How to be a Legend

I hate email chains. There’s no end to them. Chances are, I blame you.

I don’t really mind a good joke that has been getting fired about because it’s actually really funny so you get it in your inbox every couple of years as it pings electronically around the world.

What annoys the hell out of me (and gets your email address blocked if you keep sending me them when I’ve already told you not to) is people who send on some of the following.

• Virus warnings
• Email Petitions about bad things happening somewhere that need to be stopped
• Send this email test router thing to 30 people and microsoft or another company know and send you a present like an ipod
• If you don’t forward it on to ten people, you will die in 3 days, never have sex, blah blah. If you do you’ll get money and happiness.
• MSN, Facebook etc is shutting down, going to charge you to use them, or shut you down if you don’t forward on.
• Missing people

Now none of these essentially seem that bad to you, but let me explain.

Virus Warnings:

Forwarding one of these is probably the most useless thing you can ever do.

Most of them are fake for one thing “All the letters drop off the screen,your harddrive explodes,the dog tries to bite you and your partner finds out you’re cheating with that wh*re Angela in Sales”. Then you’ve got the ones that ARE genuine but it was about a year ago, and people are still going to send it despite the fact that it’s clearly been patched loooong ago or all the computers in the world would be f*cked by now. Rarely, VERY Rarely it is a genuine threat. Chances are if it’s not from a large antivirus company whose newsletter you have signed up for, it’s probably fake. Some of you will be saying “Well I’m not technical, how am I meant to know?!”. Well, you excuse making b*wbag, I’ll tell you at the end of the article.

Email petitions about bad things happening somewhere that need to be stopped:

There’s a massive variety of these. I’m sure you’ve seen some of them.

Examples are:

• women are treated badly in other countries/this one
• war about something
• kids somewhere being bummed
• murderers and rapists being let loose

Now I’m not saying those aren’t all bad things and shouldn’t indeed be stopped I’m just trying to say that adding your name to a list of names and then forwarding it on to everyone you know to do the same unless you’re the hundredth name in which case you forward it on to govermentofficial@goverment.com or something similar is not only a waste of your time but also a bit self serving. You think you’ve done anything there?.

You’ve not.

I’ll tell you why you haven’t. There are two main reasons. One is a probable and one is a certainty.

The important one though is the certainty and that’s this. No one, anywhere in the world will take a list of names on an email as serious because it’s just far too easy to fake. Look I’ll demonstrate.

I’m against this, Cindy Smith , Texas

NO! , Brian Mulhoney , Bristol, England

I feel this should be stopped!, Cordially, Lloyd Pancakes, Aberdeen.

Now are you convinced that I went and got these 3 people to write that on this computer before uploading it to the website? No. Neither is anyone else when you forward on an email. There are many places now that do online petitions that you do have to register for and they can be done and are worthwhile and listened to I believe. No one is convinced by a list of possibly made up names on an email chain letter. Which brings us nicely to the next reason that it was a waste of time.

Let’s say you’re the last one on this w*nker Relay race so it’s your job to send that baton back to the umpire. Okay that analogy lost all meaning quickly, they don’t even have umpires in relay races.

Anyway, you forward that badboy email onto govermentofficial@govermentplace.com and one of two things is very likely to happen.

1. You get an undeliverable report back saying that email doesn’t exist. Either because it never existed and you’ve now just realised these chain emails are made up by total pranksters for the lulz, or because the person who had that email has left or indeed had a new one made up to stop getting emails like that in.
2. You never hear anything back. The reason you’ve not heard anything back is not that The Man is not listening to you, it’s that companies have spam filters up on their email systems to stop spam/junk email and your email is caught in the “net”. You know why it’s been trapped by the Spam filter? because it’s f*cking Spam! Stop wasting people’s time!

Forward this email test router thing to 30 people and Microsoft, Apple or some other company know and love you for it and send you a present like an ipod,xpox,soul:

The only reason these ever get forwarded is because most people aren’t technical. That’s not an actual excuse though as I’ll explain in the closing chapter. This doesn’t happen. Ever. I’m aware you “know” someone who did but be honest, you know that’s a lie and you just heard about it, same as everyone else.They and anyone else can’t really track emails like that without a lot of effort. The effort is not worth it. It doesn’t even make sense anyway. What is being checked exactly? Who the f*ck doesn’t know that emails work and go all over the place? Why is that information of value to ANYONE? How will they get your address?.

Cmon, seriously, stop being such a gullible chimp.

If you don’t forward it on to ten people, you will die in 3 days, never have sex, blah blah. If you do you’ll get money and happiness:

You know it’s crap, I know it’s crap. Stop it.

MSN, Facebook etc is shutting down, going to charge you to use them, or shut you down if you don’t forward on.:

None of these are true. Think about it for a sec, why isn’t this global news on every tv channel and in every newspaper? We’re talking millions and millions of people affected by one of the most well known brands in the world!. Why would they even shut it down or charge anyway, they exist for advertising their and other’s products and to charge or shut it down would deprive them of that and generate a lot of bad will when people leave!

These would be some of the worst mistakes you could make as a company and they didn’t get to where they are by being stupid. Panic’s exciting and why newspapers sell but it shouldn’t stop you taking a couple minutes to go “wait….. that sounds unlikely”.

Missing people:

Some questions to consider:

1. Are they actually missing is this real?
2. Where are they missing? If it’s the other side of the world you’re kinda wasting your time unless it’s Carmen Sandiago.
3. How old is this? , are they since found people?

These again are often old, rubbish or pointless. How can I know though, better to forward them all to be sure! It might help! No, there’s a better way.

So what am I meant to do then?

Well… chances are since this is about email chains that means you have an internet connection. This means you have access to search engines, like Google. How about, and this is novel I grant you, spending the same amount of time you’d take forwarding it on blindly to SEARCH AND SEE IF ITS A LOAD OF P*SH!

Even if its at work, it’s a legitimate work use to not spam up their email systems.

There’s loads of sites, I’ve had a few chain emails in , stick the title in google and BANG!, usually the first link “Missing Person Jimmy Neebs – Hoax Email Chain”. There you go and now you’ve saved all those other people from ever receiving this crap.

Wasn’t that a hell of a lot more productive use of the same amount of time?

The same sites will come up time and again, www.snopes.com is one of the most likely, dealing with urban legends and the like that many of these are basically. AntiVirus sites like www.mcafee.com will come up for virus warning chain emails.

Hopefully this has both enlightened and entertained you and you’ll at least take a brief second to think about how much time you’re wasting and how big a muppet you’re being by just following the herd and sending it on “just in case”.

There’s lots of things you can do “just in case”, doesn’t mean you should wear two pairs of pants though does it.