This is more for friendly discussion and fun than for anything really serious.
A friend and I got to wondering how long it takes stuff we send out to more than one recipient (jokes, virals, YouTube clip links, horrible news, urban legends, stuff that Snopes hasn’t ruled on, you get the idea) by way of “friends lists” (whether or not they’re visible to the recipients).
We were trying to dream up the sort of email message that could test that without invading privacy or asking for too personal data.
Anybody here already done such a thing?
Any ideas what sort of message might make it back to you after going through a chain of forwarding lists?
Side issue: just how many “friends lists” do you know you are on as one of the recipients?
In my case, I’m pretty sure I get things as part of a group from eight other regulars and perhaps another five who send stuff only randomly.
Another way of thinking about the issue is like Six Degrees of Separation with yourself on both ends of the chain.
Say that you create something original and send it to your favorite “friends list” and each of them sends it along to their “friends lists” (which may or may not include your email address, too). How long will it take for the original thought or story of yours to come back to you as somebody else’s words? What path would it have taken?
Given the general hatred of chain email among the sort of folks who inhabit the Dope (myself included), what you’ve basically asked is “How do I go about perpetrating Great Evil?” – I don’t expect you’re going to get much help.
Nor do I expect any help in perpetrating. I’m more curious about what sort of message to concoct and send to my “friends list” that they will each want to pass along to their “friends lists” (whether they credit me as the source or not) and that through some chain action the message gets back to me as if somebody else had started it.
I know it’s hard to come up with original stuff of any kind. But I thought we could swap some ideas about features such a thing might have.
And I can surely appreciate Dopers not wanting to endorse any real pranking, which is why I said “This is more for friendly discussion and fun than for anything really serious.”