company willing to out their customers through evil pranks like that didn't deserve his business. He closed out the email and deleted it, along with all the other fake emails from yesterday. He took a big gulp of coffee as he open up the program he used to write. He had a feeling today was going to be pretty good. Especially since he had sworn of whiskey for a while and would be sticking to coffee.