January 20, 2001

4:22 AM

Is this the next Craig Shergold? A hundred and fourteen thousand emails so far and it's only going to get worse. Will it mutate? (The Shergold story has appeared in different versions.) I think this will be around for a long time. "The only mistake Street said he made is not including an end date. He doesn't know if the responses will ever stop." Hoo boy. No kidding.
posted by Steven Den Beste (7 comments total)

The instructor is an idiot. Including a stop date wouldn't stop it.
posted by fleener at 6:49 AM on January 20, 2001

Unfortunately, killing the email account probably won't stop it either. If that happens, someone will mutate the letter after having found some other address that it "should have been". That's what happened with the Shergold story. Craig Shergold is in the UK, but I saw a version of it which claimed he was in a certain hospital in New Hampshire, USA.

And I agree that a stop date wouldn't work. I've seen such messages which did contain a stop date, and later I've seen them again when someone had changed the stop date.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:06 AM on January 20, 2001

I would hardly call him an idiot- perhaps a bit short-sighted.
posted by internook at 9:09 AM on January 20, 2001

Hey, it's a new medium. Look how long it took people to become sophisticated users of television...um...er...
posted by rushmc at 12:13 PM on January 20, 2001

You know, Craig Shergold (assuming he's still alive) must be an adult now, probably a user of the web himself. I wonder how it feels to be a cautionary tale?
posted by rodii at 3:21 PM on January 20, 2001

Craig Shergold is alive and is an adult. You can see a modern picture of him by following the second link in the lead post. He is quite healthy; the cancer has been in remission for nearly ten years, which means he's cured.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 4:21 PM on January 20, 2001

So it is. I didn't even notice that link, thanks. Someone should interview him--I wonder what he thinks about all that.
posted by rodii at 8:18 PM on January 20, 2001