Looking for 2001 Jedi Census Phenomenon E-Mails

I was recently doing some research on the 2001 Jedi census phenomenon. One source claims "...e-mail campaigns... encouraged people to write specific responses..." and the "Jedi Campaign was one of the more visible..." (Singler, "SEE MOM IT IS REAL"). I have searched for these e-mails promoting Jedi as a response, but have only found unsourced sections. Rather than comb the internet, I thought it best to ask a Jedi forum. Are there any Yodas or younglings able to help this Obi-Wan find his lost email(s)?

 

I would hope that it was not possible to search for people's emails!

I know nothing is safe on the internet, but surely the content of email servers, even back in 2001, would not be accessible.

I think you may be looking in the wrong place, anyway. I can vaguely remember some comment somewhere that if enough people put "jedi" down...

I'm not sure if

a) There was a census where lots of people, independently, put down jedi as their religion, and then with the next census four years later, there was a campaign that pointed out what happened last time, that no-one got punished - census generally have a legal warning on the document - and if enough people put jedi this time around, it could be accepted as a religion or a cult.

I can remember a reference of jedi having the same number of responses as Rastafarian, putting it in the same league as that, not at religion level, but whatever level Rastafarian was.

Email does not sound like a logical medium for such a campaign; you would basically have to spam the world; to get to your target audience, magazine or fanzine articles or adverts would hit the right demographic, I'm sure.

 

Welcome, Blauer! Are you talking about retrieving contents from old-timey public e-mail lists?

 

There are public email lists?

 

Yes, some sort of a predecessor to modern forums.

 

If you know the name of a website you can try the Wayback Machine.

 

They still exist. I subscribe to and participate in a few public lists for the Lua and Python programming languages. As an example, HERE is the public archive of the Lua list.

 

Sith-I-5: I'm not looking for personal emails, but emails that were part of a campaign promoting Jedi as a response to the 2001 UK census. As for being unsure about Census data and claims about Jediism being accepted as a religion, refer to this article from the UK government web archive (http://webarchive.nationalarchives....ttp://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171780_225970.pdf) and this website "dedicated to the continuation of an idea which seems to have started some tim in early 2001" (http://www.gonmad.co.uk/jedicensus/). As for your point about email campaigns, I share it - it seems ridiculous that an email campaign could gain enough support. However, keep in mind that this is not a conventional campaign and that the supposed original email claims that the campaign is "a bit of an experiment in the power of email" (http://www.gonmad.co.uk/jedicensus/).

Thank you, Ewok Poet, and to the others who have responded. I could be looking for a public e-mail list, if that list included the email(s). As, for having a website name, LAJ_FETT, I do not. However, the Jedi census website cited above (http://www.gonmad.co.uk/jedicensus/) supposedly has the original email that started it all. I've recently emailed them about its history, but am unsure what they can provide as they too "want to know this email's history."

 

Blauer - you could try asking in the UK Fan Force forum - maybe someone there remembers.

 

That sounds like the thing to, LAJ_FETT. Thanks.