Okay, I may have exaggerated a bit. Forwarded e-mails usually don't give you a headache, but instead makes you go “Not again!?!” Here are ten common examples I'm pretty sure you can relate to:
- E-mails that tell you to say a short prayer and then pass on the mail to X number of people. “Do not break the chain. This has been going around the world for a hundred years.”, it says. Come on! I've probably received this kind of mail about fifty times in my entire four-year work experience. They must have been serious about the “going around the world”-thing! If not, then how come these mails always find me?!
- E-mails that say, “Look at the picture for sixty seconds, pass it on to fifty people, and tada! You'll get promoted or have a chance to work in a more progressive country!” Does anyone really buy this kind of stuff? I mean, yeah, at one point, I did try staring at it for a minute, maybe even more than that, and passed it on to a number of friends, but I did not get promoted at 11:59 am the following day like it said so! Aaaargh!
- Chain mails. I'm sure you've gotten one. The mail that says “Mr. Famous Personality got his letter and ignored it and he lost his job and his wife.” Or “Mr. Nobody resent the mail to twenty of his friends and he won a million dollars in a lottery the following day!” Again, come on! What if I got busy and wasn't able to pass on the mail twenty-four hours after I've opened it? Will I really lose my job, too? Sigh.
- Warning mails. “Do not use public toilets. There are poisonous spiders hiding in the toilet waiting for your cute butt so it can bite you and then you're dead the next day.” Are they really serious? What if I badly need to pee? I do have a social life, honey. I'm not at home every minute of the day. It only follows that, as much as I would like to listen to you, I need to use the public toilet.
- Mails that are supposed to be generating donations for a worthy cause. I'm not sure about this one. I do get lots of this and admittedly forward it to as many friends as possible just in case Yahoo really would donate a centavo for every mail I send. But, is this really serious? Can anybody tell me if this really works? Coz if it does, I'll just go on with the forwarding, and if not, I can go back to doing my job.
- Magic mails. These are the e-mails that say, “Read and scroll down and say a wish. Once you've passed it on to an x number of people (again!), the phone will ring and your crush will tell you he likes you!” Uhm, does reading the mail, scrolling down and forwarding it makes me a Prom Queen after 25 minutes? (the number of minutes still depend on your age, by the way!)
Yes, I know that when you send me an e-mail telling me not to drink Coke because it can clean the toilet bowl in minutes, you were just being concerned. I get that. I also happen to know that whenever you send me forward-or-else-lose-your-job-mails, you were just protecting your own interests. But can you do me a favor? Next time, try to ignore these mails. Think about this: If all of us would stop entertaining these kind of mails and supporting it by means of forwarding it to our friends, maybe these same mails would stop “going-around-the-world-for-a-hundred-years”.
Can't do it? Then please, delete me from your mailing list.
