Chain Letters

Recently, I received an email from a church friend who begged me to send this email to as many people as I could. This email originated on Nov 19, 2008, and the subject was that Microsoft/Bill Gates was initializing a Beta test to have people email each other claiming that he would pay $200-300 for each email you send and for each email you send that is sent to another email, $300. (I'm sure he'd not be pleased that his company and personal name be used so basely.) This was supposedly on Good Morning America. Before even considering the validity of this claim, I preceded to email about four or five of my family and friends. The next day I realized that there was no way that Bill Gates or Microsoft could actually locate each emailer and emailee. Duh! I guess I just went on auto pilot. I searched Good Morning America and found nothing, of course. It's more likely that someone wanted to see how many people would believe this and email their friends and associates.

Last month, I received a chain letter via snail mail, hand written, to me. This one's instruction were pretty direct and simple; You're supposed to mail a one dollar bill to five people, which will add your name to the list of people to be mailed, and wait for them to send to other people, so you can start receiving one dollar bills in the mail yourself. Eventually, the money is purported to start pouring in just by writing a letter to strangers. This time, my inherent wariness kicked in when I actually held this letter in my hands and read it. I recognized it for what it was, a ridiculous waste of time and paper.

Chain mail letters are so common that we should all ignore them, whether emailed or hand written, but our very human incurable curiosity drives us to read them and sometimes participate in the chain for no other reason but inquisitiveness. It still behooves me to understand why we would lower ourselves to such banal behavior, and, in addition to that, why a person would choose to waste their time to start a chain letter. Although, it may seem silly to even bother to write an article about this subject. I couldn't help sharing it with you. I would love to receive comments about this subject from the public, so please feel free to post your opinions.