Pop quiz! Finish this sentence: “Revenge is a dish best served…”
A) Cold.
B) Hot.
C) By me.
D) In iambic pentameter.
If you selected D, congratulations! You are correct! Or at least, you are if you happen to be a lad from Bristol, UK named Edd Joseph.
According to CNet, the 24-year-old graphic designer attempted to purchase a PlayStation 3 on a British classifieds website called Gumtree. He ponied up the £80 (about $133) for the system via an unrecoverable bank transfer, only for the seller to fail to deliver the goods. Unlike another fellow we’ve heard about today, though, this scam victim isn’t going after the website that facilitated the bogus transaction; instead, he’s going after the seller itself — by texting him the complete works of William Shakespeare, 160 characters at a time.
Joseph copied the words of every single play the Bard ever wrote from the Internet, and then pasted all 37 plays into a text message and sent it to the scammer. Since the scammer can only receive the text in chunks of 160 characters, they’ll get sent to his phone in a whopping 29,305 individual messages. The best part? Because Joseph has an unlimited mobile plan, it’s not costing him a penny more than his usual phone bill.
As of yesterday, 22 plays had made its way through his phone in the form of 17,424 texts; he estimates that the remaining 15 will probably take another few days. By the time it’s all over and done with, the scammer’s phone will have been receiving constant texts in poetic prose and beautiful verse for almost an entire week. Naturally, the scammer has started sending some pretty nasty replies to Joseph — but that’s not stopping the text message vigilante from carrying out his plan. “I got the first reply after an hour,” Joseph told the Bristol Post, “and then a few more abusive messages after that…. But recently he has taken to calling me and giving me abuse on the phone. I tried to ask him if he was enjoying the plays, but he was very confused.” He continued, “I’m going to keep doing it. If nothing else, I’m sharing a little bit of culture with someone who probably doesn’t have much experience of it.”
Joseph isn’t an avid Shakespeare fan himself — but he did note, “I’ve got a new appreciation, you could say — especially for the long ones.” Justice porn at its finest!
Image: ellenw/Flickr
