A Twitter user effectively spams his Twitter account to the point of being useless when, ironically, the online petition he started gets countless signatures.

Ryan Barr started an online petition that other Twitter users can “sign”. The petition contested that AT&T’s prices for iPhone 3GS upgrades were too high, and motioned for the company to offer “reasonable upgrade prices”. The petition reads, “AT&T should give existing customers the same rate for the new iPhone 3Gs that they do for new customers. New customers or not, another 2-year contract is being made.”

While garnering signatures for any kind of petition seems sound, the problem with Barr’s case is that, every time a Twitter user will “sign” his petition, it automatically generates a Twitter message with Barr’s username attached to it. These messages, in turn, trickles down to Barr’s Twitter reply feed, which is rendered useless because of the sheer number of messages being logged into it in such short a time.

In a letter that Barr sent TechCrunch, Barr mentions that his reply feed logged 9,200+ messages in the span of two days. This translates to about 3.194 messages per minute, or a new message every 18.78 seconds.

Currently, @twitition, the website of the online petition, logs Barr’s petition to have 11,826 signatures after four days of running. The site reports that it is currently running a total of 374 online petitions containing 26,682 signatures, making Barr’s case all the more remarkable.