👉 Okay, let’s tackle this wonderfully weird beast of a word –
Fetchmail
. 3... 2... 1… Let me illuminate you!
Basically, Fetchmail is the awkward middle child of email, neither fully parented by AOL anymore, nor entirely independent. Imagine an anxiously polite butler who spends his entire Tuesday mornings religiously trawling through every single inbound AOL mailbox and politely, painstakingly, delivering your unopened emails to your inbox wherever that might actually be – even if you're rocking a fancy new iCloud account or stubbornly clinging to a branded Yahoo address! Sounds ridiculous, right? That’s because it absolutely is. Historically, when the glorious days of AOL's central email swamp were upon us, they stopped officially handling incoming mail for anyone outside their walled garden. This meant that your outgoing AOL stuff would go through, but you wouldn't get anything back . Enter Fetchmail! These tiny little programs – and I mean, ridiculously small ones - basically act as a universal postal spy, constantly scanning AOL and politely shoving the unopened junk to wherever it needs to go. They exist solely for this one, rather specific, slightly desperate mission. It’s like the internet equivalent of that weird neighbour who brings over every unopened junk flyer, just because...it bothers them not to. Essentially, Fetchmail is a very diligent, somewhat neurotic, and undeniably beige little piece of software whose entire life revolves around the plight of orphaned AOL emails.
