E-Chainletters - love or hate?

Post by **jtaylor** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 12:36 pm

I received yet another of those stupid email chainletters this morning.

It promised I'd be cast into eternal fires of domnation if I didn't forward it on to 10 people in my address book within the next 30 seconds......

How stupid is that! I view these damned things as the equivalent of the "Irish Virus" which asks you to forward itself to all your friends, before requesting that you then delete everything off your PC and re-format.........
The volume of these things on the internet wastes resources, cloggs-up email systems and wastes people's time....it's a virus by another name, but written by people too stupid to do the hard bit and code the virusy bit, so they get you to do it for them by forwarding it to your friends!

Well - now you know what I think of them - do you have a different view???

J

Katharine · Post by **Katharine** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:05 pm

Couldn't agree more, Julian. There are some people whose emails I never open if the tag line includes Fwd. I have better things to do with my time (such as read this forum!)

UserRemovedAccount · Post by **UserRemovedAccount** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:36 pm

jtaylor wrote:I received yet another of those stupid email chainletters this morning........Well - now you know what I think of them - do you have a different view???

Julian, I totally agree. I also think that they can cause a lot of misery among the more gullible members of society, who can take the threatened retribution quite seriously.

Richard Ruck · Post by **Richard Ruck** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:50 pm

I agree - an internet plague, along with "You've won the Cardiff lottery" and desperate e-mails from "Mrs. Charity Olongu" or similar asking for help in spiriting $24,000,000 out of Sierra Leone/ Nigeria/Mozambique/South Africa etc. etc. (her husband was butchered by government agents / killed in a plane crash / nibbled to death by an aardvark, you see!).

englishangel · Post by **englishangel** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 2:47 pm

I forward jokes, friendship things and that sort of thing, but not 'chain' letters.

I have had a couple of the type, 'such and such gives you cancer'

The latest was about lead in lipstick.

Most of these are Urban Myths and there is a site which gives you the background on these so I 'Reply all' with the debunking url.

In October I got one about a little girl who had been found after the tsunami.

I went back to the originator and it turned out that her family had been found about 2 weeks later.

sejintenej · Post by **sejintenej** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 8:27 pm

englishangel wrote:I forward jokes, friendship things and that sort of thing, but not 'chain' letters.

I have had a couple of the type, 'such and such gives you cancer'

The latest was about lead in lipstick.

Most of these are Urban Myths and there is a site which gives you the background on these so I 'Reply all' with the debunking url.

In October I got one about a little girl who had been found after the tsunami.

I went back to the originator and it turned out that her family had been found about 2 weeks later.

In respect of the former I consider it as a form of bullying which could send some people over the mental age.

As to the latter, perhaps a decade ago there was an appeal for "Get Well" cards to be sent to a young boy with a form of cancer (?leukemia) who lived near Guildford; he wanted to get into the Guinness Book of Records. This was passed from one person to another by email and on newsgroups so that he did get the record.

Somebody I know from another group who worked on a local paper and used to help with the sackloads of cards every morning; it got too much when the cards continued to arrive a year after his death.

There was another appeal for business cards from someone claiming to be ill; there may have been a genuine appeal but one such turned out to be a company selling lists of business addresses and email addresses for profit. How sick can you get?

cj · Post by cj » Tue Mar 28, 2006 12:39 am

englishangel wrote:In October I got one about a little girl who had been found after the tsunami.

We had that one too. I get drawn in by the emotional strings they send out (especially when it's to do with children) but my husband resolutely has nothing to do with them and tells me to pull myself together. My mum had one sent to her and got worried about not responding. They are only designed for selfish ends, but I then worry about becoming too cynical and hard-bitten. If you want to contribute, or 'make the world a better place', then there are better ways of going about it, surely. And let's face it, there are too many wierdos out there on computers ...

englishangel · Post by **englishangel** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 8:16 am

cj wrote:
englishangel wrote:In October I got one about a little girl who had been found after the tsunami.
We had that one too. I get drawn in by the emotional strings they send out (especially when it's to do with children) but my husband resolutely has nothing to do with them and tells me to pull myself together. My mum had one sent to her and got worried about not responding. They are only designed for selfish ends, but I then worry about becoming too cynical and hard-bitten. If you want to contribute, or 'make the world a better place', then there are better ways of going about it, surely. And let's face it, there are too many wierdos out there on computers ...

I emailed the Aussie policeman who had started the email about the little Western girl and he said that she was reunited with her parents in the middle of January 2005.

If you get any of these emails check out this website
http://urbanlegends.about.com/

DavebytheSea · Post by **DavebytheSea** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 9:38 am

Email is a powerful tool for finding missing persons and that is good. All other stuff infuriates me - even jokes chains; but then, as I have said more than once previously on this forum , I have no sense of humour.

J.R. · Post by **J.R.** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 2:18 pm

Anybody who believes they will receive bad luck for not passing on the chain letter MUST be sad !

(No sense of humour Dave ? You make me laugh from time to time !)

99yorkpj · Post by **99yorkpj** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 8:56 pm

Ugh, I get about 15 a day..... They generally drive me insane.... although the odd one is quite funny. I also get sent the same one about 5 times... this is when the "delete" button comes in very handy...

The one's I really hate are the one's that tell you a tortured girl or a mad clown will come and kill you in your sleep if you don't send the message on in 5 mins to 20 people... or send this to at least 5 people and something good will happen to you at 12.30 tonight.... as if...

Great Plum · Post by **Great Plum** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 12:52 pm

I hate them!

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:04 am

Last night a tortured girl AND a mad clown tried to kill me - but then I knew I shouldn't have gone to that restaurant.

Richard Ruck · Post by **Richard Ruck** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:10 am

Rory wrote:Last night a tortured girl AND a mad clown tried to kill me - but then I knew I shouldn't have gone to that restaurant.

Shouldn't have eaten them, then! Try the spring rolls next time......

Hendrik · Post by **Hendrik** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:18 am

Well said JT.

The only way to stop it is to e-mail the person who forwarded it to you and telling them firmly to stop. Get the e-mail address of whoever sent it to them and so on, see how far you can go!

There are too many bored American teenagers with terrible English. THAT'S the problem.

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