Open Letter to All Netizens: Stop Tossing Me Aside for your Forwarding Addictions!

Chain letter forwards - don't just stop sending them to "me" please please stop
sending them to anyone, period! They're mostly bogus and unoriginal, and just
keep going and going around and around, and they're lazy. A lot of them are
plain evil, the sick kid hoaxes and slander pieces about famous people, others
are just annoying and a lot of them you have to wonder "How the heck did my
friend fall for this!?" Example: Send this on to 1 friend and your crush will
call you, send it to 25 people and you will marry your true love in a month.
"Pass this on and you'll have good luck for a year. Delete it and you'll have
bad luck for 7 years." "Delete this if we are not friends" "I want this back,
then I'll know you're my friend!" "Let's see if you read my emails, now pass it
on and see who else reads your emails!" "Forward this friendship thingie and
spread the friendship!" "Forward and see who has a crush on you/who looks at
your profile!" or one of the most laughable "Forward to x number of people and a
cool video will pop up!" Who makes up and who believes this hooey? "

Internet newbies still have a lot to learn, so they are going to get duped into
passing on chain letters once in a while.

But there comes a time when you should know better.

I fell for the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe chain when I was new to the net. Back
then, I thought it was something that actually happened to a friend of the
person who sent it to me, since that was all the header info showed. I passed it
along to an email list. No one replied.

But a few months later, it was posted on a completely different forum, by
someone with not even a remote connection to me or my friend, with completely
different names and addresses in the header info.

Guess what? It's a hoax. Neiman Marcus doesn't sell chocolate chip cookies,
recipes, and certainly not for something like $200 a piece. Shame on the coward
who made up such a lie and put it into a hoax.

Ditto for some virus warning around the same time, only someone did say
something and told me about the Snopes site, which I've been grateful for since,
though I felt like a real idiot upon learning I had fallen for a chain letter.

Back then, like probably a lot of people, I thought chain letters only came in
the good/bad luck variety, and the MMF or Make Money Fast variety. MMF is the
one that tells you to put a dollar in an envelope, erase a name off a list and
send the money to the next person down.

Eventually I learned to watch out for signs of chain letters and am still
learning about all the different types there and emotional angles they use just
to get passed on. And that is their ultimate goal. Whoever actually started any
chain letter is often a mystery, no one knows. But whoever it was, is not
interested in you or me, they're just wanting us to pass along something they
either made up, or even stole from other sources to put into a neat little chain
letter package.

The Amy Bruce dying child hoax is just one example, it comes with a poem called
"Slow Dance" that the chain claims was written by a dying child, who wants you
to pass it on and for each forward, money will be sent to help save her.

It's all a lie. Amy Bruce never existed, she was dreamed up by some demented
hoaxter. The Slow Dance poem was not written by her then, obviously. It was
written by David L Weatherford, who never intended for it to get ripped off him
to be used in a hoax. The doctor's name at the end of the email was a block of
text at the end of someone's email signature, but because it was attached,
people mistakingly think he started the chain letter.

You need to ask yourselves some hard questions.

Why send chain letters?

Do you really believe you are doing your friends/contacts/fellow forum members a
big favor?

Do you think you're the only one who's ever received it? Do you think it's so
special and so scarce that you must pass it on to your friends to insure they
are blessed to get something that's a once in a life time thing?

Do you think your friend wrote it and believes everything in it?

Do you really think sending them to all your friends shows them how much you so
incredibly care?

Do you think a canned message is more valuable to your friends than anything you
say?

Are you really interested in keeping up friendships or are you just interested
in getting ego-strokes from people who you think will like the chain letter as
much as you did and reply back with what a great great letter they think you
sent and what a wonderful person you are for passing it along?

Do you really think your friends will write you back more if you send chain
letters instead of writing your own emails or at least sending them something
that didn't come in a fwd?

Do you know for sure what you're sending is for real or do you care?

Do you really believe every chain letter that comes along?

Do you think your friends will as well?

Even if the claims are obviously ridiculous?

Have you given any thought as to how your friends might feel at this apparent
assumption?

Do you believe anything that claims you are the one true most special friend of
the person who passed it along to you, even though they actually have a Cc: list
a mile long and the one who sent it to them has a Cc: list 10 miles long? How
personal is that?

Do you think your friends need reminders via chain letter of what a friend is,
what a smile is, what a hug, kiss, or love is, and do you really believe you are
spreading the love by passing the chain along to your contacts and fellow forum
members?

Do you really believe you are showing a great deal of consideration to people
who just want real communication and friendship without getting chain letters,
by neglecting to email or communicate with them because you're too busy spamming
your other contacts with the latest forward to grab you by your emotions?

WRONG!

Think about it. If all you ever get from someone is chain letters, does that
make you feel cared about? How much effort does it take to hit the blasted
forward button anyway!?

How would you feel if you found out your "friends" just couldn't be bothered to
send you even a short "Hi, how's it going, here's what I've been up to lately"
type note and keep up a fun correspondance with you, but they sent forwards and
more forwards to other people instead? Is that any way to be a friend?

And this is a big part of why "friendship" chain letters are so galling. They're
a sham and they don't actually make friendships stronger.

I have feelings too, and I get pretty hurt when I find out that people have been
ignoring me and not sending me personally written emails because they would
rather send chain letter forwards to others who aren't as likely to object or
caution against it. Forwarding an email isn't going to determine "who reads your
email" or make you a better friend etc. If the chain letter has some claim in it
such as forwarding it will get you more friends and not forwarding it will bring
you bad luck, or that you'll be a better friend or Christian or whatever by
passing on a piece of junk that's been all over the net, how do you think that
makes me feel, getting this from you? Come on, you must surely know better than
that! So why do you keep sending this junk to so many people? It's annoying and
embarrassing! I'm not asking you to stop emailing me, and I want to make that
clear. What I'd like you to do is stop ignoring and abandoning me, and tossing
me aside in favor of forwarding stupid chain letter junk to everyone else just
because maybe most aren't as vocal about it as I am, or because they actually
like getting this junk - after all, you must have liked it in order to send it
to so many people, why is completely beyond me!

But you can be sure I'll read your notes and give you much friendship and
gratitude if you write me your own words - or even send something else you've
found on the net that doesn't come from a fwd chain letter.

I've left email chat lists that were getting ruined by forwards. One of these
used to be a lot of fun until the owner decided it would be a "Christian" email
list. And what that really meant was a list where she and others started posting
religious chain letters!

Religious chain letters -

I got a lot to get off my chest about them, so this is long.

God doesn't work through spam, and some of these religious chain letters are
coercive crap, hoaxes, or both. Remember the infamous anti-Harry Potter chain
letters, and the bogus Touched By an Angel petition?

One of these, and I think it was a HP forward, actually originated on the satire
site, theonion.com.

Other hoaxes targetting Christians, I'm pretty sure at least some were started
by anti-Christian twits who wanted to get a good har har at the expense of
Christians, and what better way to get a laugh at someone else's expense than by
starting a hoax and setting your target audience in a panic?

And this holds true for those who make up dying kid hoaxes, false accusations of
anything really distasteful or heinous against a company or person, or simply
hoaxters who try to scare or outrage generally everybody with some tale or
other, and then claim AOL said it was so and that Yahoo and Microsoft were in on
it.

Hoaxters who make up chain letters that play on our emotions to get us passing
their junk along are scum.

Back to religious chain letters -

Prayer chain letters - no thanks! You could be praying for someone who actually
doesn't exist. Furthermore, I don't, and you shouldn't need chain letters
telling you/me who and what to pray for, how, and when. And no, a prayer isn't
more powerful if you hit the forward button immediately after reciting a prayer
written out in a chain letter..

Stories in forwards, no thanks. Many are designed to make you sad or at least
make you cry. Many aren't true, some are, and others can't be verified. Some
attribute events falsely to certain people. Most just get under my skin, I
especially detest the one about the angels in the alley that protected a girl
from getting molested because she believed in God enough. What about the other
girls that didn't get this protection? If those angels were worth their salt
they would've punished the molester and protected everyone.

I can remember hearing stories like that back at a Christian camp when I was a
kid. Only it wasn't an alley and a molester, it was about people on boat trips,
where the unbelievers sunk and the ones who believed were saved. It might
impress a little kid but not me. Are we supposed to go "Hey, look at us, ha ha
ha if we'd been on that ship it wouldn't have sunk because we believed!"
Puhleeze! Good and bad happens to everyone, whether they believe or not.

Someone once sent me a chain letter story about a drawbridge where this guy's
son got in the way of the operations of it and the guy's dilemma was either to
not extend the bridge and kill a bunch of people on a train, or extend the
bridge, let the train go ahead and have his kid get killed in the run-over but
the passengers would be saved.

I heard that one at this same camp - probably before it became a chain letter. I
hated it then and still do.

It's not a decision I've had to make, ever hope to have to make, and as for what
I'd do in that situation I don't know and don't care to ponder. Neither do I
care to muse on the comparison between this guy and God's decision to sacrifice
Christ which is the jist of the whole grim tale. I quite honestly don't
understand that either, though I know and appreciate why it was done. But that
doesn't mean I have to love the whole story. I do not love the idea of
crucifiction, period, and cannot comprehend how anyone could commit such heinous
acts to another living thing.

It's bad enough sadists lived in the ancient world. We're supposed to be in the
modern, enlightened world, people are supposed to be smarter and civilized, but
sadists still exist in the world. I can't get my head around that one either.

That was a tangent. Back to - oh yeah, chain letters.

Then there are the happier religious tales of some miracle or other. These are
not so bad if they're true, and as long as the usual chain letter demands to
pass them along are not there. But, and this is a very big but - just because a
forward shouts "This is a true story!" does not mean it is! So, before passing
them on, it's always a good idea to validate them first. A quick trip to
Snopes.com Breakthechain.org and TruthOrFiction.com and keying in a few words
that appear in the story somewhere, should bring up some results.

But the trouble is, most forwarders couldn't be bothered - it's just easier to
hit that forward button! And once again, if I get it, I have to do the work for
them and let them know if the story was bunk. Argh! I usually don't reply to
these if they are true, because really, what is there to say?

Some of the worst religious chain letters, and there are a lot of them, go on
about how Christians and their religion is facing all out attack from everywhere
and is practically going extinct while every other religion is getting embraced
and accepted, and how in order to save Christianity and stand up for God and
show what a good Christian you are, you must pass on the chain letter! After
all, as one such forward puts it, if you don't pass it on, you must be ashamed
of God, so God is ashamed of you.

I call that cyber-bullying and blackmail. It's exactly the same as the forward
that calls you heartless, lazy, or selfish if you don't pass it along to all
your friends so that 2 cents can go to fight some fictional kid's disease and
keep them alive.

Bullcrap!

God doesn't work through chain letters, especially if they're paranoid
exaggerations and even out and out lies designed to get religious people into a
panic. This panic reaches a peak around Christmas time, when every religious
forward is whining about how Christmas is getting x-ed out everywhere and how
saying "Happy holidays" promotes the banning of "Christmas"

One particularly offensive chain letter of this type urges all Christians to
mailbomb the ACLU (the anti-Christ of the religious chain letter realm
apparently) with Christmas cards in order to shut down their operation. Oh, and
not just any Christmas card, they have to have scripture verses or Christian
references and pictures of the Nativity, no snowmen, Santa (He's actually Satan
yknow) etc.

Obviously I didn't send the twit the stack I blew in my head at him for the
better part of an hour.

Another moronic one I got from one of these people who habitually sends forwards
and can't be bothered sending me real notes. It was this lame-o rant abou how
"This is a CHRIST-mas tree!" It went on about how it wasn't a Hanukkah tree or
an islam tree or - I forget what else it said. The point was basically that
Christianity was getting threatened by the mere presence of people who have
other beliefs and customs and how we must lord it over all of them that WE ARE
THE ONES and they have no right to take away our religion simply by existing! Oh
yeah, and that we must also pass it on so we can keep our religion safe from
further threat!

Before that chat list got turned into a place for people to indulge their
addiction to religious forwards, it used to be full of lively, friendly, real
email notes back and forth, where anyone could start up and chip into any
conversation.

I'm one of very few Christians who dislike chain letters especially any that
exploits people's religious beliefs just to get them passing it on, true or not.
I see them for what they really are, misguided at best, utter bunk at worst. And
these do cause anti-Christian backlash, instead of bringing more people to
Christ. Unfortunately Christians and the politically right-wingers have done a
lot to get their bad reputation on the net for passing on chain letters. That's
not an asset, believe me.

I used to have a good friend - until she got on the net. She, like so many
others, got addicted to chain letters and she abandoned me in favor of sending
these forwards to other people - and I know this because someone else I know is
still on her recipiant list.

I am too upset with her for abandoning me to her chain letter addiction to write
to her any more. She once said she wasn't going to send "me" any more forwards -
and it's like, sheesh, that's not the point! Usually when people get that
mentality "Avoid sending forwards to *this person*" it almost always really
means "forget about this person and just go on spamming everyone else in your
contacts. Abandon anyone else who dares to set the record straight on a bogus
chain or simply protests at getting any from you. Blacklist them from your
contacts and just forget about them!"

Another person sent me a chain letter joke. She's a hot-head already, and got
really hissy when I sent back a reply pointing her to a Snopes page that
archived and debunked the chain. She got mad, pitched a fit at me and hasn't
sent me a personal/private email since. She can go fly a kite if that's her
attitude!

Another person who has been sending forwards to everybody in her contact list
but me, accidently sent me one. Argh! Then she sent me another letter,
apologizing for sending the chain to my address by mistake. Double argh! I
didn't write back, too upset to do so! What should I say? "That's okay." It's
not okay! The truth about how this made me feel? No, there really isn't a
gentler way of putting it and it would for sure hurt her feelings and then I'd
be the villain yet again. Do nothing? Oh sure, and keep it all in, not healthy.
It's got to come out somewhere.

What everyone who has ever done this to me owes an apology for is their
unfeeling act of abandoning me as a friend in favor of spamming their other
contacts with chain letters in any and all forms, whether it's email, wall post,
im note, or even text messages, if I actually used that feature on my cell
phone. You may not even realize that's what you've done, but it is, and it
hurts! Do forwards mean that much more to you than my friendship!?

I'd just like people to stop ditching me in favor of sending chain letters to
everyone else instead. I'd also like people to use a little common sense, and
listen to cautions against sending chain letters, and take those cautions to
heart.

Do you honestly think I'm convinced that you care all that much about me when
all I ever get from you is forwards, everything from viral jokes to
alarmist/political warnings/petitions to "factoids and quotes" that are very
likely in reality misquotes and not facts, pics of sicky cute but obviously
photoshopped animals doing crazy cutesy things, videos that are being circulated
all over the place that didn't actually come from you, but from a friend of a
friend of a friend, to gushy friendship chain letters that you didn't write, and
that I have seen posted on countless other places on the net? Gads, why not just
send a TV commercial, it comes out to about the same thing! Seriously, people,
think, please, think!

I am quite a chatty person who loves getting notes, replying back, I'd love it
muchly if people would post more notes on my Facebook walls, send me email, web
sites they like and/or they think I might like, (not from fwd emails though)
even recipes and media from their own collection (not from forwards they got
from friends of friends of contacts.) I want the real thing, not chain letters
trying to play substitute for communication and friendship, and I'm damn sick of
being ignored because people would rather just forward stuff even though they
gotta know a lot of it's fake!