7 ms·

I'm appalled by this behaviour but also bemused. What's the motivation for spamming repositories just to get a t-shirt? I mean, are the t-shirts really that goo

I'm appalled by this behaviour but also bemused. What's the motivation for spamming repositories just to get a t-shirt? I mean, are the t-shirts really that good?

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Participation trophies come in many forms.
mumblemumble 6y ago
It's probably less effort to get this t-shirt than it is to get achievement badges or hats or whatever for many video games, and this nets you an actual physical achievement badge.
- bartread 6y ago
  What you're saying makes perfect sense - no complaint or disagreement from me - but I'm still struggling to wrap my mind around this because when all's said and done we're still talking about a vendor t-shirt, and how cool can that really be? If it does motivate people and they like them, then fine: I guess it's just different strokes for different folks.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    People actually pay extra money for t-shirts that have specific brand names on them and entire businesses are built around that. It shouldn’t be surprising to you that there are people that want particular shirts.
    - bartread 6y ago
      True, but Ralph Lauren's a lot more stylish than Digital Ocean (not that I wear a lot of either of them!).
      - ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
        For a nerd? Probably not.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > different strokes for different folks. It pretty much boils down to this. Not only are vendor t-shirts actually a physical item but they are also often uniquely designed; many vendors only provide certain designs for certain events. So they really become a badge of honor and can gain in emotional value: "been there, got the t-shirt..."
cpach 6y ago
Maybe some people feel that these t-shirts signals street cred?
- SwiftyBug 6y ago
  Definitely. I've always wanted a cool Hacktober Fest t-shirt like the ones my co-workers have. But I certainly wouldn't spam open source projects just to get one.
newen 6y ago
You might wait, what, a 10 person line to get a free t-shirt? Making 5 “corrected typo” commits is probably equivalent to that effort and looks like 5 is enough to get past a spam tag.
- bartread 6y ago
  I really wouldn't. I'm not a minimalist by any means but I've been decluttering for a while and am certainly long past the point where I'll tolerate having possessions that I don't want. Maybe this is a privileged point of view but, as with swag in general, most vendor t-shirts are honestly just tat.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    > Maybe this is a privileged point of view It is. T-shirts are wear items and getting a free one that looks decent is one less that you’ll have to buy.
filmgirlcw 6y ago
You would be surprised by the stuff people do for free swag. I don’t get it either, but I’ve seen first hand how hard people go for that sort of stuff. It’s a shame it has led to people spamming repos, however.
dilyevsky 6y ago
There are a ton of automated trivial pr spammers out there that aren’t even in it for a t-shirt. Maybe it’s vanity or just wanting to see the world burn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
pengaru 6y ago
In my experience the average American goes into a leave nothing behind mode whenever baited with Free. Just look at the kind of mayhem Black Friday precipitates, and that's not even free - just a promise of exceptional discounts. The comedian Doug Stanhope has an amusing bit about free healthcare and how wastefully it would be consumed by Americans conditioned to maximally abuse anything offered free of charge. Edit: I don't mean to suggest Americans have a monopoly on this sort of behavior, it's just the country/culture I'm by far most familiar with.
- vlunkr 6y ago
  Non-Americans on the other hand hate free stuff.
- dmurray 6y ago
  The spammers appear to be overwhelmingly Indian, based on the usernames in the screenshots. Which is somehow unsurprising to me (there are 1.5 billion of them, after all).
macspoofing 6y ago
Ever visit a booth at a conference or trade-show where they give out t-shirts? Pandemonium!
- bartread 6y ago
  I've worked a bunch of them back in the day and they are indeed a feeding frenzy. Can be a lot of fun though.
jkingsbery 6y ago
It's kind of like that episode of Pinky and the Brain where they finally are able to take over the Earth by convincing everyone who moves to a paper mache copy of the Earth a free t-shirt. People love free t-shirts.
xwdv 6y ago
The shirt is a form of signaling and once you wear it in the right circles you’re in as one of the cool kids.
908B64B197 6y ago
Judging by the names in the screenshots and linked github profiles it sounds like a lot of spammers are Indian students. Thousands of students are all trying to get a low effort contribution in to have an extra line of "experience" on their resume and a T-Shirt from a western Silicon Valley company as signaling? Judging by the poor quality of the contributions, and the fact it's on GitHub, maybe folks studying IT? That type of academic spam isn't new sadly [0]. [0] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-behind-the-indian-undergrad-research-experience-spam https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-b...
- cvrjk 6y ago
  I am an Indian, and I've studied at an Indian university for my undergraduate degree, and I've witnessed spam like this everywhere. Not hacktoberfest, but I've been a part of it myself for some of the other things. Wish I had behaved better. In most of these cases, it usually starts with someone really talented doing it with all the good intentions, and everyone else wanting to get in on that 'swag' and appear just as 'talented' and 'unique' amongst their peers. The freebies are mostly for 'show off'. A few hours ago this link showed extremely low effort LeetCode/Programming Challenge problems and solutions aggregation repos created by us Indians (disproportionally more than any other country at the time I checked) with very silly open issues created & marked as 'hacktoberfest2020' (looks like some of them are gone now)[1]. But, from what I heard from my uni recently, things are improving and this year folks are trying their best to form groups to focus on meaningful contribution over spam. Even after all that, unfortunately for us though, we'll still have bad actors, probably at the same percentage as any other country, but amplified due to our population and hyper-fixation with an unreal perception about most things we do. [1] https://github.com/search?p=1&q=label%3Ahacktoberfest+state%3Aopen+no%3Aassignee+is%3Aissue&type=Issues https://github.com/search?p=1&q=label%3Ahacktoberfest+state%....
  - Thorentis 6y ago
    Why do Indian IT students seem disproportionately represented when it comes to things like this? It seems like there is a strong culture of "getting ahead at all costs". This is seen in shitty YouTube tutorials, blog posts, open source submissions, all the way down the very bottom of the barrel with call centre scammers. Care to explain for us?
stjohnswarts 6y ago
You never did anything stupid and superfluous as a youth?

I'm appalled by this behaviour but also bemused. What's the motivation for spamming repositories just to get a t-shirt? I mean, are the t-shirts really that good?

toomuchtodo 6y ago

Participation trophies come in many forms.

mumblemumble 6y ago

It's probably less effort to get this t-shirt than it is to get achievement badges or hats or whatever for many video games, and this nets you an actual physical achievement badge.

bartread 6y ago
What you're saying makes perfect sense - no complaint or disagreement from me - but I'm still struggling to wrap my mind around this because when all's said and done we're still talking about a vendor t-shirt, and how cool can that really be? If it does motivate people and they like them, then fine: I guess it's just different strokes for different folks.
- kortilla 6y ago
  People actually pay extra money for t-shirts that have specific brand names on them and entire businesses are built around that. It shouldn’t be surprising to you that there are people that want particular shirts.
  - bartread 6y ago
    True, but Ralph Lauren's a lot more stylish than Digital Ocean (not that I wear a lot of either of them!).
    - ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
      For a nerd? Probably not.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > different strokes for different folks. It pretty much boils down to this. Not only are vendor t-shirts actually a physical item but they are also often uniquely designed; many vendors only provide certain designs for certain events. So they really become a badge of honor and can gain in emotional value: "been there, got the t-shirt..."

cpach 6y ago

Maybe some people feel that these t-shirts signals street cred?

SwiftyBug 6y ago
Definitely. I've always wanted a cool Hacktober Fest t-shirt like the ones my co-workers have. But I certainly wouldn't spam open source projects just to get one.

newen 6y ago

You might wait, what, a 10 person line to get a free t-shirt? Making 5 “corrected typo” commits is probably equivalent to that effort and looks like 5 is enough to get past a spam tag.

bartread 6y ago
I really wouldn't. I'm not a minimalist by any means but I've been decluttering for a while and am certainly long past the point where I'll tolerate having possessions that I don't want. Maybe this is a privileged point of view but, as with swag in general, most vendor t-shirts are honestly just tat.
- kortilla 6y ago
  > Maybe this is a privileged point of view It is. T-shirts are wear items and getting a free one that looks decent is one less that you’ll have to buy.

filmgirlcw 6y ago

You would be surprised by the stuff people do for free swag. I don’t get it either, but I’ve seen first hand how hard people go for that sort of stuff. It’s a shame it has led to people spamming repos, however.

dilyevsky 6y ago

There are a ton of automated trivial pr spammers out there that aren’t even in it for a t-shirt. Maybe it’s vanity or just wanting to see the world burn ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

pengaru 6y ago

In my experience the average American goes into a leave nothing behind mode whenever baited with Free. Just look at the kind of mayhem Black Friday precipitates, and that's not even free - just a promise of exceptional discounts. The comedian Doug Stanhope has an amusing bit about free healthcare and how wastefully it would be consumed by Americans conditioned to maximally abuse anything offered free of charge. Edit: I don't mean to suggest Americans have a monopoly on this sort of behavior, it's just the country/culture I'm by far most familiar with.

vlunkr 6y ago
Non-Americans on the other hand hate free stuff.
dmurray 6y ago
The spammers appear to be overwhelmingly Indian, based on the usernames in the screenshots. Which is somehow unsurprising to me (there are 1.5 billion of them, after all).

macspoofing 6y ago

Ever visit a booth at a conference or trade-show where they give out t-shirts? Pandemonium!

bartread 6y ago
I've worked a bunch of them back in the day and they are indeed a feeding frenzy. Can be a lot of fun though.

jkingsbery 6y ago

It's kind of like that episode of Pinky and the Brain where they finally are able to take over the Earth by convincing everyone who moves to a paper mache copy of the Earth a free t-shirt. People love free t-shirts.

xwdv 6y ago

The shirt is a form of signaling and once you wear it in the right circles you’re in as one of the cool kids.

908B64B197 6y ago

Judging by the names in the screenshots and linked github profiles it sounds like a lot of spammers are Indian students. Thousands of students are all trying to get a low effort contribution in to have an extra line of "experience" on their resume and a T-Shirt from a western Silicon Valley company as signaling? Judging by the poor quality of the contributions, and the fact it's on GitHub, maybe folks studying IT? That type of academic spam isn't new sadly [0]. [0] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-behind-the-indian-undergrad-research-experience-spam https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-b...

cvrjk 6y ago
I am an Indian, and I've studied at an Indian university for my undergraduate degree, and I've witnessed spam like this everywhere. Not hacktoberfest, but I've been a part of it myself for some of the other things. Wish I had behaved better. In most of these cases, it usually starts with someone really talented doing it with all the good intentions, and everyone else wanting to get in on that 'swag' and appear just as 'talented' and 'unique' amongst their peers. The freebies are mostly for 'show off'. A few hours ago this link showed extremely low effort LeetCode/Programming Challenge problems and solutions aggregation repos created by us Indians (disproportionally more than any other country at the time I checked) with very silly open issues created & marked as 'hacktoberfest2020' (looks like some of them are gone now)[1]. But, from what I heard from my uni recently, things are improving and this year folks are trying their best to form groups to focus on meaningful contribution over spam. Even after all that, unfortunately for us though, we'll still have bad actors, probably at the same percentage as any other country, but amplified due to our population and hyper-fixation with an unreal perception about most things we do. [1] https://github.com/search?p=1&q=label%3Ahacktoberfest+state%3Aopen+no%3Aassignee+is%3Aissue&type=Issues https://github.com/search?p=1&q=label%3Ahacktoberfest+state%....
- Thorentis 6y ago
  Why do Indian IT students seem disproportionately represented when it comes to things like this? It seems like there is a strong culture of "getting ahead at all costs". This is seen in shitty YouTube tutorials, blog posts, open source submissions, all the way down the very bottom of the barrel with call centre scammers. Care to explain for us?

stjohnswarts 6y ago

You never did anything stupid and superfluous as a youth?