<story><title>How one guy ruined Hacktoberfest (2020)</title><url>https://joel.net/how-one-guy-ruined-hacktoberfest2020-drama</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>intsunny</author><text>..... never underestimate people&amp;#x27;s desperation&amp;#x2F;shamelessness for free t-shirts.&lt;p&gt;8-9 years ago, at DigitalOcean&amp;#x27;s first SXSW booth, we were giving out free t-shirts that had DO&amp;#x27;s Sammy shark logo, and Linux&amp;#x27;s Tux penguin logo. The catch was people had to name the penguin on the t-shirt. The vast majority could not name Tux, and pled to get the t-shirt anyways.&lt;p&gt;It was a very surreal experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bfdm</author><text>This is what I don&amp;#x27;t understand, though. If you only want to meet the requirements with low quality PRs, you&amp;#x27;ve always been able to achieve that with your &lt;i&gt;own&lt;/i&gt; public repository.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve mostly used Hacktoberfest as an annual opportunity to learn some new tech that I&amp;#x27;ve read about but haven&amp;#x27;t yet had a chance to try. I start a new public repo and work through their tutorial doing PRs to commit chunks for each major section etc.&lt;p&gt;Open source. No spam for anyone. I learn something. Free shirt.&lt;p&gt;Practicing PR hygiene on your own repo if it&amp;#x27;s something you&amp;#x27;re not already familiar with is also a benefit.</text></comment>
<story><title>How one guy ruined Hacktoberfest (2020)</title><url>https://joel.net/how-one-guy-ruined-hacktoberfest2020-drama</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>intsunny</author><text>..... never underestimate people&amp;#x27;s desperation&amp;#x2F;shamelessness for free t-shirts.&lt;p&gt;8-9 years ago, at DigitalOcean&amp;#x27;s first SXSW booth, we were giving out free t-shirts that had DO&amp;#x27;s Sammy shark logo, and Linux&amp;#x27;s Tux penguin logo. The catch was people had to name the penguin on the t-shirt. The vast majority could not name Tux, and pled to get the t-shirt anyways.&lt;p&gt;It was a very surreal experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chiph</author><text>I think your question was a pretty low barrier to winning, but I guess not. That&amp;#x27;s about when SXSW became more of a circus, filled with lots of &amp;quot;fake it &amp;#x27;till you make it&amp;quot; types. I would overhear people practicing their pitches (usually in an elevator!) and they were all different combinations of the same phrases that were trendy that year:  &amp;quot;We offer crowdsourced coupons via influencers to create brand awareness..&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We work with influencers in offering coupons, to crowdsource brand awareness..&amp;quot;</text></comment>