Tuesday 19 June 2007

A Miracle for You - Email Chain Letters


"Crucifixion" - Photograph, Lindsay Colborne

If you do not send this blog to any people you will have very bad luck, but...
Send this blog to 10 people and you will have good luck and a wish will come true.

Send this blog to 20 people
and you will have even better good luck and two wishes will come true.
Send this blog to 30 people and you will have very good luck indeed, and three wishes will come true.
Send this blog to 1000 people and you will show them all how gullible you are.

I understand why people send traditional chain letters with the hope of making lots of money from fools down the line who think they can get something for nothing, but why do people send email chain letters that promise no money, just good luck and miracles if you send them on to large numbers of other people? And why do people believe it and diligently send them on?

Sometimes the messages contained in the email chain letters are inspirational and/or informative, but why the need to promise miracles to get people to send them on, or bad luck if they don't?

The altruistic reason is that they think they have a good message that people need to hear. They play on people's 'fear of lack' in order to get them to send the good message on. I still have no idea why though. Because the thing that ends up being bounced around the world is not a good message but rather, a large number of expressions of 'fear and lack' from the lives of the people sending them. A seemingly altruistic unselfish concern for the welfare of others becomes a lack of faith in people's ability to recognize and pass on a good thing when they see it.

To send these email chain letters on, no matter what the message, is to send on an expression of the belief that you can't look after yourself and that you need someone to give you miracles on a silver platter.

But seriously, if you don't send this blog to 10 people right now, you will get a big boil on your bottom.

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