Working with a colleague I have organized an open-submission competition for internet based artworks. Having successfully applied for funding we have been inundated with submissions from our ad in the art-press. The standard is mostly very high and our invited panel has struggled to select our nine successful applicants. All that is now left to do is for me to send out the carefully scripted mail that informs the rest of the applicants that they have been unsuccessful.
I have agonized over this email. I have never been in this position before and it is excruciating trying to get the wording right – how do you reject someone affectionately? Finally I am ready. I paste the addresses into the mail and hit send.
A few minutes later I receive an angry email – then another and another. I have pasted the addresses into the ‘cc’ field rather than the ‘bcc’. Everyone on the list has received each other’s addresses. This is not only extremely bad etiquette it causes a kind of solidarity of the rejected. Within hours a rival website is launched that contains all of the 157 rejected art works.