The Miracle of Modern Technology: or How e-mail Saved My Privates

I'm going out on a limb here; I detest chain e-mails. You know the ones I mean, those messages that end with a phrase something like this: "forward this message to ten of your friends if you care that God is being forced out of our society. If you don't care, then trash it and transplant your family to the mouth of a volcano -- just to prepare yourself for eternity," or "forward this to anyone who needs sex or your genitals will rot and fall off." Seriously? I know I missed out on sex ed in the eighth grade because I had mono, but I don't recall anyone talking about chain letters ensuring the health of your manhood.

Do you remember chain letters? They were the old school predecessors to these e-mails. Maybe a half dozen times in my life I've received an anonymous, badly photocopied letter that promised good health, good luck or good fortune if I forwarded it. Those letters were always afforded a special place in my home -- somewhere between coffee grounds and banana peels in my trash can. (For the uninitiated, my experience as a janitor during college taught me one thing -- old coffee grounds and banana peels create possibly the most noxious smell this side of cat urine. And cat urine, for what it's worth, should be used as a chemical weapon. It's hard to get fired up about a revolution when you smell like a litter box.)

The popularization of e-mail has been a boon for chain letters. Whereas a person could go a whole lifetime and receive less than 20 paper chain letters, I sometimes get that many in a week via e-mail. What's worse, with e-mail, the letters are no longer anonymous. You typically know who sent it to you, to whom they sent it besides you and, sometimes, who sent it to the sender. The reason the old-fashioned chain letters were typically anonymous was because no one would dare lay claim to such crackpot ideas.

So, what to make of the chain letter renaissance? Are they a powerful force for change? Or simply a nuisance foisted upon you by your friends and family? Perhaps more perplexing is why we so readily forward them with no sense of shame whatsoever.

Though most of us don't like to receive them, we've all sent at least one. (Admit it. You were really worried about the AIDS needles in the gas pumps.) The ones Kelli and I forward are typically political in nature. There's something about being blue in a red state that makes you enjoy getting folks riled up. Political chain letters are more defensible, whether they lean left or right, because they can actually lead to tangible results. People embrace an issue, call their representatives and laws change. That's a naive view, to be sure, but you get the idea.

The ones that really tick me off are those that take on some kind of metaphysical worldview, like the overlord of e-mail is monitoring your outbox. (It could be Xenu. I hear he's got some free time since slaughtering billions of souls in Earth's volcanoes and then cramming them willy-nilly into the bodies of humans, resulting in a spiritual confusion that can only be solved by following Messrs. Cruise and Travolta to your local Scientology hoedown.) The metaphysical variety typically insist that failure to forward the e-mail will result in some catastrophic effects on your personal life: the aforementioned genital withering, loss of friends, loss of livelihood or the theft of all of your jewelry and electronics. Come to think of it, that last one may have been an actual threat...

Equally annoying are the ones that make some pie-in-the-sky promise about free money or goods. Let's settle this once and for all; Bill Gates is NOT going to send you a big check just for forwarding an e-mail to a bunch of people. Unless there's some provision in the Patriot Act allowing Microsoft to monitor everyone's e-mail activity, it's not going to happen. (Now if you told me that viewing certain anti-administration sites might result in a subpoena from the FBI, I might believe you.) And Mr. Gates did not becme the richest man in this country by giving his money away to every rube with a computer. In case you forgot, his job is to do exactly the opposite. Afterall, the guy has ugly paid shirt and oversized glasses habits to support. Likewise, Disney is not going to send you free passes to the Magic Kingdom. They will, however, charge you $7.50 for a late afternoon seizure.

It's time to put these e-mail threats to the test. The "Sex Fairy" e-mail I received this week promises that I will get lucky within 10 days if I forward the message to ten people in need of some lovin'. Otherwise, spontaneous emasculation. I realize that this e-mail was intended to be funny, but you know people are sending it out in hopes of a little wully-bully. I could send it out to ten folks and keep all of you updated on the status of my love life. First of all, eewww. Secondly, Kelli is three weeks out from a C-section. It ain't gonna happen, Sex Fairy or no. Instead, I'll risk the withering.

If, in a couple of weeks, you learn that I have testicular cancer, then I'll make the e-mail available to all of you as a preventative. But we all know the truth -- these e-mails are bunk. I mean, I never forwarded any of those chain letters, and it didn't have any ill effects on my luck or financ-- Hmmm. Come to think of it, nevermind.