[vanity rant] The Rant about Forwarded Emails

Forwarded emails | 01-04-05 | 4mycountry

[4mycountry]

Ok, forgive me. I know this is blatant abuse of privileges. But I just have to rant a bit. I got an email today that was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’, and now, I just have to rant about it. Please bear with me. And feel free to rant yourselves.

You know how we all get forwarded emails? Yeah. We get ones that have advice on life, cute little sayings, witty one-liners, adorable pictures of puppies and kittens, faith-builders, testimonies, amazing stories, pledges of eternal friendship, etc. We get them every day. Something gets forwarded to us, all the freaking time.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have – almost – nothing against forwarded emails. I enjoy them, for the most part. I like the little stories, and the sharp witty jabs, and, yes, on occasion, I even enjoy the cute puppy pictures.

But you know what I hate?

I hate the stuff like this – and note that this is directly copied and pasted from an email I got a little over two hours ago:

> Do not keep this message.
>
> It must leave your hands in 6 MINUTES. Otherwise you will get a very
>unpleasant surprise. This is true, even if you are not superstitious,
>agnostic, or otherwise faith impaired.

Send this to at least 5 people and your life will improve. 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.

Wait a minute, what?! Are you seriously asking me to believe, that if I send this email to 15 people or more in the next six minutes, that my life will ‘improve drastically and everything I ever dreamed of will being to take place”?! Because I forwarded a stupid email?!

And come on – the thread of a very unpleasant surprise if I *dare* not to forward the email on. Oh come ON, people! Very unpleasant surprises happen all the time – you know why? That’s LIFE! Life throws very unpleasant surprises at you like clouds throw rain! Am I supposed to truly believe that if I don’t send one insignificant *email* on, that the next unpleasant things that happens to me is because of it?! Am I really supposed to believe that God will slam down holy judgement upon me for not forwarding an email? I’d like to think that God has a whole lot of better things to do than smite me for not sending on an email. Seriously.

I hate forwards with lines like these (again, all taken from actual emails I’ve gotten):

-You will have good luck for Two Years if you send this to 8 people or more

- 8 angels r sent 2 u, U must send them to 8 people including me. In 8 minutes u will! receive something u have long awaited.

- Something good will happen to you tonight at 11:11 PM . This is not a joke. Someone will either call you or will talk to you online and say that they love you.

- You must send this on in 3 hours after reading the letter to 10 other people. If you do this, you will receive unbelievably good luck in love. The person that you are most attracted to will soon return to you. If you do not, bad luck will rear its ugly head at you. THIS IS NOT A JOKE! You have read the warnings, seen the cases, and the consequences. You MUST send this on or face dreadfully bad luck.

- [note: the following was in all caps. For the sake of sanity, I am putting it in proper lower case. This is, for me, the definitive of how low a forward threat can go. Expect a rant.] This is a special guardian angel…. You must pass this on to 5 people within the hour of receiving her.. After you do make a wish…. If you have passed her on, your wish will be granted and she will watch over you forever… if not.. her tears will flow and no wishes will be granted.

Ohhh my good golly molly. I *hate* ^ that one.

First of all – I tried to copy and paste the image here, but it kept getting messed up. It was one of those images that you can come up with using keyboard keys. Not a gif image. Not a jpeg. Not a picture. No color. Not big and intricate. About 110 by 80 pixels. And a grand total of four different keys were used. (, ), \, and /. The wing edged looked like this: ( \ / ), the head looked like (), the edged of the 'dress' were / and \ and the hands/arms looked like this \/. And that was it. Use your imagination.

Ok - am I supposed to earnestly believe that (a) this thing can watch over me for the rest of my life? For heaven’s sake, I can type that stupid thing in a few minutes! It’s a bunch of ( and ) and \ and / ! Second of all, am I supposed to believe that (b) if I don’t pass her on, her ‘tears’ will flow and no wishes will be ‘granted’? How can this thing cry, much less grant wishes? I mean, look at ‘her’! She doesn’t even have a danged FACE! It’s a ( and a ). Oh wait, I know – it’s the GUILT TRIP. You’re going to break the widdle pixel angel’s widdle heart if you don’t pass on the email. The only way they could have made this worse was to say, “If you don’t forward this she will cry, the other angels will pick on her and she will suffer long bouts of depression and cut her wings off and hang herself and then everyone in heaven will be heartbroken and go on a mass killing spree down here and lord knows we can’t fight angels and five random kittens will freeze to death in a cardboard box in New Jersey.”

*sigh*

Ok. I think I’m done. Sorry guys, I just feel insulted whenever I read forward fortune threats and predictions. Every time I read one, I go through this little rant in my head, and finally today, I just had to let it out. Much apologies.

Feel free to rant along and share your forwarded-email lines. Thankees ~

[Vor Lady]

I have tried telling my relatives who continue to spam me that I delete any and all forwarded e-mails, but they think I don't mean theirs! ARrrgggg!

[DLfromthedesert]

Any e-mail that looks like a chain letter is deleted and never forwarded, because, to me, it is anti-Christ, anti-God, and superstitious.

I've gotten that one, and it DOES rub me the wron way, but I just delete it and forget it.

[JoJo Gunn]

I don't get that sort of stuff all that often, and it's even rarer still that something is worth keeping or forwarding, but if I do I'll send it individually, and remove all the names/addresses at the top of the mail.

[metmom]

That's what I tell people, too. You never know when a forward from someone you know is a result of a virus. Anything with attachments that I'm not ABSOLUTELY sure about goes.

[Nea Wood]

The ones I love (NOT) go something like this:

"Poor little Timmy is dying in the hospital. But if you forward this e-mail, Walt Disney Jr./Bill Gates/Whoever has promised to send two cents for every e-mail that is forwarded, and then the doctors can save Timmy's life. Please have a heart and save the life of a poor, sweet, innocent little child! Thank you!!!!!!!!! But if you don't, well, all I can say is, how can you be so heartless that you won't even take two seconds to forward an e-mail to save a child's life?! you must be a mean b*****d, and what comes around goes around!!!!!!!!!!" LOL!

[Hillarys nightmare]

You want rant? Okay..........I'll rant a bit! I hate this stuff too!

I get some every now and then, and My wife has too many people she knows that can't send anything but this kind of crap!!!!!!!

Sometimes their mail will come in in forward batches of 6 to 15 of these stupid time wasting things. I am so put off by these type of emails that I once replied back to a couple of the folks that sent them, asking if they knew how to type anything of their own.

One got so offended that she has never sent me anything else. The other realized that she had found the perfect way to push my buttons and she began to send even more.

IN fact, one of these forward mails that was sent to my wife by one of her friend, turned out to be an " April Fools Joke", which after opened, contained a worm, that corupted the files of our OS.

We discoverd that many of our friends had also gotten this little april fools worm, and it had the same effect on their computers as well. Turns out that she had never sent it, and therefore had been generated by some other sorce using her IP address, using her contact list.

My wife then understood why it was, that I had been telling her not to open such mail like this, and to just delete the crap. I now just delete them, and say nothing to the sender.

[4mycountry]

Yeah, I think I got that one a month or so back. ;)