A seemingly innocuous email exchange about a holiday gift potluck went awry after it was mistakenly sent to more than 25,000 Utah state employees. 
 
 A cascade of curt, angry and confused responses poured in to a "reply all" email chain Friday that initially sought to discuss a holiday potluck. Utah Department of Technology Services employees took to social media to urge the tens of thousands of respondents to stop replying to the email chain that deluged state employees, contractors and businesses across Utah. 
 
 And as commonly occurs amid corporate and government "reply all" chaos, the thousands of "Sent from my iPhone" messages demanding to be removed from the email thread only deepened the communication quicksand. 
 
 Getty Images Justin Sullivan/Staff 
 
 "So this is happening right now. It’s Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government. #ReplyAll Actually don’t reply all," wrote Joe Dougherty, a Public Information Officer for -- perhaps ironically -- the Utah Division of Emergency Management. 
 
 Dozens of responses posted to social media by Utah state government employees and affiliates ranged from inquisitive, "Is it a white elephant type of swap?" to comical, "I'm sorry you have to uninvite the entire State Government," to the downright angry, "Remove me from this email thread now!" 
 
 The thousands of polite responses asking to be removed from the "reply all" emails clogged up phones and state employee computers for several hours Friday morning. But those seemingly helpful replies along with dozens of "EVERYONE STOP RESPONDING" responses only amplified the crescendo of emails. 
 
 Screenshot: Twitter/Joe Dougherty 
 
 Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox added a little humor and weighed in on the "cc" calamity Friday afternoon, "This is real and it’s an emergency. Started out as a potluck and $5 white elephant gift exchange in one department and someone accidentally cc’d every state employee. I fear this will never end." 
 
 "This was a genuine crisis, but it happens every day on a smaller level. Some people simply can't not #replyall, so prevention is key: send large group emails to yourself w/ bcc to other recipients, and hope somebody doesn't 'loop' others in," tweeted Josh Loftin, Director of Communications and Public Information Officer at the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts. 
 
 Salt Lake City's local CBS affiliate KUTV reported that neither the offending sender nor the department they worked in was publicly divulged as of the end of the workday Friday. ||||| Someone mistakenly sent a potluck invite to 25,000 Utah state employees — nearly the entire state workforce — Friday, reported KUTV. Then the reply-all emails began. 
 
 
 
 
 
 “So this is happening right now. It’s Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government,” wrote Utah public information office Joe Dougherty on Twitter about 9:30 a.m. Friday. 
 
 His post included a long chain of reply-all emails to the 25,000 recipients of the errant invite. Many begged fellow respondents to stop hitting reply-all, while others resorted to all-caps demands to “STOP THE MADNESS.” 
 
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 So this is happening right now. It’s Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government. #ReplyAll Actually don’t reply all. pic.twitter.com/8loT09CM4s — Joe Dougherty (@PIO_Joe) December 7, 2018 
 
 “I … want to die,” reported one state worker on Twitter, while another reported receiving 51 reply-all emails to the invite in mere minutes. 
 
 someone over at the department of corrections accidentally invited every single state of utah employee to their holiday potluck....and now there's an email chain....and i .....want to die — too depressed to put up Christmas decorations (@the1kim) December 7, 2018 At 9:27 am I got this email which was apparently sent by the Dept of Corrections to every employee of the State of Utah. Ten minutes later I’m up to 51 responses of people saying “please don’t reply to all.” I’m wondering how many hundreds more I’ll get before DTS pulls the plug. pic.twitter.com/4y8LhY85xu — Peter Gessel (@PeterGessel) December 7, 2018 dear lord. someone sent an email to the entire State of Utah and now everyone is replying to all. — Amanda Rock (@amanda__reads) December 7, 2018 
 
 Even Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox commented on the fiasco on Twitter, calling it “an emergency.” 
 
 “This is real and it’s an emergency,” Cox wrote. “Started out as a potluck and $5 white elephant gift exchange in one department and someone accidentally cc’d every state employee. I fear this will never end.” 
 
 This is real and it’s an emergency. Started out as a potluck and $5 white elephant gift exchange in one department and someone accidentally cc’d every state employee. I fear this will never end. https://t.co/fL1NBOlsZW — Spencer Cox (@SpencerJCox) December 7, 2018 
 
 But by 11:10 a.m. Friday, the flood of reply-all emails seemed to be abating, Dougherty reported on Twitter. 
 
 “Ok. It’s 11:10 am and I think it’s safe to say the great #ReplyAll disaster of 2018 is finally over. Thank you for playing!” he wrote. 
 
 Ok. It’s 11:10 am and I think it’s safe to say the great #ReplyAll disaster of 2018 is finally over. Thank you for playing! pic.twitter.com/WXtK1G01Fs — Joe Dougherty (@PIO_Joe) December 7, 2018 
 
 “A reply all broadcast storm is the closest we’ll get to perpetual energy,” commented one observer on Twitter. 
 
 A reply all broadcast storm is the closest we’ll get to perpetual energy. — Dave Holzer and the turtle he rode in on. (@daholzer) December 7, 2018 ||||| An apparently simple email about a holiday potluck at a state office went off the rails Friday when it was accidentally sent to approximately 25,000 state employees. (Photo: KUTV FILE) 
 
 An apparently simple email about a holiday potluck at a state office in Utah went off the rails Friday when it was accidentally sent to approximately 25,000 state employees. 
 
 
 
 One early respondent seemed to anticipate the coming storm of emails by replying to all, “braces self for receiving thousands of emails from people hitting ‘reply all’ to say they got added by mistake.” 
 
 Then the ‘reply-all’ responses began. 
 
 “STOP REPLYING TO ALL”, one ‘reply-all’ respondent wrote. 
 
 “Please remove me from this email,” another employee replied to all. 
 
 “EVERYONE STOP RESPONDING!!” responded one angry email. 
 
 
 
 A photo posted by state spokesperson Joe Dougherty showed dozens of emails sent over the course of just a few minutes around 9:30 a.m. 
 
 Dougherty posted around 11:15 a.m. to say the email chain seemed to have run its course. 
 
 Neither the offending sender, nor the department they work for were identified. 
 
 
 
 “I fear this will never end,” Lt. Governor Spencer Cox posted to twitter around 3:30 p.m. 
 
 Reply-all catastrophes pop up occasionally. A few years ago Reuters was caught up in a reply-all chain that went between the company’s 33,000 employees. That ordeal prompted at least 600 response emails. ||||| SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah State Bar is looking into how an email with a photo of a woman's bare chest was sent out to members of its email list Monday. 
 
 Matt Page, communications director for the Utah State Bar, confirmed the contents of the email and the organization's inquiry into how it was sent. 
 
 "We are aware of it and we are horrified," Page said. "Our goal is to get to the bottom of what happened and ensure that it never happens again." 
 
 Page said the Utah State Bar is considering a number of questions about the email's origin, including whether the organization was hacked or whether the photo was included in the message — inadvertantly or intentionally — by someone within the organization. 
 
 "We are looking into both of those scenarios," Page said. "At this point, we're not sure which one of those occurred." 
 
 It was also unknown Monday whether there were any cybersecurity concerns for those who received or opened the email, he said. 
 
 Once the inquiry is done, Page said the Utah State Bar will release its findings to its members. 
 
 A second email was sent quickly after the first, including a message from the organization's IT director, Lincoln Mead, apologizing for the "offensive image" and announcing that the message was being investigated. 
 
 Mead confirmed Monday that the message was only emailed and was not published to the organization's website or any social media pages. 
 
 Chase Thomas, policy and advocacy counsel at Alliance for a Better Utah, was among the attorneys who received the email. 
 
 The subject line of the email invited recipients to the organization's convention happening this weekend in St. George, Thomas said, announcing, "2018 Spring Convention Walk-Ins Welcome! Learn How!" 
 
 Nothing about the email raised any red flags, Thomas said, so he opened the message as he sat in the House gallery at the state Capitol. 
 
 "I was expecting a routine email I would most likely scroll through and delete. But I had to scroll through and delete a lot faster than I had initially anticipated," Thomas said. 
 
 Thomas said he was lucky to be seated on the top row of the gallery, so no one was sitting behind him, but an intern who was with him got a look at the message. 
 
 In a tweet, Thomas warned others, "If you recently got an email from the Utah Bar, be careful opening it! There may or may not be a naughty picture in it. … Guessing they got hacked?" 
 
 He received the apology email soon after. He said he's not sure what the Utah State Bar should do about the message. 
 
 "I guess it depends on what they find out during their investigation. I'm just glad they quickly sent out an email acknowledging it happened and that they're looking into it," Thomas said.
– "STOP THE MADNESS!!!!," "dear lord," and "I want to die" were just a few of the responses to what was meant to be a routine email Friday about a seasonal potluck party in a Utah state office, per the Miami Herald. What caused the holiday hubbub: The email meant for one department was accidentally sent to more than 25,000 employees throughout the state, leading to what Newsweek calls "a cascade of curt, angry, and confused responses" when recipients started hitting "reply all" in their return correspondence, KUTV reports. Unable to simply ignore the mass email, hordes of workers, both irritated and amused, tried to get off the "reply all" chain by … replying to all with that request, which Newsweek notes "only deepened the communication quicksand." "It's Replyall-gate 2018. Adventures in state government," one worker tweeted as it was happening, while another worried the messages wouldn't taper off: "I fear this will never end." In addition to the snark and outrage, some replies were genuine queries about what to bring to the potluck, as well as to the white-elephant gift exchange also set to take place. A Utah communications professional offers some advice to those who want to avoid the same "reply all" fiasco happening when they have their own email to send out. "Prevention is key: send large group emails to yourself w/ bcc to other recipients, and hope somebody doesn't 'loop' others in," he tweeted. Neither the person who sent the email, nor the department, had been IDed by EOD Friday.