Moneydick

Here’s a Charming Story about a 15 year old Irishman who got a Gmail Invite the only way he knew how:

I had a shitty hotmail account, 2mb’s large, Gmail had just come out, everywhere I asked people hadnt gotten or had already given away their invites. I got desperate. I tried my damndest to find sites that where giving them away, swap sites, all wanted something for their invites.
I stumbled upon this gmail invite spooler for American servicemen abroad and began to form a plan to get a much sought after gmail invite for free. This was a while before the auto spooler at isnoop.net was working.
The forum was small, just started, only a few posters, nothing much. You needed a military email, that would be the hard part.
First I changed my msn profile. I used my hotmail account to get the invite, it was xachariahsan@hotmail.com, this is because xachariah was taken and I just added san. I changed the name from plain xachariah to xachariah sandelson which is in no way close to my name. I changed my age, 15 was a little too young for the armed forces. I changed my country, Ireland is a bit of a deal breaker, I removed my picture and I added an occupation, Strategic Assault Co-Ordinator or Ground Assault technician, either one.
It only took one post to convince a girl to hand over her last invite, I dont know the exact contents but it went along the lines of:

“My name is Xachariah Sandelson and I have been in the military for a while and have encountered a problem I know you guys could help me with. I’m a senior technician a little overwhelmed with the amount of attachments my family has sent me as my wife loves making and sending videos and pictures of our children. Watching them I could forget the pain of being posted in a far off land.
The attachments where large, and even though the military offered a not disrespectable amount of memory in total, I regularly went over it. They deactivated my email account and I was forced to get a different service, so I chose hotmail. I immediately regretted it. This was only last week or so.
It’s only 2 mb, which isnt enough room to keep those family photos, movies, and emails. I need a bigger mailbox to receive those files. I will be happy to take any spare gmail invites.”

An hour later I was the proud owner of a gmail account, I discontinued the use of my hotmail account except for MSN Messenger and reinstated my previous changes back to normal.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this post on their frontpage is the synthesized version of that initial plea: