Tip of the Day: If your default reply function is set to Reply All and you’re replying to an email that was sent to an extremely large mailing list, make sure to remove the mailing list from the recipients before hitting Send, or else this will happen.

So the story behind this image?

I took Sociology 131 last semester at my university. One of the teaching assistants made a mistake and sent out a mass email to an old mailing list from last semester rather than the new one from this semester. I didn’t realize this and thought there was only one mailing list for Sociology 131, and asked to be removed from it because I took Sociology 131 last semester.

I also didn’t realize that I forgot to remove the mailing list from the recipients, so when I asked the teaching assistant to remove me from the mailing list, the entire mailing list also got a copy of my email.

I then set off a chain reaction where everyone else started asking to be removed from the mailing list. However, instead of replying to Amanda’s message, they replied to mine.

You’ve probably guessed it by now – instead of sending the removal request to the teaching assistant, they instead sent the request to me and only me.

I’ve had a handful of fails related to mailing lists in the past, but I think this is the most interesting fail, seeing as the fail was done by the seven people who don’t know how to use email.