November 17, 2008
Viral Emails, and the Diseases They Spread
A
few days ago, a friend forwarded to me an email that posed as a collection
of witticisms and insights by Andy Rooney. What it was, in fact, was a
large, sickening pile of mean-spirited and small-minded inanities proclaimed
by a timid, anonymous wuss who apparently thought it suited the common good
for him to
falsely attribute his stupidity to Andy Rooney, i.e., to hide behind
another person's name, rather than take responsibility for the steaming
cauldron of whimpering fear and whining anger that is his mind. The
sad thing is: many people who receive this particular email will believe
that Andy Rooney actually stands by the statements it contains!
Which brings us to today's
Oddity of Man, which is:
The Cadre of Hard-Core True Believers
in All Things Email.
You undoubtedly know members of this particular
cyber-spatial sub-cult. You receive forwarded emails from them
(sometimes frequently).
A typical email forwarded by a True Believer may
include a long, dreary string of simplistic verse in over-sized font and
cradled by grammar school graphics. The verse poses as the retelling
of an angelic innocent's demise that is caused by one thoughtless, uncaring
act of evil. You are then exhorted to pray, make one special wish, and
then forward the noxious email to ten of your very best friends within the
hour. The promise is made that, if you do this, the Archangel Gabriel
himself will visit you personally, hug you fondly, kiss you smack on the
mouth, and grant your wish. If, on the other hand, you fail to forward
your friend's email, an angry God will condemn you to a barren and unhappy
marriage outside of your species.
Here are some other things that you need to know about
True Believers in All Thing Email.
On one hand, their numbers tend to dwindle because
they pour whatever assets and income they have into futile projects and
become destitute and homeless, eventually losing access to computers and
their numerous email addresses. True Believers have
collectively handed over fortunes to Nigerian lawyers promising them
incredible inheritances. They have also spent millions failing to
become rich at home stuffing envelopes, auctioning cheap merchandise on the
Internet, or even ― if you can believe it!
― playing the real estate market.
True Believers throw untold millions
each week at emails promising longer, harder penises, bigger breasts and
slimmer waists. They happily hand over even more for pills that
promise to help them sleep, and keep them awake
― pills to make them more mentally alert, and to mellow
them out ― pills to help them lose weight, and
to gain weight ― pills to help them obtain
erections, and to help them obtain even more erections.
In this vein, so to speak, True
Believers also whole-heartedly respond to emails with money to help them
find that one special person who is sweet enough, loving enough, and just
plain desperate enough to spend the remainder of their years with them in a
dedicated relationship, pretending to care
― and also for hot, sleazy one night stands with a
"young sensual blonde housewife whose high-powered executive husband ignores
her and leaves her unsatisfied, and who lives in your town and wants to meet
you tonight!" ― or the "baby-faced teen who just
can't get enough and who lives in your town and wants to meet you tonight!"
― or, my personal favorite, the "bisexual, transsexual
Japanese school girl bondage princesses who live in your town and
want to meet you tonight!"
On the other hand, the number of True
Believers tends to grow because, as a wise man once observed, "there's
a sucker born every minute."
On balance, one might expect True
Believers to become extinct eventually, simply because of their
medical beliefs and practices.
True Believers believe that
being overweight is healthy.
They believe they can
cure cancer by avoiding all sugar and meat, and engaging in heavy breathing
exercises.
Best of all, they believe they can
stop heart attacks by rapid, rhythmic coughing.
Sundry additional minutiae concerning
True Believers:
They believe that the
Internal Revenue Services will pay them $80 to complete an online customer
satisfaction survey.
Female True Believers never use
antiperspirant because
it can cause breast cancer.
They have a fondness for
unverifiable parables of the miraculous.
They believe the simple
act of forwarding email can bring them free merchandise.
And they believe the
failure to forward email can cause death.
In sum, the Cadre of Hard-Core
True Believers in All Things Email are fine and simple folk who fear all
manner of things, who believe in all manner of things, and who wait
anxiously for that glorious Day of Universal Redemption when they receive in
their in boxes an email that reads: "If everyone forwards this email to
everyone else, and everyone keeps forwarding all the forwarded emails that
they receive to everyone else, and if . . . ."
* * *
But I must be fair to my
friend referenced at the top. When I peevishly replied to her email ―
referring her to, among other things, an
article on the trans-Atlantic slave trade that she clearly needed, she
replied with a simple, "Hahaha, sorry. I didn't read the whole thing.
I just forwarded it along." My friend is not so much a True
Believer in All Things Email, as she simply is a True Consumer of All
Things Email.
Perhaps, upon our next
meeting, I shall entwine my fingers in her hair and gently bounce her head
against the nearest wall. If she complains, I can always reply, "Hahaha,
sorry. I didn't check to see if the wall was hard. I just
bounced your head against it."
