We Need to Talk About the Ducks

By Erika Siebring

Please allow me to introduce you to Mr. James Veitch.

For those of you who don't know, James Veitch is a writer and comedian. He is best known, I believe, for two things: the ducks and the spam emails.

What are "the ducks"? Well, Vietch appeared on Conan in October 2017 to discuss an elaborate prank he pulled on his roommates. Me describing it does not do it justice, but essentially James playfully annoys his roommates by keeping an absurd number of rubber ducks in the shared bathroom. It starts out with just a few rubber ducks and it quickly spirals out of control.

I implore you, go see it for yourself. All. Of. It.

Have you watched it? Great. Now, we can talk about the ducks. Or rather, we can talk about a concept even greater than the ducks themselves -- Mr. Veitch's hobby of replying to spam emails.

This is a rather funny endeavor that Veitch lays out on his YouTube page and in his December 2015 TEDTalk. The premise is obvious -- Vietch one day decided to start replying to spam emails as opposed to just deleting them. This means, yes, he does send falsified bank information to Nigeran princesses and he takes every single line of an email absolutely seriously -- to the point where the emailers stop talking to him

By doing this, Vietch turns himself into the email equivalent of an Internet troll. But, what's important to note is that it's being done out of pure ridiculousness. Whimsy. Vietch is just as annoyed as anyone else about getting spam emails, but figures why not get a little fun out of it?

How long are these people willing to go to keep up the facade of a spam email? What do they do when they come across someone who takes every single letter in every single sentence incredibly seriously? What happens? I'll tell you what happens: comedy.

In his TEDTalk, Veitch illustrates his weeks-long experience trolling a man claiming to be Solomon Odonkoh. Solomon offers to send Veitch a shipment of gold, and verbal hi-jinks ensue. In fact, this go so far that Veitch compels his correspondent to speak in code, resulting in Vieitch receiving the greatest email of all time:

From: Solomon Odonkoh

To: James Vietch

The business is on. I am trying to raise the balance for the Gummy Bear so he can submit all the needed Fizzy Cola Bottle Jelly Beans to the Creme Egg for the Peanut M&Ms process to start. Send $1,500.00 via a Giant Gummy Lizard.

Now you may be asking yourself: why should I care about this British guy trolling people on the Internet? Simple: it's fun. You know who responds to spam emails? Nobody. You know who fills a bathroom with a hundred rubber ducks? Nobody. But you know who should? Everybody.

Veitch here is demonstrating a persona that is admirably confident and childish. Ever heard the saying "Never let your inner child die"? That's what Vietch is doing here. He's taking something that is so annoying and almost routine and just makes it so entertaining for himself and other people. He is that person that takes time out of his own day to make others' days better. Not to mention he is about as good-natured as an Internet troll can be.

I highly reccommend checking him out.