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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!vax135!cjp
From: cjp@vax135.UUCP (Charles Poirier)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: My Coke runneth over
Message-ID: <1124@vax135.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Jul-85 01:38:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: vax135.1124
Posted: Sat Jul 13 01:38:38 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 15:15:53 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 28

Please pardon the lack of obscenities in this flame.  (c;

I'm not going to flame about the rash of Coke Returns postings.
Instead I'm going to suggest why it and similar rashes happen.

Ngh!  Oh no!  I think I'm losing it, I can't help myself!  "Thank you,
thank you all!  I was Lost in the Desert, Hiding under a Rock, Locked
in a Closet, Deaf, Blind, and Passed Out when they announced the Old
Coke!  Now I can stop worrying!"  Darn, I wasn't going to do that.

Take a clue from this phrase from one Coke posting: "News flash!"
News flashes can work on TV because (a) there are still few sources of
the information -- it is still "news", and (b) the transmission reaches
everyone who is going to hear it within the same few milliseconds.

(a) If you heard it on the news, 2000 other net users did too.
(b) It is not a "flash" if it takes about 5 days for articles to
trickle from your site to the far side of the net.

So the next time you have hot news, wait a bit ... all the longer if it
has been a hot topic on the net recently ... consider how hot it will
seem five days (and 50 articles) from now.  If no one within a day's
net travel from you noticed and posted, then you're probably safe to do
it yourself.  (This scheme wouldn't work if *everyone* followed it.
But they all won't.)

	Sitting on 2000 cases of hoarded Old Coke and RUINED,
	Charles Poirier