Hundreds of journalists are trapped in an endless "reply-all" spiral this afternoon, after someone pretending to be infamous pharmaceutical entrepreneur Martin Shkreli sent out a mass email without BCC-ing the recipients.
The fake Shkreli emailed a press release to 456 members of the media around 3 a.m. on Thursday, advertising the release of a song. Although many of the journalists immediately called his bluff ("Nice try. Womp womp," one cc'ed journalist replied), the thread was still ongoing as of noon, with the real Shkreli having been added upon request.
I am on a very bad email chain
The only emails worse than PR ones from fake Martin Shkreli would be normal ones from the real Martin Shkreli pic.twitter.com/s8juDbVQ0G
Sadly the reply-all merriment on the Shkreli email has already turned sour pic.twitter.com/YrHDQxVAlt
Though in this case the person who started the thread was an impostor, the stunt would not be unbelievable from the real Shkreli. The entrepreneur gained notoriety in 2015 for buying the rights to an AIDS drug and then hiking the drug up to 5,000 times its original price. Since then, he has pulled off a variety of other media stunts including buying a rare $2 million Wu-Tang Clan album, saying he would buy the gun used to kill Trayvon Martin from George Zimmerman, live streaming hours of random activity from his home, and offering to buy the rights to Kanye West's The Life of Pablo before it dropped. At the time of publication, the thread is still ongoing––and if you want in on it yourself, Shkreli is offering to add people who tweet him their emails.
Does anyone want to be CCed to this massive email? Just reply with your email.
