This
morning I received another chain email from a good friend who means
well. She had forwarded one of those
sappy messages that wraps a not-so-veiled threat in a puppies-and-rainbows
feel-good message. These things are crafted by
someone—probably a lot of different people—for purposes that have nothing to do
with the content. Let’s deconstruct the
message to see how it works.
The
subject line made me cautious immediately:
“There all true.” Anyone who doesn’t understand the difference between “they’re,” and
“there,” probably does not have great words of wisdom for me.
Granted, I’m an intellectual snob, but proper use of language is
important if you want to communicate accurately.
So
here’s how this email goes. We start off
with an order followed immediately by a nice statement and then a threat:
Read this and I mean REALLY read this!
This is without a doubt one of the
nicest good luck forwards I have received.
I hope it works for you – and me!
You have 6 minutes.
Say
what? Is the bomb ticking? What if it takes me more than six minutes to
REALLY read this? Will my computer
explode? Let’s continue:
There’s some mighty fineadvice in these words, even if
you’re not superstitious. This has been
sent to you for good luck from the Anthony Robbins organization. It has been sent around the world ten times
so far.
Hmmm. The Anthony Robbins “organization.” Does this mean the Anthony Robbins Foundation
or are the authors just trying to sound like it? Two words are run together so someone did not
proofread very well. And I guess that I’m
supposed to be impressed by the fact that it has been around the world 10
times. But how did they measure
that? Is there an app for tracking the
distance an email travels? And from
where to where? If I send an email to
someone in Tokyo, does that count as halfway around the world?
Do not keep this message.
Oh,
don’t worry about that.
This must leave your hands in 6 MINUTE. Otherwise you will get a very unpleasant surprise. This is true, even if you are not superstitious,
agnostic, or otherwise faith impaired.
Wow. The time limit for sending it on has been
repeated and emphasized but they left the S off the word MINUTE, which
reinforces my suspicion that the author speaks English as a second
language. The threat is also
repeated. I will get a very unpleasant
surprise even if I don’t believe that will happen (I don’t), if I’m agnostic (God is behind the threat with a stopwatch in His hand), or if I’m
otherwise faith impaired. This paragraph
is the first time that religion has been mentioned and it’s a pretty vague reference
but I guess that might motivate someone who believes that God is actually tracking what
I do with this email.
What
follows is a list of 21 uncontroversial statements that sound wise and
profound. They are designed to give the
reader both a good feeling and also to give him/her a reason to pass the
message along. After all, without these
statements, the message is really just orders and threats and who’s going to
send something like that to 15 of their best friends? Here’s a couple to give you an idea:
ONE. Give
people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
FIVE. When you say, “I’m sorry, look the person in
the eye.
TEN: In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.
FIFTEEN: Say ‘bless you’ when you hear someone sneeze.
See
what I mean? They sound good but there’s
no real substance to them.
Having sucked you in this far, the email moves on to the
real instructions:
Now, here’s the
FUN part! Send this to at least five
people and your life will improve
Umm,
why will it improve? Did Pope Francis
bless this email? Did the Dalai Lama
meditate on it? Did the author light
candles, say a novena, fast for a month, or hoist prayer flags? Why would I believe that this email--or any email--has the
power to improve my life? Well, the
author thought about that and provided some seemingly quantitative rationale:
1 – 4 people: your
life will improve slightly
5 – 9 people: your
life will improve to your liking
9 – 14 people: you
will have at least 5 surprises in the next 3 weeks
15 and above: your life
will improve drastically and everything you ever dreamed of will begin to take
shape.
Clearly,
the author wants this email passed along to as many people as possible. But why?
Hmmm. Could it be that the email
contains some kind of malware, like a keyboard logger or a way to steal email
addresses? Call me cynical, but somehow
I think that getting hacked is a whole lot more likely than blessings raining down
upon me.
A true friend is someone who reaches for
your hand and touches your heart Do not keep this message.
Now
we’re back to the mixed messages. A
statement aimed at making you feel the the true friend who will reach
out to all his/her friends by forwarding this message is followed by the
command not to keep it. Well, why
not? If it’s so great, why not hold on
to it and read it every day? I’m just
saying. Oh, that missing period between
sentences once again raises my suspicions about the source of this email.
This is without a doubt one of the nicest good luck forwards
I have received. Hope it works for you –
and me!
Well,
it’s not going to work for you, baby, because I’m not going to pass it on to
anybody. But it’s probably too late for
me since I opened the email already. I
deleted it and emptied the trash but my system is probably toast by now. Don’t be surprised if you receive some junk
email from me in the next few days. And
now the wrap up:
You have 6 minutes.
In
case you didn’t get the threat before, here it is again. The author wants to reinforce the importance
of you sending it out to as many friends as possible as quickly as
possible. Well, the six minutes are long
gone and I don’t expect to experience any bad luck real soon. Why?
Two reasons: (1) I already got the bad luck from opening this email, and
(2) an email has no magical power to affect your life for better or worse. It’s
an email. It’s probably also loaded with
malware and there’s no good luck in that for anyone except the originator.
I
have said this before and I’ll say it again:
Please don’t send me chain emails.
I will break everyone I receive every time. I repeat:
Every. Time. I feel good about
doing this because I think chain emails are just a con job in an electronic
medium. Oh, and I have broken many of
them but never experienced any bad luck or ill fortune as a result.
I’ll
finish up with the email’s number 18: “Don’t
let a little dispute injure a great friendship.” I know my friend meant well in sending me
this email. Like most people who forward
these things, she had no idea of its real content and intentions. I hope she doesn’t take this post as criticism
because that’s not its intention. I do
hope that you also take my example. Break
those fake feel-good chain emails every time.
Every. Time.
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