People who forward chain letters/internet petitions

[Gravekeeper]

Ugh, I have a cousin that does this. It wouldn't be so annoying if not for the fact we haven't spoken in years. So she'll email me some stupid or one of those insipid "Keep scrolling down to hear a story about Jesus!" emails. But she'll never email me to actually talk to me personally.

Wouldn't be so annoying if not for the fact we were near raised as siblings. Until she made a total mess of her life in her 20s. Now I'm considered important enough to forward pictures of monkeys smoking cigars, but not actually talk too it seems. -.-

[tabbyblack13]

What I really started hating is the posts from Facebook. Have you seen the ones that tell you to repost if you care. The thing is that I do care but I'm not posting on it. If it is about breast cancer, I will walk or support someone else walking. I will donate money way before filling my wall with causes.

Today I just saw one about Facebook charging. This rumor has been going around for years and keeps popping up. It gets so annoying dealing with it over and over again.

[Greenday]

Today I just saw one about Facebook charging. This rumor has been going around for years and keeps popping up. It gets so annoying dealing with it over and over again.

Saw one of those today, but was already beat to calling out the person for reposting useless stupid crap.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Sounds like that Facebook chain status that was going round a little while ago saying, "Support victims of child abuse, change your picture to a cartoon character!"

I have a weird sense of humour, so changed mine to Pedobear. How is changing your FB picture going to help victims of abuse? Surely donating some money would work better?

[SkullKing]

Yeah, but it would cost money.

the Idea is that this kind of thing raises awareness, and to some problems, raising awareness is a very big step, and changing your avatar was a very simple and quick thing to do.

It is one of those: "how can I help without actually doing anything" things

[GameGirl]

I hate forwarded chain mail letters with the white hot heat of a thousand burning suns. I admit to have sent a few myself, back when I was younger and more ignorant of the internet and what constituted SPAM and junk mail, but now I would no more do that than I would send money to some guy in Nigeria(seriously? people believe that?).

The Facebook charging is ridiculous. FB isn't going to charge anyone to use their service, they would lose half of their customers if they did something like that. Two people whom I consider quite bright and of sound minds actually forwarded the FB status to me, two people who really should have known better.

[HYHYBT]

Raising awareness is important; but the action must suit the supposed goal. Changing your avatar to just any old cartoon character only means something to those who are *already* aware of why you're doing it. Now, if you could get people to all change theirs to the same image, and one that somehow indicated what it was for, that might make people aware.

I still will forward jokes, provided that 1) it's not mean, or racist, or anything like that; 2) I find it funny; 3) I'm pretty sure the person(s) I'm forwarding it to will find it funny; and 4) I'm reasonably sure they haven't seen it yet, because they'd have sent it to me. (And also to people I know well enough to know they LIKE finding funny jokes in their inbox, and who know how to ignore them when they don't have time rather than complaining that I dared think they might could use a laugh.) Given those limits, is there anything wrong with that?

[BrenDAnn]

Facebook seems to have removed the character limit on posts, which means, you guessed it, even more long, pointless spam posts! Joy of joys! As for e-mails, my mother used to get and send them. I myself just delete without reading. I should've gone to hell/gotten attacked by some random dead girl/had the worst luck ever a million times over by now! Ha!

[SkullKing]

Raising awareness is important; but the action must suit the supposed goal. Changing your avatar to just any old cartoon character only means something to those who are *already* aware of why you're doing it. Now, if you could get people to all change theirs to the same image, and one that somehow indicated what it was for, that might make people aware.

If Lots of people do it, it is possible that someone will ask "why so many cartoon avatars?"

And if someone likes your cartoon(or something else) avatar, and comments on it, it gives you the opportunity to say something like:

Thanks, Some people are changing their avatars to :something: in or der to raise awareness to :cause: which spreads the word.

That being said, I agree changing your signature to a link to an appropieted organization's site. or everyone using the same image would be much more effective

[AdminAssistant]

So, now a lot of my friends are posting a satire on the chain status update. But it's still a chain status update! A pointless block of text that was barely funny the first time I read it. Sheesh.

[HYHYBT]

Facebook seems to have removed the character limit on posts, which means, you guessed it, even more long, pointless spam posts! Joy of joys! As for e-mails, my mother used to get and send them. I myself just delete without reading. I should've gone to hell/gotten attacked by some random dead girl/had the worst luck ever a million times over by now! Ha!

To me, it seems that character limits cause more trouble than they solve. Without also limiting the number of posts a person can make, all it does is force people to break long items into pieces, which only makes things more confusing. And if you *do* also limit the number of posts... well, that has its own problems.

[Dips]

What offends me so much is the "if you delete this you'll get bad luck."

Okay, let's examine that. If they forwarded it becuae they are superstitios, they just condemned you to bad luck! Who DOES that?

I typed out something that said "I'm at my mom's place, where the internet connection is bad. I can read stuff, but I can't send it back. I won't be going back home until after the deadline on the bad luck curse. If I die or suffer any sort of calamity, it's blah's blahs fault." Then I hit "reply all."

I LOVE it!

Back in the 90s I worked at a hospital and their TOS for having an email account forbade forwarding chain messages.

When I'd get one of those I'd reply something like this:

"Dear M,

Thank you for the message promising good luck, but I can't get the good luck because I can't forward it without losing email privileges which I need to do my job. I don't want to lose my job.

But it says in paragraph 16 that if I don't forward it, I'll get bad luck. I don't want bad luck.

Help me! What should I do?"

Yeah. Pretty mean, but it made the point.

Nowadays I can't really make the argument that I'll lose my email privileges so I just have filter set up.

If From: = [person who sends me crap all the time] AND Subject: starts with "FW" =====> Trash.

That filter has helped a LOT.

[HYHYBT]

I've found that using Mail's "bounce" feature works wonders. Unfortunately, Apple removed it from the current version.