Outhorse Your Email
Admiral Biscuit
Alright everybody, this has been on my to-do pile for a while, and now it’s time to finally post it! Get yourself a drink and kick back, you know the drill.
We’re gonna talk about the time that Flim and Flam ran—well, I almost want to call it a scam, but the truth is that they did exactly what they said they were going to do, and they might still be doing it, except for the inevitable lawsuit.
. . . As if anybody’s surprised that there was a lawsuit.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Iceland tourism board went viral with their ‘Outhorse Your Email’ promo. They built a giant computer keyboard, and trained native Icelandic horses to walk across it. Made a slick website with some glamor shots of horses, along with their skills. HRÍMNIR FRÁ HVAMMI, for example, is assertive, efficient, and has shiny hair.
Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Marebelline.
•••
I don’t need to tell you how Flim and Flam can sniff out an opportunity, a chance to make a quick buck—or a quick bit. And I should also point out that there are legitimate ways for a pony to get online. It involves paperwork and the speed with which human and Equestrian bureaucracy moves, something which neither Flim nor Flam had any time to deal with. ‘Outhorsing’ was here now, and they could jump on that train if they acted fast.
A few ethernet cables strung through the portal, a collection of computers bought cheap from a corporate downsizing (with a cashier’s check that might or might not bounce). A young pony who’s got a computer-related cutie mark to set them up . . . it turns out that exposure to Earth and its rich pastiche of technology and culture has invigorated what some might consider a stagnant cutie mark pool.
[That does lead one to consider the implications of cutie marks, especially as industry and technology evolve at a quicker and quicker pace; do some fillies and colts now get cutie marks in a field which hits its maturity at the same time they do, or is there a lag? Does somepony have a cell phone cutie mark before the first cell tower is constructed (and maybe she has no idea what it means)? Or are they constantly playing catch-up with their Marks?]
Both Flim and Flam were smart enough to understand that an actual horse couldn’t read an incoming email, and realize that they could offer an identical service with employees who couldn’t read English . . . or read at all. After all, Princess Celestia’s goal of universal literacy for all her ponies (as well as pony-adjacent species) was only a few decades old, and there were plenty of ponies who had not attended school at all or who had quit early to work on a family farm.
Maybe it was actually a noble gesture. Tech jobs (which this technically was) tend to pay better than working-class jobs, and were generally out of reach of ponies who couldn’t read, ponies who could quickly be taught to bang out letters on a keyboard and push a ‘send’ button. Or more likely, it was an understanding of the market forces at work and a way to get warm rumps in seats without paying too much.
Either way, they had a small cubical farm set up, and two tiers of employee ready to deal with ‘outhorsed’ email: those who could read and respond at least somewhat appropriately, and the larger pool who would type nonsense, only trained to fill up a certain part of the editing window then hit the green SEND button and await their next email to ‘outhorse.’
I met one of the ‘type nonsense’ mares at a restaurant at the height of their business. Bless her heart, she was trying her best to be a good employee.
She had purchased a copy of Flim and Flam’s book, Teach Yourself to Read. As was their style, they promised that once you had read your way through their book, you’d know how to read, and they weren't wrong. As a learning aid, the book was useless, but it did technically do what it promised.
Her enthusiasm for the job was almost infectious; while we were waiting for our food, I actually considered the benefits of joining the team. And, in the interests of full disclosure, I filled out an application and was waiting for an interview when they hastily closed up shop . . . we’ll get to that.
•••
Flim and Flam knew the right places to spend money. Someone who was actually competent made the website and networked all the computers. And they got business, maybe more than they could handle. Their website had glamor shots of ponies and short biographies; they had a video showcasing their little cubicle farm. My friend even had a short appearance, squinting at the screen and then happily banging away on her keyboard. It was honestly higher production quality than was required to sell their product—ignoring the potential copyright infringement, who wouldn’t get the warm fuzzies inside at the thought of some technicolored pony answering pointless corporate emails with little to no skill at the task?
Who hasn’t considered all the time-wasting our jobs entail, and the advantage of skiving some of it off on somebody—or somepony else? A higher level of management sends an urgent email which does nothing but reveal their complete lack of understanding of the job at hand, and the thought of them getting pure nonsense in reply is worth a few dozen dollars a month.
It was a money-making machine, as long as it lasted.
Thing was, while Flim and Flam were plenty skilled at setting up dubious business ventures as quickly as they noticed that there might be a demand, they had no chance against human lawyers. Getting the paperwork through the portal took a few months; there was plenty of traffic and a cease-and-desist copyright suit from Iceland was hardly a high priority.
Lawsuits could be fought; besides the established firms, there were a fair number of ponies with novel cutie marks percolating through their adolescent and young adult years. It would have been expensive and time-consuming, but they might have ultimately prevailed.
That wasn’t their tactic. Flim and Flam’s business experience had taught them that the best way to deal with adversity was to gallop off and regroup elsewhere.
They had learned enough about business to have a number of corporate entities handling payroll and other expenses; a few cut-outs and some heavy-duty plausible deniability let them skate off scot free. The illicit ethernet cables got pulled, and when the internet stopped working, word traveled around the office in lieu of an official shutdown notice.
•••
Some big tech firms have big, shiny offices or huge campuses, while a lot of the backbone of the web is in unassuming buildings that could have anything. Their leased office space was rented out in the short term to a typing pool, keeping some of the literate talent, and using some of the computers that got left behind.
Not all the computers, because more than a few ponies realized that they weren’t going to get a final paycheck, and took their computer home with them.
•••
A few people—and ponies—thought that this was Equestria’s first tech scam, pre-dating even the even more short-lived (virtual) mail-order Changeling bride or groom program.
Y’all know the details of how that turned out.
I wouldn’t call it a scam, though. Not exactly. The fact is, they did exactly what they said they were going to do. Anybody could pay a fee, and any emails that they sent to be ‘outhorsed’ would indeed be replied to by a pony. One who couldn’t read at the cheapest subscription level, and one who could at a higher tier.
As for the workers—as I already mentioned, some of the literate ones who got good with computers neatly transitioned into a new career at the same place, now working in a typing pool. Most of the others were used to working short-term jobs anyway, so they weren’t too bothered about losing this job. There was always plenty of other work available, especially for a pony who was willing to try something new.
Some months after the debacle, I met my friend for lunch again. She’d taken a computer and had figured out how to use MSPaint on it, and now had a new career as a digital artist, one of the first in Equestria.
She’d even spent some of the money she’d earned to enroll in adult education classes, since it turned out that Teach Yourself to Read wasn’t a very good resource.
Author's Note
Pre-read by Snowliason
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