07/11/2007

PLEASE READ! IT WAS ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA & TODAY SHOW

OK Internet Morons. If one of my friends ever sends this email to me again I think I may seriously lose it. Bill Gates IS NOT PAYING MONEY TO SPAM PEOPLE!!! Bill Gates is a very generous man, but sweet baby J.C., come on people.

I don't know what is worse, the fact that some people are so stupid they actually think Microsoft will pay them out, or that some people are so desperate for cash that they become so stupid. Regardless, it's amazing how money talks - or should I say, how people will do the dumbest things for money.

I enjoy debunking these ridiculous forwared'd emails. I enjoy it when smart people make themselves look so dumb when the prospect of making a couple bucks comes along. I could make a slanderous claim here but I won't.

So for all of those idiot friends of mine, who have just made me aware to either their pitiful financial situation, or to their complete and utter idiocy; Here is your sign:


^
I'm Stupid


Print it out, hang it on your neck, and next time I come across you in a bar I won't offer to buy you a drink, nor will I pry your brain for a shred of original insight. Further, don't forward me junk, and don't forward junk at all. I guarantee you some other moron will just forward it to me and I will see your email in the forwared'd spam mail harvesting list and harass you for it. But the same person to my knowledge sent this out more than once after I busted her for it (but didn't copy me the second time - dah, I got the next forward). What an idiot!

"This isn't real, it wasn't written up in USA Today (other than in articles about Internet hoaxes), Microsoft and AOL aren't running a tracked "e-mail beta test" with Bill Gates paying people for participating, and Intel and AOL aren't merging. The bottom line is that no matter which incarnation of this silliness one receives, the principle is the same: there's still no free lunch, and big companies aren't going to hand out fabulous vacations, $1000 bills, free trendy clothes, new computers, cases of candies, wads of cash, or new cars just because someone with a functioning Internet connection does them the favor of forwarding an e-mail. Though at first blush, participating in such pie-in-the-sky wishfulness appears perfectly harmless, such participation only serves to clog up already overtaxed resources. Oh yes, it does one other thing: it gives the idjits who cooked up these frauds a great big laugh at your expense."

I just don't understand how such a simple Google search couldn't inform these people to this hoax. It has been going on for 10 years!!!

"Opps I just forwarded this e-mail to about 12 people and I've been waiting for my check to come in the mail. The person that e-mailed me said please read cause it was on Good Morning America. I figured if it had been on Good Morning America it must be true. I didn't know thanks for telling me." - here's your sign Stupid
"No offence, but you can't seriously tell me that you think Bill Gates wold pay for spamming."
"Here's a good hint - if it seems to good to be true, it normally is."
''There's a sucker born every minute."
"Jeez, people's stupidity is only matched by their greed."
"I've been dying for years to write one of these things just to get off on knowing that idiots everywhere were passing it on." - here's your sign Stupid
"I don't think most of us know enough people stupid enough to fall for it to make it worthwhile." - I didn't either, but then again, I've got this email so many times I don't even need to read the body any more.
"It is fascinating, isn't it? I've wondered myself, what is that little tic in the brains of people who have this need to get you to pass on chain e-mails? It bugs the heck out of me. I'm not talking about the scams that involve money (which are naturally offensive because they actually cause harm), I'm talking about e-mails like the one Alison mentions here, where they simply want to see you pass it on. Do the people sending the e-mails out need validation in their lives so badly? Does it ease some insecurity if they can get you to do what they say? It reminds me of a child pointing behind you to make your turn around and then singing "Made you look! Made you look!""
Over And Out

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pass THIS important message around to your friends...
Whenever the header to an email uses that many E's for "please" and "read",
the folks who composed it are probably a little unbalanced. pay attention to signs in behavior and what it tells you about the messenger, anything truly valuable should not require all that exaggerated pleading to get folks interested.

kay9gigi said...

Thank you. This email's now going around my campus and I've gotten it twice today from people saying, "probably not, but just in case...".
Well, as you said, a simple google search is all it takes to find out.

Anonymous said...

First off most of us who have sent the message on are not STUPID but money hungry and gullible. Many people don't have jobs and are trying there hardest to not starve themselves with going broke. Understandably, no one is going to pay for forwarding an email...but everyone out there has a hope that money will come easier to them. NOT STUPID!!!!

Matt Stark said...

Anyone need proof of peoples stupidity, please read the previous comment.

Cristin, if you stand outside and run in circles for 48 hours it will start raining money. Bill Gates told me this himself and it was on Good Morning America.

shaunls85 said...

Blind hopefuls would be a better term for people like my brother and roomates and the staff in the sports medicine dept at my college. The only money one can get is the form of income or won by playing the odds. Friends do help friends out and family does help family out but, it ends there with the notion of free money.