Stop Email forwarding - Save Lives
Originally found at this link which no longer seems to exist.
Now presented here for your reading pleasure.
Stop Email forwarding - Save Lives
A young man was diagnosed with a life-threatening bout of food poisoning after eating part of a cooked rat that had fallen into his eight-piece chicken dinner that he had purchased from Kentucky Fried Chicken.
After his recovery, he felt great, and remembering that it was National Friendship week, so he asked his geeky roommate to go out and celebrate with him.
His roommate didn't feel like going out, because he wanted to stay at home and bake cookies from a Neiman-Marcus recipe that some woman had paid $250 for and had forwarded to every person in America over the internet.
So the man took himself out. He went to a local bar and met a young woman, who bought him several drinks and got him drunk.
When he awoke in the morning, he found himself back home in a tub full of ice, with a note taped to his mirror saying "Call 911 to save your life." The man was horrified to find two long incisions on his back, where his kidneys had been removed.
He went to find his phone, which was not working.
He was afraid to call in through his computer because he knew that there was an email in his inbox with a subject line titled "Join the Crew," which he knew contained a virus which would destroy his hard drive. He knew this was a real virus and not a hoax, because he was a computer programmer.
At the turn of the millennium, he had been assigned to a special task team at work, whose goal was to solve the Y2K problem and prevent Armageddon in the year 2000.
Luckily, there was a hospital right down the street from his house.
This was a very famous hospital, because there was a little girl there dying from cancer that had sent out emails all over the world, asking people to forward them to as many persons as they could, and the American Cancer Society would donate five cents for every email forwarded.
The American Cancer Society eventually went bankrupt from making all these donations, and Bill Gates of Microsoft felt so bad for the Cancer Society employees that he gave them, in addition to all of the people that received and responded to the "Let's All Go" email, a free trip to Disney World and $5,000 cash.
The young man grabbed his keys and was making his way out the door to go to the hospital when he noticed that it was very dark in his roommate's room. He stepped inside and turned on the light to find his roommate's decapitated body on the floor, and a message painted in the blood on the wall that read, "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light last night?"
Horrified, he rushed out of the house, got in his car, and headed for the hospital.
On his way to the hospital, he couldn't help but remember that he had received an email a few weeks ago with an angel on it made of X's and O's, and he was supposed to forward it to 10 people. If he had done so, he would have good luck, and if he didn't, he would have bad luck.
The young man hadn't taken the time to think about ten people that he cared enough about to send the email to, so he casually deleted it from his inbox. Now, he was sure that this was the cause of all of his bad luck.
At that moment, he decided that he would change his life and become a new person. From that day forward, he would make a greater effort to show care and concern for other people, and would make every effort to serve and sacrifice for his fellow man.
As he was approaching the hospital, he noticed a car fast approaching without its headlights on. In his first humble act of kindness to another person, he flashed his lights at the car as it passed them.
The car, which was full of gang bangers, turned around, ran him off the road, and shot him.
Tragically, he died at the scene of the crime.
The lesson to be learned here is clear: This poor young man would have never died had it not been for all of the random email forwards that he had received.
Think of all the other lives that are senselessly lost each day due to random email forwarding.
So let's stop the forwarding madness. Let's save lives. Together we can make a difference!