Chain Letters - A Rant

Second to pop ups featuring pictures where you can actually see a female’s intestines without any unnatural wounds, the most annoying thing, in my opinion on the modern Internet is CHAIN LETTERS! Made up by jack-asses with too much time on their hands, wallowing in their own self-pity trying to inflict their eternal boredom unto others. And, I know, I’m the one making a pointless rant about next to jack shit because I have too much time on my hands, but I don’t piss myself off, so I don’t have anything to bitch about, which means no rant, and oh I can’t imagine an existence without that.

Mindless Forwarding

This is where the part of the word “Chain” in Chain Letters is defined. A kid, about 9, maybe even 8 probably older discovers this thing on his computer called the Internet. At first, he couldn’t care less about it, it’s confusing, it has learning stuff on it, and exotic pictures he won’t be able to truly appreciate until his later years. Later on, about 10, 11, they develop a brain and they realize video games are much more fun on-line (some of which don’t stop until they’re 35, and finally move out of their parents basement to get rid of their pesky, ever clinging virginity), but most just play casually. Then the inevitable puberty hits at about 13, maybe 12, probably older, and anything with breasts causes his brain to stop working because all his blood, normally working for his head, rushes in to start constructing a vertical, bodily tower.

Then comes along a revolutionary male discovery, and the Internet is used for something else, and there is a constant shortage of tissue. At about this time as well, a social desire kicks in along with his new breakthrough of how to kill spare time. Along with these new social desires comes a need for constant communications with this kid’s peers. For several reasons:

1. He can create a completely different image of himself while on the other end of a computer of the person he’s talking to because he is not held down with things like distractions, embarrassments and no time to think things over.
2. He can blind tons of his friends/peers with this image of himself at the same time.
3. He is more comfortable.
4. If he gets bored, he only needs to type with one hand.

These factors are quite accommodating to him, and soon he gets used to it. E-mail and online chat are soon a huge factor in his life. Although, as he is in that stage of his pointless, insignificant little life, the majority of the time, he’ll just be wanting to talk to girls. And, of course, all the girls he wants to talk to won’t be on all the time (THEY can’t multitask). But, fortunately there is e-mail. And, unfortunately, chicks have an unhealthy obsession with online surveys, superstition, socializing, and Orlando Bloom. So, the female race usually ages 13-17 love chain letters. They are enthralled by the idea of some weird unknown being controlling the fate of their lives (I mean Jesus, it’s called marriage!) and the un-expectancy and mysterious unreliability of exciting superstition. And chain letters are packed with all that complete shit (which I’ll go into later on).

So, anyway, this girl that he likes get these e-mails, and first almost seizures out realizing she has 7 days to live unless she sends out a bunch of e-mails to 100 people, so she instantly realize that she doesn’t have 100 friends (only 3 friends, and 58 phony followers), and only on the sole fact that it’s a life and death situation is she forced to send it to all the horny little boys she tries so hard to avoid in class.

So he gets this e-mail from her, and almost passes out (His head’s blood is occupied), and he instantly follows the instructions, for the sole purpose that she sent it to him. So he forwards it. And it turns out there is a chick he hardly notices that completely adores him, that he sent it to, and she instantly follows the instructions on the e-mail, only because he sent it to her. This process continues continually, for an obscenely unbelievably long time.

That or it just circulates because the modern teenager has no self-esteem and all they do is go on the computer and eat.

And so, the chain letter gets circulated around and around and around, until someone with a half a brain stem decides not to bother with it. Although by then the manifestation being fuelled by the mass stupidity of the teenage population cannot be stopped unless:

1) A new chain letter is sent around.
2) A new fashion statement is made.
3) A mass army of dirty Nazis invades their houses.
4) So and so cheats on what’s her face.

And of course, the only one that ever happens is another chain letter is passed around. Where’re Nazis when you NEED them?

Concerning the Subject…

So, this kid, (the “he/him” we were talking about earlier) finally puts two hands back on the keyboard and opens the e-mail. The first thing running through his mind is “Wow, she must like me! Score!!”. The second is “Jesus, she believes this? What a fucking idiot…” The third is “…A fucking hot fucking idiot”.

The first thing you see when you open a chain letter is an enormous list of people the chain letter had been forwarded to previously. Finally, after your computer freezes up, and you restart it, you begin the long journey to the actual letter. Finally, you reach the bottom. The first thing you see is a blinding gigantic yellow font saying something completely unreadable. Many studies have been conducted trying to get into the complex mind of the total idiot; none so far have shown why they do this. I have my own theories, however. I believe they think if they make HUGE font, which takes up one word per page, and use colors like neon yellow, they can catch our attention.

Well, here’s the thing. The huge font makes the whole letter about 400 pages long, about 19 pages of the letter, the rest forwarding history. The bright font, doesn’t catch the eye, it blinds it.

So, they think they have the attention of the reader. Now, if you squint hard enough and use the scroll button, we can make an attempt at reading the letter.

Now, I must admit, the possibility of death always spices up any situation (Which makes eating NSMS food and hitch hiking in Salts Spring fun!), but I mean come on, it gets more lame than that more soon with chain letters.

“Send this to 50 people or Bloody Mary will visit your mirror when you’re in the bathroom and cut your head off”.

“Send this to all your friends or a horrible fate awaits you! Even ask Joe! Joe got this letter the day before he was getting married, but just discarded it the moment he saw it on his computer. 10 minutes later his fiancé was hit by a 27 wheeler truck, his dog was eaten by killer fleas, his fish were eaten by his cat, his cat was turned inside out after eating the fish, he was evicted from his house by Russians, a rabid armadillo chewed up all his clothes, his car rolled down a hill and into Lake Placid and eaten by a 50 foot alligator, and his penis got caught in a disc sander, right when he saw a supermodel topless, which made him bleed to death and burn in hell.”

“Hundreds of children are starving to death at this very moment. For every person you send this letter to, a billionaire doctor in Hollywood will give 10 dollars to every child in Bolnandinavia. Because we all know how many doctors live in Hollywood, and how one of them just randomly decided not to be an asshole and to give away all his money, because there is a magical counting device that’ll know how many you send. With the letters you send, we can feed poisonous killer fish to starving children, or we could give a few starving children lots of money and food by feeding the rest of the starving children to poisonous, killer fish. Please, contribute now.”

“If you send this letter to ALL of your friends within 5 minutes, something magnificent will happen to you! Just ask Bob! Bob got this letter and, because it was obviously on the top of his To-Do List, he instantly sent it to 3 or so people, and moments later Bill Gates died, and he discovered he was his lost cousin and inherited all his money, and he found out he was Hugh Heffner's son, and got screwed by every model in the magazine, then moments afterwards, his life long fantasy girl from grade 8 phoned him out of know where and told him she wants to marry him not because he just became a billionaire, and his dick grew 6 inches, so he could show his new wife his 8 inch penis!”

So, by showing you those almost complete replica examples of chain letters, I’m sure you understand completely what I mean. If not, you’re a waist of a brain, and you should have yours donated to a guinea pig organ donation.

On a Final Note…

Send this to all your friends within 20 minutes or you’ll be raped by a 400 pound man with a 45 pound prosthetic penis.

Just kidding. He’s a 45 pound man with a 400 pound prosthetic penis.