Edd Joseph
Edd Joseph

A Bristol graphic designer who was ripped off by an internet seller has turned to Shakespeare to get his revenge.

Edd Joseph, 24, who lives in the city with his girlfriend, was furious when he bought a PS3 games console for £80 and the seller failed to deliver the goods.

So Edd decided to take his revenge by sending him the entire works of the Bard - by text.

Edd discovered he could copy the words from the internet and paste them into a text message - without costing him a penny on his unlimited mobile phone package.

He sends it as one text but his victim can only receive them in 160 character chunks - meaning the 37 works of Shakespeare will buzz through in 29,305 individual texts.

So far Edd has sent 22 plays including Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello which have been delivered in 17,424 texts.

He reckons the remaining 15 works will take another few days to send - meaning his adversary's phone will have been constantly beeping for nearly a week.

Edd said: "I was really annoyed and I was trying to think of ways of being more in the position of power because I felt so helpless about it.

"My first thought was that I could try and pretend I had found out where he lived but it was all a bit of a cliche and it wasn't going to worry him really.

"Then it just occurred to me you can copy and paste things from the internet and into a text message.

"It got me thinking, 'what can I sent to him' which turned to 'what is a really long book', which ended with me sending him Macbeth."

Edd bought the console and a bundle of games from a seller in Derby two weeks ago.

But Edd paid by direct bank transfer - giving him no protection when the seller failed to send the goods or provide a refund.

He complained to the police who said his chances of catching the crook were slim, and Gumtree, which posts free classified ads, said bank transfers were against its terms and conditions.

So Edd found a Shakespeare play on his iPhone internet browser and then copied and pasted it into a text message with just a few presses of a button.

Despite the length of the text, Edd only has to press 'send' once for each play and his phone then processes them into individual texts.

And because he is on an unlimited texts and calls package with O2 at £37 a month, his stunt is not costing him a penny.

He started sending them last Thursday and has been pinging plays throughout the weekend - often at night to cause maximum disruption.

The average Shakespeare play - at 22,600 words - will be delivered in an annoying 792 texts to his rival's phone.

The longest play, Hamlet, took an epic 1,143 text messages and defiant Edd has also sent Macbeth (600 texts), romance Cymbeline (847) and All's Well That Ends Well - a pleasing 861 messages.

Edd has now started getting abusive replies from the seller.

He said: "I got the first reply after an hour, and then a few more abusive messages after that. His phone must have been going off pretty constantly for hours.

"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.

"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.

"I'm not a literary student, and I'm not an avid fan of Shakespeare but I've got a new appreciation you could say - especially for the long ones."

Bless them. Bless their cold, dark hearts.

In what might be the greatest-ever Valentine’s Day prank, a group of Shanghai singles purchased every odd-numbered seat for a Feb. 14 showing of Beijing Love Story. Their sole purpose: disrupting lovey-dovey dates. “Want to see a movie on Valentine’s Day?” asks a message posted by an organizer. “Sorry, you’ll have to sit separately. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Tell that to the millions of Chinese who will be spending the day in the absence of a date. With a population of 1.3 billion, China naturally has hefty share of the world’s singletons. This is compounded by a dramatic gender imbalance. Thanks to the one-child policy and preference for sons, there are an estimated 34 million ‘surplus men’ in China — a whole lot of lonely hearts.

Luckily, the country’s unattached have a history of being awesome; they’ve even got their own day. Since the 1990s, Nov. 11 has been celebrated as Singles Day. It was picked because the numerals — 11/11 — are said to look like ‘bare branches,’ a Chinese term for bachelors. It started as an occasion to get together for a meal, but has since morphed into a multi-billion dollar orgy of online shopping.

Valentine’s day is also celebrated (if you’re into that type of thing). As I left my apartment block this morning, an older gentleman entered through the lantern-drapped gate, a bouquet of pink and white flowers tucked under his arm. All of Beijing’s best restaurants have been booked up table-for-two by table-for-two.

The self-described “computer nerd” that spearheaded the Shanghai theater stunt said he was just trying to do something nice for fellow singles. He initially tried to buy all the the tickets in the theater, he told the Shanghai Morning Post, but was turned down. Things came together when he started a campaign on a crowd-funding site and, working with fellow singles, snapped up the requisite seats

Via Time

Revenge Texting, Such Sweet Sorrow

Chinese Singles Buy Movie Tickets So Couples Can’t Sit Together on Valentine’s Day