Psychology of 'congratulatory' spamming

At my school SJMSOM,IITB, its not uncommon to hear someone or else cracking something or other everyday. The first triggering mail intimating the good news is a really pleasant one, but more often than not it forebodes coming of a tsunami of 'reply to all' (RepTA) mails congratulating the feat. The problem is that 'reply to all' being most benign of all the buttons available on a UI(user interface) , conveniently places all the available addresses within the reach of the mail and sets the target on many an innocent souls. For example some informed soul mail the congratulatory mail announcing the achievement to all the people in the class/school mailing list, which has the ability to torpedo 54 to 120 mailboxes at a single click on a button. The address field of Sender 1 reads:
To:
CC:
The first guy to spot the mail does yet another RepTA to personally congratulate the acheiver and manages to do the following:
To:;
CC:
The domino effect continues till people get fed up of the whole RepTA sequence and wait for something more interesting to come their mailbox's way.
What I didnot understand was what drove people to click the dreaded RepTA button. If people were genuinely interested in extending their wishes to the Mr. Achiever , they could have dropped the person a personal mail. Why spam numerous mail boxes with his wishes for the guy in question? Is it because people want to be in action? Or iz it becaaaaz they want to show the world that they indeed become happy at others' achievements and that they are one from the 'social' breed?
I decided to test it and eventually managed to test the junta on two occassion. Both of the times after quite some spamming I moved the discussion to the bulletin board ,which is meant for sharing ideas,news etc. among SOM(school of management) guys. And on both occassion there was hardly any action on the threads. Suddenly people who were hell bent on using the innocuous RepTA button somehow didnot feel the compulsion to get to the thread congratulating the Achiever. It was not that it required considerably more effort to visit the thread and register their sentiments, for I had provided the link in the mail and it was a matter of clicking the link and posting. Also it had the obvious advantage of not spamming the mailboxes. This made me think and think hard.
I am not passing any judgement here for my test were done only twice and people did respond to the threads. It might be that all enthu junta would have already spammed and so no point in visiting the thread and posting. My argument might be absolutely incorrect. I am absolutely aware of these possibilities.I am just stating things here.
So what can be done to prevent people from RepTa syndrome. I have a few suggestions:
1. The moment someone clicks on RepTA, the email client should send an electrical pulse to the user's bum so that it hurt everytime someone tries to RepTA. This would lead to sensible usage only.
2. All the innocent victim should reply personally to the first guy who does a RepTA. So if the RepTA leads to invasion of 54 mailboxes then the perpetrator should have 54 mails in his mailbox the next moment. Give him the the taste of his own medicine,54 times .
3. Simple yaar disable the RepTA button. Make the person type down the contacts in the To box everytime, this will use to the judicious use of key strokes and mouse clicks :).

Any more whacky ideas??? Post in the comments...