Go on, break the chain

I have developed a spam response routine. My right index finger clicks the left mouse button, my left pinkie hits Shift, my right index finger clicks the left button again, highlighting an entire column of rubbish in my inbox. I then move the mouse pointer to Delete, and erase the rubbish. Then, back to Send and Receive to open the floodgates to the next deluge. I feel like I am drowning. I even carry out these motions in my sleep.

Aside from the regular weight loss/lip plumping/online degree/untold wealth offers, I am now on the receiving end of some departed members of staff`s tree-hugging, horoscope spam, as well as about 200 e-mails an hour from mail filters in response to a virus being transmitted by some clown who is spoofing my address.

I have been propelled into rage by the appearance of this unsolicited nonsense so many times that my ire is tiring and I can`t sustain levels of indignation anymore. Instead, I have decided to direct my wrath at those people I can actually hunt down and throttle the breath out of - my friends.

One particular friend (who remains blameless in this whole scenario) has recently moved on from a career in restaurant management and motherhood to an office job. She is delighted at no longer having to glaze over at the dinner table when everyone else discusses the latest funny or irritating e-mail trend. However, with e-mail access also comes e-mail unpleasantness, and she has found that she is often the recipient of chain letters from the people that she works with.

She refuses to forward them, but some of them quite sneakily hide the fact that they are chain letters until the very end, where they suddenly threaten bad luck or even mutilation and death to the person who breaks the chain.

As far as I am concerned, the people who send these mails are threatening me. There is no collective unconscious guardianship of chain letters that deals out karmic debt to those who break the chain. Regardless, making the threat against those you call your friends is unkind, unfair and unreasonable.

Chain letters started long before the advent of e-mail. They used to be transmitted by fax, and before that even in the archaic paper-based postal system. Initially they were all meant in good fun. In my day, I participated in one that had you send a book to the person whose name was two above yours on the list. If you sent the letter to 10 people, and they did what they were supposed to, you would end up with 100 new books.

I have been propelled into rage by the appearance of this unsolicited nonsense so many times that my ire is tiring and I can`t sustain levels of indignation anymore.

Georgina Guedes, Editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

Even then, the ones that threatened you with bad luck and monetary ruin were rife, and even then I ignored them. These days, there are conspiracy theories about how chain letters are used to harvest e-mail addresses for spammers. Whether or not this is the case, there is still no reason to forward them. People seem incapable of grasping the fact that the letter must have been started by someone, some perfectly normal (if a bit touched) human being. These people have no super powers to grant wishes or to cause sudden death.

Why then is it so difficult to say "no"? What is it about people that they are so superstitious that they would rather threaten 10 of their friends with death within two days than simply break the chain? In light of this, I feel that there is only one way of dealing with the useless friends that forward these mails. Talk to them in their own language. Write them a letter stating that your computer has had a "no chain letters" spell cast over it and that if anyone, having received this warning, ever sends such mail to its inbox again, they will definitely break their leg within 24 hours.

As an addendum, you can also tell them that this letter has cast the same spell on their machine, and that if they forward it to 10 of their friends, they will never be afflicted with chain letters again.