Runt
Well-Known Member
In response to the THREE CHAINLETTERS I received today, think this is the perfect time for me to start a little chainletter of my own
I title it Finally A Chainletter We Can All Appreciate!
A LESSON:
The typical chainletter is made up of several parts. They are the Hook, the Request, the Reward, and the Threat.
The Hook introduces the chainletter, entices people to read on, and includes appeals to our emotions that aim to invoke in the reader pity, guilt, or simply the feeling that we can make a difference. For example:
Hello, my name is Pathetic Nobody, and I have a problem that only you can help me with. I have a terrible disease, and if you care about anybody but yourself you will read this email carefully and follow all the instructions contained within.
The Request is the actual instructions of the email and usually contains yet another appeal to pathos:
If you are a nice person who cares about others, please forward this to as many people as you can.
The Reward is what you will get in return for following the request. This appeals not to our virtuous, caring side, but to our greedy, self-serving side:
If you send this to one person in the next five minutes, you will find your one true love within the next three days. If you send this to ten people in the next five minutes, you will miraculously accumulate one million dollars within the next two days. If you send this to thirty people, you will wake up tomorrow and discover that you are now the absolute ruler of the known universe.
The Threat is what will happen to you if you do not fulfill the request but simply delete it. It usually includes YET ANOTHER appeal to pathos, in a last attempt to get you to blindly follow email instructions
If you care only about yourself and dont send this unimportant and completely fictitious email to everyone you know, the neighbors dog will eat your cat, your milk will spoil, your spouse will fall in love with someone more attractive, and the boogieman will eat you in the middle of the night.
COMBATING CHAINMAIL:
Having had ample opportunity to learn this ingenious structure from the best of the best, I now present you with what will soon become the worlds most valuable chainmail:
THE HOOK:
Hate chainmail? Great! So do I! Want to never receive another chainletter again? You are not alone! While it is impossible to simply prevent chainletters from ever reaching your mailbox again, there IS an amusing and effective way to discourage others from sending you useless mail and to punish those who insist upon continuing to forward you chainletters.
THE REQUEST:
Option (A): Resisting the power of chainletters long enough to delete
1. Dont Open: Resist the temptation to read every chainletter that you receive. If you get an email from a friend and the subject line looks suspiciously like one of those chainletters you know you will hate, simply delete it. That way you will not be exposed to the appeals to pathos contained within the letter and persuaded to send a forward you absolutely despise to everyone you know simply because you feel guilty for not doing so
2. Recognize and Resist: If curiosity or a thought such as maybe THIS email will contain something interesting even though the rest never do cause you to read one of those hateful chainletters, do not fear! There are ways to resist its magic. Recognize that the chainletter has only one purpose: to get you to send that email to as many others as possible. Recognize that this means everything the email statesno matter how much it appeals to your pathos by invoking guilt, pity, or any other emotion that will causes you to want to mindlessly obey the command to pass the email onto othersis outright false. Thousands of chainletters about some girl with leukemia will NOT make her better! You will NOT get to sleep your hot neighbor if you send the chainletter on! Deleting the chainletter will NOT lead to your death or fifty years of bad luck! A chainletter is simply a conglomeration of lies and sneaky rhetoric designed to get you to pass the disease onto others. Therefore, do not be afraid to delete it.
3. Extreme Measures: If you are extraordinarily susceptible to the evil seductive power of chainletters, there is still hope for you! Not only are there ways to counteract the curses described in the Threat Section, but there are also instructions you can follow to neutralize the feelings of guilt you may receive from deleting a chainmail without first forwarding it. So never fear; ignore those voices in your head telling you to forward to all your friends and instead delete any hateful chainmail you receive and then use the instructions contained in this MUCH COOLER chainletter to battle any negative feelings and possible curses that may have arisen from this action.
4. Counteracting Curses and Feelings of Guilt: If you are about to delete those chainletters without sending them on and feel any of fear of retribution, read this section very carefully! First, to ensure that no harm befalls you or your pets while you are performing these Curse Countermeasures, simply pour a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer and all will be well. The first step to neutralizing those curses is to print out a copy of each chainletter you are about to delete. Now, without leaving your protective circle, blend three tablespoons of nutmeg and three cups of egg whites in a sterling silver bowl and coat the front and back surface of each piece of paper with a healthy layer of this mixture. Microwave the pile of sticky printouts on HIGH for 15 minutes. Finally, remove the whole mess from the microwave (still without leaving your protective circle) and bury it all at midnight under a full moon, carefully filling the hole with rock salt and chanting three hundred times, I am a good person despite not forwarding chainletters. If you follow these instructions to the letter, the curses will be counteracted and your conscience will be free from guilt.
Option (B): Educating and Exacting Revenge
1. Reply To All: Most chainletters encourage you to send the letter back to the person you received it from, as well as send it to everyone you know. Therefore, when you receive a chainletter that you dont appreciate, simply do as it suggests: click on the option Reply To All but instead of responding by sending the original message back to everyone, simply copy and paste THIS chainletter in its totality and use it as your message. Then click send. This option will allow you to pass this valuable message not only onto those who dared send you a stupid forward in the first place, but anyone connected to them who might potentially send you or others useless chainmails in the future.
2. Revenge: See The Threat (below The Reward)
THE REWARD:
If you follow the instructions in Section (A) and delete every stupid chainletter you encounter without forwarding it, the rewards are many. You will save valuable time by not even reading trite and uninteresting chainletters. You will be guilt free. You will have no reason to fear the stupid curses contained within chainletters. You will have no reason to fear the kind of bad reputation that comes from being known as the kind of person who forwards lots of stupid chainletters. For every chainletter you have been sent and have deleted without forwarding, you will be responsible for NOT contributing 3-5 new emails that will only annoy other people and slow email servers.
If you follow the instructions in Section (B) and replace the text of every chainletter you COULD be forwarding with this cool email, you may be able to help convince others to stop sending so many crappy emails. And if not well, at least you were able to creatively rebuke others and contribute one GOOD chainletter to the mass of truly CRAPPY ones!
THE THREAT:
The consequences of not following the instructions of this email are truly dire indeed. You will only perpetuate the problem by continuing to forward worthless email. You will annoy your friends. You will annoy your friends friends. And their friends. And so on. Eventually you will annoy the whole world. Then one day you will find that every time you send a stupid chainletter out, everyone will reply to you with: FWD: Finally A Chainletter We Can All Appreciate! Eventually your mailbox will get clogged with thousands of copies of my chainletter. And where will you be then, huh?
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR:
May this be the last chainletter you ever forward or receive!
A LESSON:
The typical chainletter is made up of several parts. They are the Hook, the Request, the Reward, and the Threat.
The Hook introduces the chainletter, entices people to read on, and includes appeals to our emotions that aim to invoke in the reader pity, guilt, or simply the feeling that we can make a difference. For example:
Hello, my name is Pathetic Nobody, and I have a problem that only you can help me with. I have a terrible disease, and if you care about anybody but yourself you will read this email carefully and follow all the instructions contained within.
The Request is the actual instructions of the email and usually contains yet another appeal to pathos:
If you are a nice person who cares about others, please forward this to as many people as you can.
The Reward is what you will get in return for following the request. This appeals not to our virtuous, caring side, but to our greedy, self-serving side:
If you send this to one person in the next five minutes, you will find your one true love within the next three days. If you send this to ten people in the next five minutes, you will miraculously accumulate one million dollars within the next two days. If you send this to thirty people, you will wake up tomorrow and discover that you are now the absolute ruler of the known universe.
The Threat is what will happen to you if you do not fulfill the request but simply delete it. It usually includes YET ANOTHER appeal to pathos, in a last attempt to get you to blindly follow email instructions
If you care only about yourself and dont send this unimportant and completely fictitious email to everyone you know, the neighbors dog will eat your cat, your milk will spoil, your spouse will fall in love with someone more attractive, and the boogieman will eat you in the middle of the night.
COMBATING CHAINMAIL:
Having had ample opportunity to learn this ingenious structure from the best of the best, I now present you with what will soon become the worlds most valuable chainmail:
THE HOOK:
Hate chainmail? Great! So do I! Want to never receive another chainletter again? You are not alone! While it is impossible to simply prevent chainletters from ever reaching your mailbox again, there IS an amusing and effective way to discourage others from sending you useless mail and to punish those who insist upon continuing to forward you chainletters.
THE REQUEST:
Option (A): Resisting the power of chainletters long enough to delete
1. Dont Open: Resist the temptation to read every chainletter that you receive. If you get an email from a friend and the subject line looks suspiciously like one of those chainletters you know you will hate, simply delete it. That way you will not be exposed to the appeals to pathos contained within the letter and persuaded to send a forward you absolutely despise to everyone you know simply because you feel guilty for not doing so
2. Recognize and Resist: If curiosity or a thought such as maybe THIS email will contain something interesting even though the rest never do cause you to read one of those hateful chainletters, do not fear! There are ways to resist its magic. Recognize that the chainletter has only one purpose: to get you to send that email to as many others as possible. Recognize that this means everything the email statesno matter how much it appeals to your pathos by invoking guilt, pity, or any other emotion that will causes you to want to mindlessly obey the command to pass the email onto othersis outright false. Thousands of chainletters about some girl with leukemia will NOT make her better! You will NOT get to sleep your hot neighbor if you send the chainletter on! Deleting the chainletter will NOT lead to your death or fifty years of bad luck! A chainletter is simply a conglomeration of lies and sneaky rhetoric designed to get you to pass the disease onto others. Therefore, do not be afraid to delete it.
3. Extreme Measures: If you are extraordinarily susceptible to the evil seductive power of chainletters, there is still hope for you! Not only are there ways to counteract the curses described in the Threat Section, but there are also instructions you can follow to neutralize the feelings of guilt you may receive from deleting a chainmail without first forwarding it. So never fear; ignore those voices in your head telling you to forward to all your friends and instead delete any hateful chainmail you receive and then use the instructions contained in this MUCH COOLER chainletter to battle any negative feelings and possible curses that may have arisen from this action.
4. Counteracting Curses and Feelings of Guilt: If you are about to delete those chainletters without sending them on and feel any of fear of retribution, read this section very carefully! First, to ensure that no harm befalls you or your pets while you are performing these Curse Countermeasures, simply pour a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer and all will be well. The first step to neutralizing those curses is to print out a copy of each chainletter you are about to delete. Now, without leaving your protective circle, blend three tablespoons of nutmeg and three cups of egg whites in a sterling silver bowl and coat the front and back surface of each piece of paper with a healthy layer of this mixture. Microwave the pile of sticky printouts on HIGH for 15 minutes. Finally, remove the whole mess from the microwave (still without leaving your protective circle) and bury it all at midnight under a full moon, carefully filling the hole with rock salt and chanting three hundred times, I am a good person despite not forwarding chainletters. If you follow these instructions to the letter, the curses will be counteracted and your conscience will be free from guilt.
Option (B): Educating and Exacting Revenge
1. Reply To All: Most chainletters encourage you to send the letter back to the person you received it from, as well as send it to everyone you know. Therefore, when you receive a chainletter that you dont appreciate, simply do as it suggests: click on the option Reply To All but instead of responding by sending the original message back to everyone, simply copy and paste THIS chainletter in its totality and use it as your message. Then click send. This option will allow you to pass this valuable message not only onto those who dared send you a stupid forward in the first place, but anyone connected to them who might potentially send you or others useless chainmails in the future.
2. Revenge: See The Threat (below The Reward)
THE REWARD:
If you follow the instructions in Section (A) and delete every stupid chainletter you encounter without forwarding it, the rewards are many. You will save valuable time by not even reading trite and uninteresting chainletters. You will be guilt free. You will have no reason to fear the stupid curses contained within chainletters. You will have no reason to fear the kind of bad reputation that comes from being known as the kind of person who forwards lots of stupid chainletters. For every chainletter you have been sent and have deleted without forwarding, you will be responsible for NOT contributing 3-5 new emails that will only annoy other people and slow email servers.
If you follow the instructions in Section (B) and replace the text of every chainletter you COULD be forwarding with this cool email, you may be able to help convince others to stop sending so many crappy emails. And if not well, at least you were able to creatively rebuke others and contribute one GOOD chainletter to the mass of truly CRAPPY ones!
THE THREAT:
The consequences of not following the instructions of this email are truly dire indeed. You will only perpetuate the problem by continuing to forward worthless email. You will annoy your friends. You will annoy your friends friends. And their friends. And so on. Eventually you will annoy the whole world. Then one day you will find that every time you send a stupid chainletter out, everyone will reply to you with: FWD: Finally A Chainletter We Can All Appreciate! Eventually your mailbox will get clogged with thousands of copies of my chainletter. And where will you be then, huh?
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR:
May this be the last chainletter you ever forward or receive!