When I was twelve, I received my first chain letter in the mail. I never knew who it was from, but for some reason I believed every word of it. I made ten copies and mailed it off to random people. I think I even stuck some in the mailboxes of neighbors that I didn't know. I, for one, was not going to be bit by the chain letter curse. Several weeks went by and none of the good stuff that was supposed to happen did. In fact, several months later nothing different had happened. That was all it took for me at twelve years old to realize that chain letters were nothing but a scam perpetrated by the post office to get people to spend more money on stamps. They're still around today and even though they're on the Internet, I know that USPS is somehow behind the whole thing. And people continue to buy the promise that they're going to get a million bucks or that Bill Gates is going to send them a computer, despite repeated failure at these letters to fulfill their promise.

I would like to step back now and take a look at the evolution of the modern day chain letter. I'm sure that the first chain letter was something that took years to propogate. One cave man would hand five of his fellow cave men stone tablets with a variety of pictures. The first would be cavemen that didn't carve out five new stone tablets and the horrible fates that befell them: mammoth trampling, drowning in a tar pit and having all of your pelts stolen from them. The second set would be the cavemen that did follow the directions who had wonderful things happen to them: adorned with pelts by admiring cave women, discovering fire, etc. From there came the paper type of chain letter that I mentioned above, we'll skip over that since we've already talked about them. After that came the Internet and e-mail and the super fast propogation of e-mail. Now you could be inundated with countless pieces of chain letter mail at a much higher rate than ever before. And the reason is because people have you in their address book. They get the mail and then forward it to everyone in their address book because, "you never know when it might be real. How would you like to turn down the one that made you a million dollars?" In addition to e-mail there started to be two more types of chain letters:

1. The Little Girl With Cancer- In this type of chain letter there is a little girl or boy with some life threatening illness. Somehow, by forwarding the e-mail to ten of your friends you will help her overcome the illness that even doctors can't solve. I am ever amazed at the life saving power of e-mail. Why, last week I was about to plummet to my death in a flaming car and a chain letter e-mail rushed to my aid, put the fire out and caught the car right before it went over the precipice. Though I feel that my readers are far more intelligent than the rest of the Internet community, I feel that I should set straight the occasional wanderer who comes to this site on accident: There is no little girl with a debilitating life threatening disease. Well, I'm sure there are several, but the girl in this e-mail is fictitious.

2. You Don't Love Jesus- In this type of e-mail there is usually some terribly depressing story that somehow gets resolved by the glory of Jesus Christ. That's all fine and good, I have no problem with circulating just a story like this, here's where the problem comes in. At the bottom of the e-mail it says, "If you love Jesus, you will forward this e-mail to 10 other people. God bless!". First off, if forwarding a chain letter to people was really a sign of how you loved Jesus, why would only 10 people be enough? Why wouldn't it be five hundred million people? Also, before writing this column, I looked up in my WWJD almanac to see what Jesus would do if confronted with this situation. Here is what the almanac said: "Hit delete, then rain down the wrath of my father on the sender of this e-mail." I think that about sums it up.

So after the whole Internet thing was going for awhile, certain people got used to the chain e-mail thing and started to delete the messages as fast as they were getting them. Chain letters had to evolve again. Enter Friendster, Myspace and all those other friend sites. Suddenly on the friend sites chain letters now became ok to send again. You would post a bulletin with something like how you love Jesus or if you're really my friend you'll repost this bulletin or something inane like asking simple little details about your personal life. It's all the same crap as before, just in a different format, because everyone sending it is supposedly your friend.

I think that brings us up to speed on the whole chain letter thing and it's place in history. Now I would like to talk about how to combat this. This has worked wonders for me, though it has lost some friends. Basically it amounts to the letter below:

Dear Sir/Madam,

This is not a chain e-mail, please do not treat it as such. You will not make huge sums of money, win a computer, help a sick child or prove your love of Jesus by forwarding this to people. DO NOT forward this to people, DO NOT make copies to show your friends. Do everything you can to destroy this e-mail, it is likely that the person that sent this to you is now dead. Please take these following stories into consideration:

1. Sally Turner received this e-mail and thought that it was a standard chain e-mail. She immediately forwarded it to all of the friends that she had in her address book. Later on that day Sally saw a stray cat on the sidewalk. She reached down to pet it and the cat slashed her with it's claws. At the pain, Sally reeled and stumbled into oncoming traffic. She was hit by an eighteen wheeler. The force of the blow threw her backwards into a local House of Knives store. Authorities searched for three hours to find a piece of her large enough for her family to identify.

2. Tony Smithe received this e-mail and immediately hit the delete button after reading the first paragraph. You would think that that would be the end of it, however Tony's son Jim was playing on the computer later that week and found the deleted e-mail. He un-deleted it and forwarded it to ten of his best friends because he though it would be funny. It was not funny. Tony and Jim were both part of a double murder/suicide when Jim's mom who had been off of her meds finally snapped and killed the entire family in one fell swoop.

3. Jill Ballick received this e-mail and immediately deleted it. Deleting was not enough for Jill, however. She also had the hard drive of her computer formatted and completely rebuilt so that hopefully the e-mail would never be found. To this day, she still leads a normal life. Except for the genital herpes. But that wasn't the e-mail's fault. Anyways, she takes that prescription medicine that reduces flair ups so that she can lead a normal life. Really, she's ok.

So please heed this advice and delete this e-mail right away. Your life may depend on it.

God Bless!


Well, I hope that delving into the sordid world of chain letters has been informative and that it will help you avoid the further harrassment from chain letters. If you don't want to die, you will forward this column to ten people that you know within 48 hours.