One of my oldest and best friends is a teacher at an elementary school. She sent me an e-mail asking me to help with a student’s science project. The e-mail consisted of instructions and a list of first names. I was supposed to copy and past the entire e-mail into a new message, add my name to the list if it wasn’t there already, send it back to my friend and send it on to an additional 10 people. Repeat ad nauseam.
Well, the whole thing sounded strange to me. Who starts science fair projects in early September? And my friend never said that this project was for one of her students. Since she has a bad habit of forwarding chain letter-type e-mails (“send this happy flower picture to 25 people and see how many responses you get!”), I figured I’d check Snopes. Guess what I found? The first line about the teacher’s daughter was changed, but the rest of it was identical.
This is about the tenth time I’ve sent her a link to Snopes after she sent me a chain e-mail. I’m hoping she’ll get the hint.
Sometimes they get the hint and stop fowarding stuff—and sometimes they get a different hint and stop forwarding stuff to you. Either way, you win.
Congratulations on striking another blow in the fight against ignorance!
I’ve been sending the snopes links out “reply to all” so that not only is the sender corrected, but everyone else that they sent it to knows the sender is an idiot.
Podkayne, I couldn’t agree more. I’ll just be happy to stop getting this stuff.
Ruby, I actually considered sending my e-mail “reply to all,” but I thought my friend might be upset by that. I think she really believed she was helping with some kid’s project. The “forward this to 200 people and get free M&Ms” e-mails, on the other hand, might just get a reply to all.
