You know the ones that circulate around about “Find this missing child” or “Donate to such-and-such foundation because I saw some cancer patient smiling”?
Well, last night, I received (much to my annoyance) one such email, and actually spent several minutes bashing out a response to it, and even taking the time not only to hit “Reply to All”, but to include every single email address I could find in the “Forwarded from… to…” sections that inevitably precede the actual message.
It went a little something like this (for those of you whose email addresses were on this email, I have removed them so that I can collect and sell them at some point, because if you’re in the CC line of an email such as this, chances are that you forwarded it on. If you didn’t, you would have expressed rage in a reply-to-all message such as I did – more on that later):
Please look at the picture, read what his mother says, then forward this message on.
(I’m too lazy to put the picture here).-Ed
My 15 year old boy, Evan Trembley, is missing.
He has been missing for now two weeks.Maybe if everyone passes this on, someone will see this child.
That is how the girl from Stevens Point was found by circulation
of her picture on tv. The internet circulates even overseas,
South America , and Canada etc.
Please pass this to everyone in your address book.‘I am asking you all, begging you to please
forward this email on to anyone and everyone
you know, PLEASE.It is still not too late. Please help us. If anyone
knows anything, please contact me at:
HelpfindEvanTrembley@yahoo.com
I am including a picture of him.If it was your child, you would want all the help you could get!!
To which I replied:
Sorry all. Haven’t seen this guy. In fact, haven’t seen a white person in over a week.
Perhaps if the idiot (or mother… whatever) had added some useful information such as, oh, whereabouts the guy was last seen, for instance, then perhaps instead of chastising all you morons (yeah, I said it) for sending me inbox-filling-trash of some John-Doe-prettyboy, perhaps one who has thought about pulling such a stunt numerous times in the past could maybe offer some insight as to where to start looking – other than the obvious places like the morgue, hospitals, homeless shelters etc. In fact, if he did it properly
Have they thought to check his bank accounts? Social Networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, et al ad infinitum)? Cellphone records? (Most countries require registration even for pre-pay mobiles). I(e)mmigration records?
Most 15 year olds would find it hard to get hold of a decent fake passport, and doing so would take you straight back to the bank account. Anyone with half a brain would go to a country where entering visa-free (or at least not having to pay for one) and subsequently disappearing and just looking/living like a permanent tourist is an option, and where such requirements like registration for things like SIM cards and Hotels are non-existent.
Assuming this mail originated in Australia/NZ, Thailand would an ever popular choice for making such a move. Usually in a country worth disappearing to, the authorities in these countries are corrupt, non-existant and the infrastructure won’t support a manhunt… without a half-decent bribe, anyway.
One could assume (again, depending on where the guy went missing) that if there is no body recovered within a given vicinity, he probably disappeared on purpose, to get away from a life he probably hates, and an overprotective mother he probably resents.
Call me cynical, but circulating this picture on the internet is likely a waste of time, since it is likely only of relatively local concern. Remember: Internet Audience != TV Audience. See previous point.
Finally, I bet my friends in, for example, Slovakia, couldn’t give a damn, (and nor can I, where-ever I am) – and thats just another reason not to forward this on.
So there are my thoughts. Give me all the information, or none at all (which more or less means stop spamming me, so I don’t have to spend 10 minutes writing replies about why you all are such exemplary examples of in-duh-viduals, gullible idiots, morons – whatever term you prefer most, and for those whom I may or may not have just enraged, disgusted or otherwise insulted, feel free to send me hate mail).
Now I have to go and have a Sauna so I can calm down, in hopes that my rage towards all of YOU will melt away.
–Mathew
P.S. Please also note that I have gone to the trouble of harvesting and including ALL of the email addresses which none of you thought to remove, probably to use for my own personal gain (see footer). Maybe that will learn you to only send me mail that is worthwhile. All of you forwarding this from your corporate or government email address? Tsk tsk. I would fire you for wasting company time – 3 strikes and you’re out.
And later that evening, I got a reply from a lady named Karen:
Hi Mathew, for someone who doesn’t give a shit, you seem to have plenty to say!
Hope the spa was useful (calming) as your response wasn’t.
Can I say I didn’t choose to send this to you and I would be grateful if in future you didn’t keep me on your mailing list.
Regards,
Karen
To which I replied (to her alone):
Hello,
How very perceptive of you. You are right that I don’t care a great deal about the email itself (or, to use your language, no, I don’t give a shit). You will notice that I direct most of my fury to the morons endlessly forwarding these stupid emails all over the internet, wasting my Inbox space.
I thought around 1999 that I had once-and-for-all rid my Inbox of these cursed chain letters and the like, but it seems that in the last year or so there has been a significant increase in the number of these ridiculous things coming to my Inbox.
You are also right that YOU did not choose to send this to me, one of your so-called “friends” did choose to send it to you (and whether you forwarded it on or not I can not say for certain), and were careless about the methodology they chose to employ in doing so. As such, you might want to tell your friends that, if they plan to forward these kinds of things to other people, they should use the BCC field so your email address doesn’t show up, or better yet, don’t send it to you at all unless the message has some content worth reading.
While I am all for community, forwarding emails like this is, in my opinion, NOT the way to go about it, and it just makes people like myself more irate than I otherwise normally would be. As mentioned in the previous email, the person who wrote the original email (if they really wanted help) could have been less vague on details about the missing person
Part of the point was that no-one can even know what country to be looking in for this allegedly missing person, and thus the whole thing is a giant waste of time before you even get thinking about keeping your eyes peeled for people resembling generic white teenaged boys. Needle in a haystack if you even get the right city. In addition, there is no date (2 weeks… is that 2 weeks today or 2 weeks 3 days ago when it first landed in someones inbox at 15.10.2007 0358GMT?)
All that said, who is to say that its not just some kid looking for attention, sending this email pretending to be his mother, and taking advantage of morons who will flood the email account thats been set up with messages of love and hope and such?
Finally, you are not on a mailing list, you never were, and you never will be.**
Mathew
**That is, on a mailing list that I own or compile, as you probably have no use for or can not afford any of my products, and are probably not in my market. In saying that, I can’t guarantee that your email address won’t be sold for profit by someone. But, the the more of these emails that show up in my Inbox, the more email addresses will eventually be prone to exposure – whether by me or not. Again, see footer for my legal ass-covering.
And today, I got a response from my mother (also somewhere in the list of recipients):
Thanks Mat. The rest of the world actually gives a shit about other people. You never know if someone may be able to help someone else. Not everyone just worries about themselves!!!!!!!!!! As for dissing my contacts; DONT
To which I replied:
You completely missed the point. Without so much as even a country to start looking in, this email was nothing more than a waste of space.
…and thats all, so far!
