GProgress

We all hate them.

We all know the dark horror of opening up our favorite email client and seeing a vast array of ‘FWD: RE: FWD: RE:” in our inbox. It’s the duty of having to delete them all, and feel guilty about it while doing so. We’ve all got our own stories about chain letters, so let me tell you mine.

About a year or so back when I had the generic hotmail email account, I used to get hoards of chain letters from friends who thought it was only right to fill up my measily 25 MB of storage with email’s that contained more email address’s than actual content. Boy I’m sure email harvesters loved chain letters filled with hundreds upon hundreds of email accounts. I never liked them. Chain letters are the spawn of Lucifer himself in my book’s. I would grudgingly go and see what they wanted me to do, although I never would do it. “Forward this to 15 people in the next ten minutes to find the love of your life!” - “Forward this to 25 people to having a dancing snail from Peru walk across your screen.” Wow, this is redundant!

Eventually I would just stop checking the contents of these email’s. I knew it would always be the same template. forward this to __ people in the next __ minutes/hours to have an (action or prize here)! I kept deleting and they kept on coming in. I grew tired of having to send them to the Trash folder, so I had to think of something to stop getting them. I finally got it. Why not vent my anger out against these blasted letters, through the letters! I immediately found the first chain letter, which was conveniently at the very top of my inbox, opened the sucker up, and wrote out everything about it that was wrong, annoying, or just plain stupid. Then I forwarding it to every single email found within the letter. I signed it with a happy, “Regards, Zach”.

I thought for sure I’d get some sort of reply back about it, or even another chain letter. Surely one message to everyone wouldn’t keep them all at bay. Right? Wrong. It did! I waited one day waiting for my inbox to slowly fill up again. Day one went by without any unwanted emails. Day two also went by with the same outcome. Then a week, and a month. I became worried no one had actually read my email, or worse there was a backlog in hotmail server and I’d get a swarm of chain letters at one time - a months worth. That would just be hell.

So I had to check something. I Made up my own chain letter, making it a parody of every other chain letter out there:

Brenda O’Malley is home making dinner as usual, when Tim Finnegan arrives at her door.

“Brenda, may I come in?” he asks. “I’ve somethin’ to tell ya.”

“Of course you can come in. You’re always welcome, Tim. But where’s my husband?”

“That’s what I’m here to be tellin’ ya, Brenda. There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery.”

“Oh, God no!” cries Brenda. “Please don’t tell me…”

“I must, Brenda. Your husband Shamus is dead and gone. I’m sorry.”

Finally, she looked up at Tim. “How did it happen, Tim?”

“It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness Stout and drowned.”

Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me true, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?”

“Well, yes Brenda, yes.”

And with that said, Tim left to go home and Brenda started making arrangements for the funeral.

If you LIked th1s joke plz send it 2 20 of ur friendz in teh neckst 10 minutez 2 see sumting kewl float accrozz ur screen!! But if u dun…ull have bad luck 4 ever! Send it back 2 the persun who send it 2 u if u care 4 dem!

So I sent that off to everyone I could get my hands on. Why did I do it? Hell, I wanted to see why everyone sends these around. Is there something unique about a chain letter that entices the reader to forward it to XX amount of people? …Doesn’t matter. They’re still stupid and pointless. Anyway, after I waited for a little bit, I finally started getting some back! Excellent. After recieving about 15 back (15!), I again wrote a message explaining everything about it that was wrong, annoying, or just plain stupid. Alas, I sent it out again, hoping to secure my place, and never get another again.

Sadly, this did not work out. For some reason, people actually liked this joke. After emailing my response back to everyone, I got several back that included bad grammar, bad words, and bad display of emotions. They all could be summed up as, “How dare you put down this funny joke! I guess I shouldn’t really send it back, since this makes me not care for you anymore as a friend…” Yada Yada Yada. Now this was good, I had some idiots telling me off. I replied to everyone again not with a long drawn out message as normal, but just a simple, “Tool.”

Ya know, I rarely get chain letters anymore.