from this page: with a few little additions from moi here and there.

"Oooh! An e-mail from someone I KNOW!" I'd say, "I wonder what it can be?". And then I'd open it. And be confronted with "101 Reasons Why It's Better To Be A Guy Than A Girl". And I'd SCREAM forever.

You see, I just cannot STAND forwards and chain e-mails, and I can't for the LIFE of me understand why people send them on. I mean, have you ever laughed at an e-mail titled "FW: Fw: Fw: Fw: Re: This is fun!!!"? Or been inspired by a chain e-mail containing a poem about drink-driving, or a story about some Mexican guy buying a carton of milk for his neighbor's wife or some other such equally ludicrously improbable tale? I haven't. This leads me onto one of the main problems with chain e-mails.

1) They are written by the sort of people who write chain e-mails. More than likely they would be spotty American teenagers with no friends and nothing to do but sit at a computer all day., trying to control the masses with dreck like: "ITS NATIONAL FRIENDSHIP WEEK!!! SEND THIS TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND TO THE PERSON WHO SENT IT TO YOU!" gratuitously tacked on to the bottom? No, no

So, why, oh WHY do people whose literary talent rarely even approximates to a correct usage of punctuation and grammar feel the need to foist upon us poem after joke after inspirational story? And, more to the point, why do people read these things and actually SEND THEM ON???? Which brings me neatly to my next point.

2) People who send on e-mails are like the people who write them. But with less creativity.

Here's a scenario for you to mull over. Imagine that you're incredibly bored and, as a last resort, decide to go on the Internet and have a look around for some interesting sites. "There are literally MILLIONS of websites out there," you think to yourself, "Each a suppository for varying amounts of information on extremely diverse subjects. Almost every interest I have, no matter how obscure or perverted, shall be catered for on some website or other, and although variations in quality are immense, there is SO much out there that it cannot FAIL to entertain me for the awkward half-hour between "Friends" and "Frasier"! Why, the very beauty of the 'Net is its INCREDIBLE eclecticism! And whilst I am on, I shall check my e-mail. Ooh, one new message downloading! I wonder what it could be......

Why, it's a forward with a big, honking attachment! Which will take forever to download, and shall doubtless turn out to be a collection of pictures of men on bicycles taken at HILARIOUSLY unconventional angles! Ker-CHING! Well, I know what I'LL be doing for the next half-hour! Ah, forwards...... Eases the pain......"

DOES THAT SOUND LIKELY TO YOU? Because it certainly DOESN'T to me. Just who ARE these people, that take it upon themselves to inflict their own particular brand of 'entertainment' on the rest of us? They're like the really bad karaoke singers who start belting out "I Will Survive" when you're right in the middle of a pleasant conversation. Only, instead of actually singing THEMSELVES, they play a tape-recording of someone else singing, someone who you've never seen, never heard of, and pray to GOD you'll never meet. Because, if you DID happen to bump into them on your way home one lonely winter night with no witnesses around, and they started telling you a story called "The Boy Who Never Gave Up" or "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down", your next prayer to God would be a rather lengthy one, involving a fair old bit of explaining on your part. But, most of all, ABOVE ALL about these people, ONE thing gets to me. It's the knowledge that they haven't sent it to me for ANY real reason, other than my presence in their address book. Now, I wouldn't mind half as much if someone read a forward, thought "Ooh! This is the sort of thing (Insert name) would find funny!" and then sent it on to me, with the best of intentions. But I DO mind when someone says "Ooh! A forward! Another chance to INDISCRIMINATELY inflict upon EVERYONE with whom I have had ANY sort of correspondence in the last 5 years a completely inane and utterly pointless exercise in showing-off!!". Because I'm fairly convinced this is the main reason they do it, you know.

1) To show that they receive forwards, and thus to prove that they have friends.

2) To let everyone on their mailing-list see how big their mailing-list is, and further propagate the myth that they have lots of friends.

3. Because they think some stupid sappy preachy friendship forward is more sincere, inspirational, and more appreciated than an actual personal email typed up by them! Heaven forbid they should actually send you their OWN ORIGINAL THOUGHTS!! They have no clue how insulting it is to keep getting preached at by stupid friendship chains or religious forwards that tell you you must not love God enough if you don't send on a crummy forward! They don't stop to think how irritating it is to get nothing but forwards from them with all this sap, corn, useless and out of date email petitions, gossip and rumors designed to blacken some famous person's reputation, etc.

And so it is that the rage induced by my finding a forward in my mail is directly proportional to the number of unfortunates who have also had their Inboxes violated in a similar fashion. The message is: there is more than enough schytte on the Internet as it is, without the relative sanctity of my mail server becoming a suppository for further crap. Forward-senders, no-one is impressed by your slip-shod attempts to affirm your social circles. For, when all's said and done, anyone who thinks that repeating and rehashing something that wasn't even worth saying in the first place is an adequate substitute for proper human contact needs their head examined. With a baseball bat.

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