E-mail chain letters deceive

Every morning, I check my e-mail in the event that something of dire importance has been… Every morning, I check my e-mail in the event that something of dire importance has been sent to me over the course of the night. Instead, I usually find myself sorting through junk mail and chain letters.

The spam doesn’t annoy me; I find it more hilarious than believable that a prince from Nigeria needs money to save his family. The e-mails that do bother me are particular kinds of chain letters that are sent to me in bulk.

I have no problem with chain e-mails that threaten me with tragedy or bad luck if I dare to delete them rather than passing them on to 68 people in 10 seconds. I happen to like toying with fate, and oftentimes I find myself waiting a few moments for the promised catastrophe to occur after I press the delete key. Fortunately, despite the massive amounts of chain e-mails I’ve refused to forward, I’ve never once been the victim of any of their ominous threats.

The particular chain e-mails that drive me crazy are the ones that can easily be mistaken for propaganda. Such letters attempt to argue a point or state an opinion. I find nothing wrong with spreading e-mails about important news or beliefs; I’m guilty of occasionally sending my friends e-mails about issues that are important to me. Some of the chain e-mails that get passed around, however, are filled with fallacies and bizarre exaggerations.

I have reached a point where I simply cannot stand reading another chain e-mail that tries to prove a point with false information. Perhaps I expect too much from the Internet, but I always hope that people will begin to catch on and stop forwarding glaringly false e-mails. Upon the realization that trying to stop such e-mails is futile, I’ve decided to fight back by refusing to pass on any e-mail found to be false. In doing this, I’ve discovered the chain e-mails that are the most popular and that need to be discontinued.

If an e-mail suggests that sending it to a hundred people will save the life of a small child, it’s not real. Millionaires and businesses cannot track how many people a letter is sent to. It’s highly improbable that the “generator” of the e-mail would ever be able to spend enough time and energy figuring out just how many e-mail addresses a single letter has spread to. E-mails like this can be safely deleted without any guilty feelings.

An e-mail that begins with something similar to “I’m not a racist but…” has been written by a racist. This applies to anything with a warning about not being a bigot, a sexist or even a liberal. Placing a disclaimer at the beginning of an article does not change its contents, and if the author feels the need to add a disclaimer, it is usually only to save himself from looking bad. Thus, the content in such an e-mail is usually some sort of uneducated, rambling attempt to justify a personal opinion. These should be deleted immediately.

The story of a brave, young student in a classroom standing up for what he believes, against the tyranny of a biased teacher is a very popular e-mail. If there is a surprise twist at the end with the speaker being a famous, historical person it is probably fabricated. While I’m sure Mark Twain and Albert Einstein stood up for what they believed in, it is not very practical to think that someone took down their speech verbatim before spreading it around the Internet. These can also be tossed.

My least favorite chain e-mails are ones that insinuate that certain people get what they deserve. One of the most popular e-mails of this type concerns Madalyn O’Hair, the founder of American Atheists who was murdered with two of her children. It reminds readers of her petition to ban religious shows, such as “Touched by an Angel,” from television. This e-mail suggests that her murder was justified because of her radical views and that most atheists will suffer the same fate. The entire message of the e-mail is horrendous for suggesting that certain murders are acceptable.

Furthermore, Madalyn O’Hair never even tried to get “Touched by an Angel” off the air. Those who receive this e-mail don’t bother to find out if the “fact” relayed in the chain message is true or not. Any e-mail filled with suspicious facts and petitions should be thrown away.

Not all chain letters are bad. Chain e-mails can be a lot of fun when they are used to send out jokes or update people on current events. They can also, however, be filled with lies and cruel or exaggerated statements. Rather than blindly forwarding them in their original form, take the time to make sure their facts are correct. A quick stop at Snopes.com — a Web site that specializes in debunking Internet myths — can clear away any misunderstandings. If going to Snopes takes up too much time, hitting the delete key doesn’t take much effort. I highly suggest it.

Send Shannon chain e-mails at slb46@pitt.edu.