Just Send This to 20 of Your Friends...

... and maybe we can shed some light on chain mail. (Yeah, not the most pressing issue in the world but...)

Oh sure, not all of them are so obviously incomprehensible. Like those that tell you that they've gone around the world several times and have not been broken for decades and the harm that came to those who did break it -- really? How would you know? And did the original letter -- the one your supposed to copy exactly -- make these prognostic claims?

And then there are those that are emotional blackmail -- even if there really is a sick child who wants to get as many postcards as possible, and even if I really do support the troops, do I have to prove I care by forwarding emails?

Some of them are purely harmless. Recently a friend and a family member both sent a chain mail where all you have to do is send a recipe to one person, the name at the top of a two-person list. So you send a recipe to that friend-of-your-friend, move your friend's name to the top, and put your name at the bottom. Then you forward copies of the letter to 20 friends and hope they'll do the same.

Who couldn't use a few good recipes? Well, yeah, but...

I guess the appeal is that since it's such a short list, you should receive mail in return relatively soon -- and even if everybody doesn't hop on board, you'll share your recipe with someone and you'll get a few recipes in kind. No big deal. And believe me, I wouldn't mind receiving some simple meal ideas, and I have a couple up my sleeve that I am more than willing to share. But you have to look more closely at what is going on here to realize you might not want to participate.

Okay, let's say when you receive the letter, the person at the top of the list was a friend of the person who started it. And let's just assume that two people started it, using both their own email addresses to get it going.

So the first two people send it to 20 people each, and those 40 send it 20 people each. One of those 800 people is your friend. So that means that when you jump in, you are one of 16,000 folks in the next "generation" and the people you send it to are in a generation consisting of 320,000.

Still with me? So when your friends send out their emails, they will be adding 6,400,000 other kind souls to the mix. Your friends will be at the top of the list in the next generation -- which will be among the 128,000,000 emails in cyberspace asking for a simple recipe. That's more than half the adult population of the US. And if it should somehow leap to another generation -- that would be almost half the population of the entire world. In just seven "forwards."

Now, of course, each person's name will only have the potential to be at the top of 400 emails. And it's more than likely that -- just like at every level of this chain -- only a few of those who receive the email will actually join in. So no, it's not really conceivable that it would ever approach the numbers I've thrown about here. So there's really no harm, no foul -- it is innocent correspondence with an innocuous purpose. (Although it must be said -- your email address could be sent to as many as 400 people, and you can't know for sure that it won't make its way onto some spam list or other.)

Call me a stickler, but I've come to the conclusion that these types of emails -- as utterly harmless and sincere as they may be -- are just not something I want to perpetuate.

(Feel free to pass this post on to as many people as you want -- and they can pass it on, if they want. Maybe we can make people think twice before they hit "send" on another chain mail.)

Comments

[ChunLing]

I sent a reply to some of the upstream fish about just such an email today. This one was the "a big electronics company is willing to give you a free laptop if you forward this to enough people" variant.

Exactly. "You are now known to the entire computer literate population of the Earth as someone who believes that there really is a free lunch. Don't worry, there is no possible chance any of them use this knowledge in any way that could be to your detriment."

My brother started one of these, the "Honor system virus". "Please forward this to everyone in your contacts list, then reformat your hard drive." I wonder how many people actually did that.

I just Googled it. Apparently this is something my brother should not have started. Maybe it would be better to assert that probably a lot of other people had the exact same idea and chose the same name and similar wording. I have no idea whether that is probable or not. Actually, given how long ago this happened, I'm almost certain that my memory of the events is faulty. My brother probably just received such an email from somewhere, and we all had a good laugh and most definitely didn't forward it to anyone. Not even.

Yes...yes that's the ticket. Received, not forwarded and definitely not started.

However, you do have to admit that such a message, affecting only the most suggestible recipients, would eventually act to reduce the tendency for chain e-mails to propagate.