Chain Letters, Friday the 13th, Black Cats and more…

Last night B got this chain letter via text message. It started out with this horrible story about a (presumably) tweenage girl coming home to find her mother murdered, and then dumped in an upstairs bedroom closet. After the tweenage girl found her brutally murdered mother, she ran screaming down the stairs, at which point, some mystical event resulted in a tragic ending to her life. The text message included a picture of some generic stairs in some generic house. (I admit, I had to do a double take, because I initially thought the picture was taken inside my own house.) The story ended with the instruction that if the recipient didn’t forward this to two million people, the same thing would happen to them. Hogwash.

So, here it is, Friday the 13^th. I don’t think of myself as superstitious, but I cannot help but recognize that today is supposedly unlucky by virtue of the numerical date and the day of the week. I also grimace whenever I think a black cat has crossed my path, quickly contemplate all that can go wrong in the next seven years if I break a mirror, and I would not walk under a ladder without good reason. (Like, if someone double dog dared me to.) All of these things are silly, and I know it. I will not, however, forward a chain letter. It doesn’t matter what tragedy awaits me, or how rich I’ll be, or even if Bill Gates himself is somehow tracking the email and planning on sharing his Microsoft millions with me if I forward it on. I’ll just keep my silliness to myself, thank you very much. I won’t impose it on you.

I posted something about this horrible chain letter on my Facebook status, and had a couple of very interesting comments. One of my friends identified chain letters as a form of bullying. Wow. Never thought about it that way, but that is what it is. Anytime you influence someone to do something out of fear of retaliation (even in the form of bad luck), that is exactly what it is.

I have heard before that most chain emails are started by people who sell email lists to spammers. Look at the next chain email you receive. I’ll bet it will include forward, after forward, after forward. Most of the time you can click on those forwards, and instantly have access to the email addresses of a whole bunch of people you don’t know. In fact, depending on your email program, those addresses are probably stored on your computer or in your address book in some form or fashion. Now, suppose for a moment that a friend of the friend that sent you the chain mail gets a virus on their computer. This virus scans their computer for email addresses, and of course, your address is right beside theirs in the “to” line of the email. The virus then sends out a spam message that includes a link to some website that sells drugs, or porn, or watches, or whatever else is out there that you really don’t want. Every time you forward one of these things, your email address, as well as the addresses of all your friends is embedded in that message. You don’t know where it will end up.

So, I’d simply ask, if you get a cute picture, or a funny joke or something else that you would like to share with me and 47 thousand of your closest friends, please do me the courtesy of sending it using the BLIND CARBON COPY or BCC function in your email. (All the email programs have it – check your ‘help’ screens if you don’t see it.) By doing so, you keep the email addresses of your friends private. It is the courteous thing to do.

And the next time a chain letter comes around, remember that I really don’t want it. I will break the chain. And, by the way, if you don’t share this blog message with 3,983,428,120 of your closest friends, I will break out my voodoo doll.