There are certain people in this world who, it seems, regardless of age, experience or a general demeanour which suggests they should know better, circulate the vile, idiotic, pester power that is the chain mail/status update.
These used to actually be on real paper (anyone else remember those?) and we would have assemblies telling us not to respond to them, but nowadays they squirm their way into your conscience by other, sneakier and harder to avoid ways, landing in your inbox, your timeline on facebook or sometimes even on your mobile phone.
What is it about human beings which makes them so receptive of these idiotic bleatings? Why are 99% of sensible adults absolutely incapable of ignoring them?
Whenever I receive such missives or accidentally stumble on one in a facebook status (usually in VERY SHOUTY CAPITAL LETTERS just to get the point across with maximum irritation) I immediately have to take a deep breath and try to mentally forgive the fuckwit person who has posted it and not immediately block them, which my trigger finger is impulsively itching to do.
The fact that I refuse point blank to EVER repeat or engage with any of these bullying, pointless things does not mean that:
a) I do not care about cancer. Believe me I care, but personally I find running the race for life or buying raffle tickets for Cancer Research a much more rewarding and less twattish way of showing the same.
b) I do not care about the armed forces. Again I very much do care and come from a services family but SHOUTING about this constantly would only give me a headache and proves absolutely zero in the grand scheme of things.
c) I do not care about autism/downs syndrome/disabled children/whatever else has been deemed the most important and ignored issue of the day. Nonsense. I am a human being with opinions and feelings –but shouting about them and irritating people with it is not going to actually achieve anything. Other than provoking eye rolling and sighing in anyone who feels the same.
I find the obligatory emotional blackmail section the most nauseating and aggravating. Look, you blockheaded, amoebic being, I have a busy life, I work full time, I exercise, I have a lot of friends and family members who take up my spare time….you, with your pissy little playground call out of “99% of people won’t repost this in their status” (subtext – people who ignore this are evil, stupid miscreants who torture kittens for fun) clearly have too much time on your hands. But then I already knew that because you have one of these retarded status updates at least 3 times a week and also update your status to tell us vital information about what you are having for lunch (“an AMAZING cheese sandwich”) or who is featuring on daytime TV today.
Less frequently I get one of these on my mobile phone, I never even reach the bottom of the message before deleting. You can tell within the first sentence exactly what the purpose of the message is; sickeningly twee? check, self righteous? double check, more clichéd than a Jennifer Annison rom-com? Yep. Usually there will also be some kind of signifier about the kind of person you are (my best friends, the closest women in my life) before a call out to forward it on immediately to similar recipients or your spleen might explode and if you do forward it on the Blessed Fairy of the Cheddar Gorge will bring you good luck within 5 days. Really. Do you still believe in Father Christmas too? Seriously, have a word with yourself.
On a whole other (but intrinsically linked) level of I-want-to-repeatedly-smack-my-head-against-a-brick-wall-when-this-happens – I live in hope that a certain member of my family will one day send me an email saying something useful. Or failing that something interesting. Or maybe just something vaguely relevant to my life. But this particular email sender simply wants me to be frightened on a level usually reserved for readers of the Daily Mail and with alarming frequency wants me to believe that the country is being TAKEN OVER (shouty letters needed here unfortunately) by PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BAN CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!
And…..PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BAN TEACHING ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST…..and sometimes even PEOPLE WHO WANT US ALL TO WEAR BURKAS!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so profusely sorry for the appalling amount of exclamation marks and shouty capitals in the above text. It hurts my eyes just writing it. But this level of scaremongering tends to be perpetuated by people who make their ‘point’ by making your eyes bleed in this way.
These type of emails always also contain the chain mail caveat of imploring you to circulate it and implying that if you do not a small goblin will sneak into your bed and sexually assault you while you sleep.
The one I received this week was one I have seen before. A number of times. It is the ‘people are suggesting that we stop teaching about the holocaust because it offends Muslims’ version. Here is a link to a sensible site explaining the fact that this is in fact a well publicised hoax which was circulated originally in 2007 and has since been disproved but continues to be forwarded on by legions of fucktards people who, in my opinion, see it as an easy and below the radar way of being overtly racist in the name of ‘keeping our culture sacred’. What a load of utter bullshit.
Guess what? The Daily Mail actually ran a story on it in 2007 too….my god I despise the Daily Mail and all that it stands for. The sole purpose of this kind of story is to provoke unrest and stir up hatred for other races and cultures (generally anything Islam related) and I do not understand for a moment why anyone with half a brain would not see through this deplorable nonsense straight away.
Four years later and the same bloody email is still doing the rounds and landing in my inbox a couple of times a year. I despair.
Just so you know, if you circulate these kind of idiotic, bottom feeding chain mails and statuses, the government immediately places you on a list of ‘People who are too stupid to deserve to be saved when Armageddon comes’ via their big brother methods of keeping tabs on you. You should immediately circulate this piece of information to all your dim witted friends so that they too can be prepared for when Muslims/Aliens/Scientologists inevitably take over the UK and make us dress like the bay city
I hold out hope for a day when chain mails and statuses are outlawed and it becomes fair game to add the names of circulators to a register which marks them out in society as empty headed sheep who should be avoided at all costs. A bit like the sex offenders register but without the same level of interest from the Daily Mail. That is all.
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