I am Mrs. Heather Walker, I am in the process of setting up a charity |
Evangelists in the mid eighteen hundreds preached there were giants in the earth. Playing on the gullibility of the general public and certain so called experts, a large piece of gypsum was carved into the likeness of a giant man, buried, “discovered” by well diggers and authenticated as a petrified humanoid giant. This stone giant, called the Cardiff Giant, was then displayed to the public at a dollar a head. Thousands flocked to see this marvel. A two-thirds interest in the giant was sold for thirty thousand dollars. This scam was so successful that a few months later, a second group “discovered” another giant stone fossil of a man. “There’s a sucker born every minute,” said con artist David Hannum in 1870.
Click the forward button. Today we have a modern twist on the birth of suckers, the email chain letter. We have all received them. Some of the more ridiculous are the ones that claim Microsoft or AOL are testing a new email tracing system and every person that forwards this email will receive $250. If only it were true. Our issues with hurricane recovery could be solved if everyone in the United States simply forwarded one email. 350 million people times $250 is roughly nine hundred billion dollars. Forward it a couple more times and the national debt goes away all thanks to Microsoft and AOL.
Click the forward button. There is the missing girl from the tsunami that can’t remember anything so please forward this email to everyone you know and help her find a relative. Or the one that says the American Cancer Society will donate three cents for every forward of this email and please send a copy to some listed email address. Of course, lets not forget the sappy, I am your friend, I love you poem and please forward this to everyone you love. (Believe me, some chain letter writer sitting in a basement in Hamburg Germany doesn’t know you or love you.) And my favorite, the businessman that woke up in his hotel room with his kidneys taken by an international gang of thieves selling these organs on the international black market for body parts.
Click the forward button. Chain letters play to various facets of human nature. Greed is a motivator. How many of you sent that Microsoft email on to every person in your email address book then figured out a few months later that no check was in the mail? Another motivator is our heartstrings. The missing child, what can it hurt to simply hit the forward button? Raising money to fight cancer, surely no one would kid about that. Fear is a good inducement to action. Mix it with a story about skilled medical thieves, some unsuspecting business travelers, add a little bit of black market intrigue, an organ that we know can be transplanted and we begin to think maybe there is a well funded organ transplant black market. Even amazement is used to motivate you to hit the forward button. For example, right after the shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry, photos supposedly taken by an Israeli satellite showed the explosion of the shuttle in orbit. Interestingly, the photos looked exactly like the opening scene from the 1998 movie Armageddon.
Click the forward button. "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it…” Joseph Goebbels (Propaganda Minister) Some of these chain emails have been around for a decade. Why do they persist in filling up our inboxes? Don’t the people that send these to us realized what they are? (Martha, did you forward that email about our Congressmen not paying into social security?) I know that it only takes a second to move the mouse over the forward button, but think about the person that gets the email, and realizes that it is a hoax. Now what does that say about the person that sent it?
So, the next time an email arrives and you are tempted to hit the forward button, take a moment and go to http://www.snopes.com or http://www.breakthechain.org and check the validity of the story. Then decide if it needs to be forwarded or deleted.
Please forward this column to everyone you know.
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