Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 19:06:01 -0500 From: Luis Francisco Silva Gonzalez Subject: Anti-Chain Letter -------- To Whom it may concern: This letter is being sent to you because recently, you were sent a chain letter, which you may or may not have passed on. This is an anti-chain letter. It originated at Portland State University. Its purpose is to put a stop to all of the silliness of chain letters and their complete lack of connection with luck, fortune, or anything else. If you receive this anti-chain letter, keep it until you receive a chain letter. Then instead of spreading the chain letter, send this letter back to whoever sent that obnoxious piece of junk mail to you. If you sent one recently, send this along to the same people. If we get lucky, maybe this will spread all over the world and eventually get back to those goobs who have nothing better to do than write meaningless letters that prey on people's superstitions. (How do they know how many times a letter has been "around the world" anyway?) If you don't, your car will not break down; a close relative is not going to die; and you won't lose all of your money. If you do, you probably won't win a million dollars, receive a promotion, or suddenly find true love. (We sincerely hope you do anyway.) However, you will feel much better about ignoring chain letters in the future. Thank you. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 19:10:16 -0500 From: Luis Francisco Silva Gonzalez Subject: PYRAMID (_NOT_ a Chain Letter) [truncated] P Y R A M I D This pyramid is for married men. MONEY IS NOT NECESSARY. Make five copies and post it to a friend of your entire confidence. After this, pack your wife and send her to the first name of the list, add your name at the botton of the list. At the time when your name reach the top of the list, you will receive 16,476 women, some of them could be very interesting. Don't break the chain: one guy did it and receive his wife back with his mother-in-law. A friend of mine that didn't do it, receive 82 women at this post. Today is his burial. He had a smile on his lips that I never had seen before in my life. DON'T BREAK THE CHAIN AND DIE HAPPY. From cargo-d-approval@world.std.com Sat Apr 1 11:56:11 1995 Return-Path: Received: from europe.std.com by mail.netcom.com (8.6.11/Netcom) id LAA11538; Sat, 1 Apr 1995 11:56:10 -0800 Received: from world.std.com by europe.std.com (8.6.11/Spike-8-1.0) id OAA13967; Sat, 1 Apr 1995 14:56:05 -0500 Received: by world.std.com (5.65c/Spike-2.0) id AA26249; Sat, 1 Apr 1995 14:56:04 -0500 Received: from dartvax.dartmouth.edu by world.std.com (5.65c/Spike-2.0) id AA26239; Sat, 1 Apr 1995 14:56:02 -0500 Received: from donner.Dartmouth.EDU (donner.dartmouth.edu [129.170.208.4]) by dartvax.dartmouth.edu (8.6.11-DND/8.6.9) with SMTP id OAA12621 for ; Sat, 1 Apr 1995 14:56:01 -0500 Message-Id: <15741144@donner.Dartmouth.EDU> Date: 01 Apr 95 14:56:01 EST From: Tim.Ferguson@Dartmouth.EDU (Tim Ferguson) Subject: Chain, chain, chain! To: cargo-d@world.std.com Sender: cargo-d-approval@world.std.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: cargo-d@world.std.com Status: RO Not having been in the Explosive Cargo Discussion group for more than a day and a half, I am going to exercise my rights as a newbie and make what may be a totally inappropriate postings. This is a letter I wrote to net contact who has just apologized the second time for sending me a chain letter by email: "Not to worry. In the words of the great Aretha Franklin, "Chain, chain, chain. Chain of fools." I wish sending chain letters were the silliest thing I'd ever done. The properties of exponential progression drive postmasters and system administrators up the wall, but thats their problem, until it screws up my mail. I was involved to a massive chain letter like wave of hysterial the winter before last. A college student (I think at Syracuse) had sent an email warning of a virus to a friend telling them *NOT* to open any email with "Good morning" in the title. It was a joke. The recepient passed on the warning to others, who passed on the warning to others, who passed to on, ect. That some people ran diagnostics on their machines and found a virus (from some other source it inevitably turned out) gave the warning extra urgency. In the course of three days email systems nationwide were shutting down under the weight of forwarded warnings. All the computers at the hospital I work at had printed messages taped to them about not opening email entitled "Good Morning"! Mass hysteria in action is pretty damned contagious. Nobody who forwarded the warnings was much interested in talking about it later :-( which was sad because I felt I had just experienced the electronic equivalent of the famous Halloween Night-War of the Worlds panic. I should look that up sometime and see how many people fled when when Orson Wells announced that aliens had landed in Sutters Mill, NJ. I suppose that the people who got in their cars to flee the aliens that night didn't much feel like talking about it either. Chain letters are seductive hooey. They're interesting because they demonstrate how more destructive ideas gain popularity like; a. people are poor because they are lazy, b. skin pigmentation is somehow related to character, or c. when I was a teenager it suddenly become imperitive that many young American males to go half way around the world to kill Vietnameese people? (The angel of death fortunately chose me neither as a victum or agent.) Talk about taking wooden nickles! It was more like accepting a ton of beach sand for the value of its equivalent weight of gold. In the aftermath of the email hysteria, someone suggested that not only did the people reacting in panic do more damage than an actual virus, but that the occurance was a de facto virus. It spread in an uncontrolled manner wreaking havoc. Thats what I think about when I read about our current national politics. Blame the powerless, the real culprets have money, guns, and lawyers. So thanks for sending the chain letter. I enjoyed thinking about it and have had fun responding to it as well."