The story is now all too familiar. Nearly 40,000 NYU students were sent an email encouraging students to submit their IRS form electronically, just after noon on Monday from the NYU Bursar’s Office. Later that day the entire NYU student body received the same simple message from sophomore Max Wiseltier in a reply to the email: “Do you want me to do this?” At midnight on Thursday, three days after the infamous email was sent, Wiseltier was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“In a story of technology gone wrong, a sophomore from New York University, a kid named Max Wiseltier, became very famous very quickly on campus on Monday when he accidentally sent an email to every person at NYU,” said Kimmel during his opening.
“Basically I tried to send an email to my mom, and I got the button wrong,” said Wiseltier on the show, via Skype. “After my roommate told me that I’d sent him an email, I sent out another email saying sorry to everyone.”
The apology was sent, but the damage had been done. Students at NYU then realized that each and every student had the power to send anything — questions, jokes, pictures of Nicholas Cage — to the entire NYU student body. Within hours of the infamous Wiseltier email, memes related to the fiasco began appearing on the NYU Memes Facebook page. NYU Local reported the story on Tuesday, and by Wednesday, Gawker, the Huffington Post, and Yahoo News all had stories on the “replyallpacolypse.” On Wednesday afternoon, Jimmy Kimmel Live’s Twitter page reached out to Wiseltier for an appearance on the show.
“I got everything from threats telling me that I should leave school to people wanting me to run for president,[…]people telling me how to use email — everything,” said Wiseltier on the show.
“And so what school are you going to transfer to now?” asked Kimmel to laughter from Wiseltier and the audience.
Kimmel continued, asking Wiseltier how often he emailed his mother. Kimmel suggested that he not pursue a Communications major and “stick to writing letters for a while.”
“My sense is that most of the reaction to the coverage of ‘replyallcalypse’ has been pretty lighthearted,” said NYU spokesman John Beckman. “Still, it caused some jams in our email system before we were able to take corrective actions, so we’ll be reviewing what happened to make sure that the tools administrators are using for emails to the NYU community are the proper fit for the individual communication.”
As of Thursday afternoon, “replyallcalypse” has been featured on Time.com, The Daily Mail and NBC’s “The Today Show.”
Peter Slattery is a contributing writer. Email him at [email protected].
