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? "
I have feelings too, and I get pretty hurt when I find out that people have been ignoring me because they would rather send chain letter forwards to others who aren't as likely to object or caution against it.
Sending/posting a forward is not 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 bogus junk that's been all over the net, how do you think that makes me feel, getting this from you? What sort of friend sends bullying email curses that tell you to pass them on to x number of people or to all your contacts or else? Not a real friend, or at least not one who thinks! It's idiotic, inconsiderate and rude!
How do you think it makes me feel to get all these sappy "friendship" chains with sickly smarmy stories or poems that are designed to tear-jerk, and preachy essays on what it means to be a friend, to have a friend, and how caring and sharing and loving and hugging is the only way to be and how you or I could die tomorrow, leaving the one left living to regret for the rest of their life that they didn't say those three little words via chain letter blast? And that's the only time some of you people can even be bothered to give me a second's worth of thought, and even then it isn't really a thought, I've become just another number on your list for getting these stupid forwards!?
Don't you people realize that the whole point of these emotional-yankers is to soften you up so you can't think for yourselves, and then you will just forward it on! Because that is the real goal of all chain letters! And you are all being used as cogs to keep the virals circulating!
I don't need to be preached at by some generic chain that's been passed around a million times by a million different people, and that I've gotten a number of times from 6 different friends, especially when they go on and on about what friendship is and how to be a friend. I don't want stories that are designed to put a downer into my day, or make me go "Ooooooohhhh! Aaaaaaaaawwwwwwweeee!" I don't even want true stories that have some sort of agenda twist tacked on to them to manipulate people into forwarding out of outrage or manufactured amazement or anything at all! And that goes Especially if they can't even be verified, or worse, they are out and out false.
I know what friends are, I know what hugs and kisses are. I know what love is, and you better believe me, it does not come from forwards!
You can't save your friends from criminals, the flu or anything else by passing on chain letters. You won't get money or a free laptop by sending out forwards to any number of people! A lot of the so-called facts in trivia and quote forwards are actually not true, and falsely attributed to people who never said or wrote what the chain claims they did.
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 writing me, just the opposite, in fact. 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'm sick of you people letting yourselves get pushed around by chain letters, and yes, that's exactly what it is! You all have absolutely no problem declining a real request in person or even in an actual email I have written. You have no problem telling me you can't talk, or you can't go out for coffee with me, or you have to take a raincheck on some get-together because something pressing has come up. But my gosh, you just don't have the spine to say "NO!" to chain letter forwards!
Something else way too many of you do is assume that because we're starting to email each other, that it's okay to send forwards, that you somehow think that's keeping in touch. Well, it isn't! If you ever wonder why I don't write you any more and I've stopped replying to emails you send, it's because you sent me chain letters! Sometimes I can reply with a site to debunk the forward, but I'll rarely make comments other than discourage forwarding activity of this crap. Other times I just don't reply at all because there wasn't an entry dealing with the particular forward on hoax-debunking sites, the love/luck and friendship chains are so numerous in their mutations that even though they are manipulative bullcrap, there are just too many for every site to debunk individually. You have no idea how upset I am with you when I get these! Too upset to be civil!
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 -
Yes, I am a Christian, so what I'm about to say may shock you.
Religious chain letters make me go particularly ballistic, you do not want to talk to me after sending me a religious forward with a bogus story and false prayer and guilt-tripping. Because I'd like to throttle anybody who sends these fraudulent things out
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 targeting 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, outrage or some sort of wave of deliberately enduced emotional state of wow?
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 -
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.
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.
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 about 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!
I screamed!
Of course it isn't a Hannukkah or Islam tree - those religions have their very own separate festivals and occasions, and their very own different symbols to go along with it!
Oh, goodness, that is probably why I thought she was a Christian falling for religious chain letters. Yes, she has always fallen for chain letters, but if she was a Christian at one time, she sure as heck isn't now, having become an anti-theist. Her chain letter addiction helped our friendship to die, and this anti-theism has definitely ended it.
But I'm not the only one who has lost friends because of people's chain letter addiction.
Just read this entry." It's short, but right to the point.
As I've said in the smash of that rotten chain:
If those angels were worth their salt they would've punished the molester and protected everyone.
That was a tangent. Back to - oh yeah, chain letters.
virals are paranoid patronizing deceptive distorted exploitive utterly bogus twisted manipulative insulting, blasphemous, perverted, scummy beyond the pale, crap and any combination of these that no Christian has any excuse to fall for.
It is no fun getting "picked" AKA spammed by friends/family/contacts or some dude named Zorin with silly stories about "Lunch with god" or some drunken father who got violent and his kid saw Jesus so wasn't even traumatized, or some Sick Woman dreamer probably named Edith Burns with a Confession Of Rights to believe in Easter and wonders if Jesus had email if he sent this chain letter that was supposed to give the devil a headache, and telling us who Jesus is and that he is our Friend In Need, and that God Supposedly Said we should Marry Them To Save Them because Life Is A Theater and how we should help give everybody a happy whispers day by being among the very special and unique 7% of people to pass along that long-handled spoon story, the Phoney ST. Theresa Prayer, the fake ST. Jude's good luck and not-so-holy picture, wish-granting hoax, the Mashiach chain, The Shaya Story, the one about The Room that got ripped off its real author when someone else took the credit, and that dreadful downer known as Jimmy's Letter From Heaven!
So basically if it's viral, just don't send it, period.Also, just because a forward shouts "This is a true story!" does not mean it is! You've seen other spam that shouts "This is not spam!" right? Well, the same applies to chain letters. Chances are if it shouts out "This is not a chain letter!" or "This is a true story!" it is a chain letter and very likely it is an untrue or at least partially untrue story. So, before passing them on, it's always a good idea to validate them first. A quick trip to one of sites and keying in a few words that appear in the story somewhere, should bring up some results.
You need to ask yourselves some hard questions.
Do you really believe you are doing your friends/contacts/fellow forum members a big favor?
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?