Early 2000s radio listener flooded a Britney Spears LA ticket contest with millions of automated emails, crashed the station's inbox, and still only got second place

Author image for Etai Eshet
Etai Eshet • Editor
Mar 13, 2026 1:00 PM EDT

This story has everything I needed for a nostalgic trip down internet lane. I mean, Britney Spears Live in LA, local radio DJs holding contests and above all, early internet naivety where contests actually trusted people to behave themselves. That was adorable. A radio station basically said please spam us and then got offended when someone spoke fluent spam

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  • Teenager working at a desk with a vintage desktop computer in a cluttered garage workspace filled with boxes and tools.
    via Stokkete

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Everything about this story is peak early 2000s energy. A pop concert giveaway. A DJ with an inbox. A rule that says whoever sends the most emails wins. No rate limits. No captchas. Just blind faith and a very tired mail server humming in the background. Someone was always going to look at that and think this needs automation.

  • Early 2000's Radio Contest: Whoever sends the most emails wins concert tickets!

    A local radio station launched a contest to give away tickets to a Britney Spears concert in LA.
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  • I had no interest in Britney Spears, but I had friends in LA that I wanted to see.
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  • Contest rules: Whoever sends the most emails to the DJ at the radio station over the weekend wins.
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  • I mean, it was the early days of The Internet, and things like this happened. Malicious Compliance: I wrote a simple program that sent out a bunch of emails per second from my home computer and left it running.
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  • Enter the kind of nerd who hears most emails and immediately starts thinking in scripts per second. A tiny homegrown program gets spun up. Suddenly the contest is less about passion for Britney and more about who can turn their desktop into a denial of service with manners. Millions of messages roll in each one politely numbered like a digital cattle brand.

  • I don't remember the exact number of emails per second. To be fair, though, I was trying to not be so malicious that I crashed their email server, because I wanted my emails to be counted so I could win.
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  • Smiling teenager sitting at a desk with a vintage desktop computer in a cluttered garage workspace filled with boxes and tools.
    via Stokkete

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • I remember from my logs that I sent many millions of emails while the contest was running, so it was probably close to 100 per second.
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  • I had a counter running and would include the counter in my email subject line, something like: "Email Contest Submission # 15,323,726" Fallout: On Sunday afternoon, they announced on the radio that the contest was over early, because their email server kept crashing and please stop sending emails.
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  • The DJ responded to one of my many, many emails asking me personally to stop. He told me that he didn't have the tools to delete so many emails and had to request special help from their ISP's IT department, that he got in trouble with his manager, and insinuated that I was a mean-spirited person for automating something that was clearly meant to be hand- crafted emails and for causing him so much trouble.
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  • The radio station predictably panics. The mail server keeps face planting. The DJ is drowning in subject lines that all look like a stock ticker. Eventually he breaks and sends a heartfelt message begging one of the culprits to stop. Not the most strategic move considering that person clearly treats emails like confetti.

  • He also told me I came in 2nd place. Looking back, I should have added a few more zeros to the number of emails I sent per second...
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  • Edit because it wasn't clear to some readers: The guy who won the contest sent way more emails than I did, by several orders of magnitude.
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  • Then comes the best reveal. After all that chaos the programmer does not even win. Second place. Someone out there took the same terrible contest rules and said cool but what if we really tried. Three people silently turned a weekend promo into a stress test for the station’s entire infrastructure and the top spammer walked away with the tickets.

  • In his email to me, he said there were 3 of us who flooded his inbox with millions of emails.
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  • The genius of it all is how perfectly it captures that era. Companies wanted online engagement but had no idea what to do with real volume. They wrote rules that rewarded pure quantity and then clutched their pearls when people stopped playing like it was a cute little fan activity and started treating it like a math problem with a prize at the end.

  • They closed the contest early because it was already clear who would win.
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  • BobKickflip Did they call out the winner for using automated tactics as well?
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  • juntar74 Original Poster's Reply I'm sure they sent him an email asking him to stop, but they sent him to LA for winning the contest.
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  • No_Pen_3396 No I understand the rules as you've explained them, I still view you (and the winner) as cheaters. In the early era of the internet there were plenty of people (maybe the DJ included) who didn't realize what was possible. They didn't know to include some kind of rule about programming. The fact that you crashed their server and they had to get IT involved certainly indicates that they didn't know what was actually possible-ergo, did not intend this to be some kind of programming cont
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  • juntar74 Original Poster's Reply I'm pretty sure that the FCC has rules for radio stations about changing contest rules and fairly documenting criteria for entering and winning. So regardless of intent, the rules were the rules. Did I cheat or break any of the actual contest rules? Absolutely and unequivocally no, I did not. Did I ab e the intent of the contest? Yes, I sure did. That's what this whole sub is about: I maliciously complied with the contest rules, knowing that it would have a negat
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  • No_Pen_3396 So did they actually send you, or disqualify you? And for the record, I do kind of agree that it was kind of of you to do. Contests like that are clearly intended to be how much can you do, not what can you program a computer to do. Clearly not the spirit of the thing.
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  • juntar74 Original Poster's Reply I didn't win the tickets, some other guy won who sent even more emails than I did. As far as my behavior, I followed the contest rules to the letter; I did exactly what they asked for. If anything, I showed restraint by not maxing out my home computer's capabilities (I mean, I still had to play StarCraft and do homework assignments all weekend while my program was running in the background.) Edit: You and I see the world very differently. Contests like that are o
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  • AlaskanDruid I love it when Al accounts pretends other stories are Al. lol
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  • juntar74 Original Poster's Reply I've often worried and wondered if I am actually an Al in a simulation. But if I am, does that mean everyone is? Or is it just me, and everyone else is real? I'll be the first to admit that I don't think like other humans, and I certainly don't write like most people on The Internet. But in my heart (supposing I'm a real person and do actually have a heart), I believe that I am human.
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  • No_Pen_3396 Definitely a different way to see things--there's a difference to me between finding a clever solution to compete and outsourcing the task. I don't see this as you competing at all. You knew some programming and made the computer compete for you. That's not participating in the contest-- that's outsourcing.
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  • juntar74 Original Poster's Reply I'm not sure you understood the rules. of the contest. There was only one rule: Whoever sends the most emails wins. Period. No other limits existed. This contest was designed in a way that advantaged people who had tools and means to send lots of emails. And people who had tools and means to send lots of emails recognized it clearly as a programming contest. >That's not participating in the contest--that's outsourcing. I don't understand how you can claim that I
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  • NightMgr I had a friend in HS who hobbies included mass mailings for contests back when it was all hand written. I thought it a bit of a joke till he won a full Alpine car stereo system with subs and amps. Then he won 7th row Van Halen tickets. He did well.
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  • RabidSeason DJ called you out personally, but apparently someone else did more?? You got screwed by a friend of theirs.
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  • Coder Joe1 I did something similar for my teen daughters. It was a contest by a popular band. I believe they'd do a free concert at the winning high school that sent the most emails. My simple script churned out thousands of emails for a few days and my daughters excitedly reported their school was so far ahead that no school could catch up. Fearing they'd be disqualified for cheating, we decided to shut down my script the day before the contest was over. As you can guess, another school shot ou
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  • Chaosmusic I had the opposite experience. In 1991 my college radio station had a late night heavy metal show, like 2am. The band Overkill was playing at a local club and they were giving free tickets to the 7th caller. So I called and was told I was the first caller. Hung up, called back, and was the second caller. By the third call they just gave me the tickets because obviously no one else was calling.
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00s radio 2000s early 2000s millennials nostalgia britney spears nostalgic 90s kids contest millennial-nostalgia
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