This isn’t a plea for MST, though I do I enjoy talking with him and seeing him on the site. He’s made me a far more cautious internet user (link clicking paranoia is pretty funny), but I think he is generally aware that the way he approaches things will lead to getting booted.

I didn’t recieve the joke mail, so I have no idea what the “mission” was beyond posting in a thread, but thinking about the situation, there are several players – myself included – who are quite guilty of sending a lot of tubmail in an effort to garner a peen. My point is, I haven’t had the “send me an e-mail” box clicked since I started playing and it honestly never would have occurred to me that my tubmails might actually have a financial impact on CZ. Hell, when players have sent me tubmails asking for advice on how to get the Flamebate or Popularity peen – I’ve told them to do tubmails in conjunction with a contest! Looking at the current stats on both those peens, it is pretty silly to think anyone not hosting a contest and/or mounting an epic campaign is ever going to get them. Which is fine, except that the general population of Flamebate is not large enough to get them – this means tubmails will likely be sent.

Someone above suggested removing that e-mail notification option and I have to say that is a good idea. The only real benefit to getting an e-mail when a tubmail is sent is to entice inactive players back into activity, but the odds of them being tubmailed for any reason other than peenwhoring is almost nothing.

I realize that peenwhores are kind of the nightmare players on the site, but they exist and as long as the peens exist they will continue. It also might be an idea to note that spamming tubmail or botting tubmail or whatever is bannable, since it isn’t listed in the wiki as something to be concerned about and in a trolling environment I don’t think it would even occur to most players that they could get banned for it.

EDIT: I just noticed that as of this morning MC Banhammer updated the post listing things to keep you from getting banned with tubmail spamming. I personally don’t like to mess with main game/policy pages on the Wiki, but I do think it should be added so that some unaware solo player doesn’t start a campaign for the friend peen without ever stepping into Flamebate.