It was another one of those notes from my mother, one of those with "Fwd: Fw: Be Aware" in the subject line.
"Oh thrill," I thought; another one. Another warning that I would feel compelled to read or suffer through ten years of bad luck, or worse, bad sex, or cancer, like the last one threatened to plague me with if I didn't read and respond. My mother was strangely superstitious when it came to these emails; they played on her guilt. What kind of mother wouldn't let her daughter know of the latest scam? Health scare? Nut job preying on women?
"Just in case," her notes always said, and were followed by a breadcrumb path of forwarded messages from other guilt-ridden friends. Today's message was about a woman who had died from drinking soda from a can that hadn't been wiped off and was infected by rat piss. It was one more thing I now needed to add to my list of situations to avoid or else, as warned by my mother, which included providing directions to strangers in parking lots, taking pills with no water (my cousin did this and an aspirin festered in her throat), microwaving plastic food containers and wiping from back to front (some things, Mom, you just KNOW and don't need to be told, OK?).
The rat piss story, even if it's true, is just one more example of women's paranoia given a platform. We feel compelled to read this stuff and absorb it, for fear that we be the next featured victim of some oddity, like falling into an outdoor toilet and drowning. I can see my Mom sending that email on that one, with a note reading, "See, it CAN happen!!!!"
The "must acknowledge and tell everyone in my address book" phenomenon is not only common among women; recently my friend Brett sent me a chain letter with a note: "Sorry to do this to you..." Enclosed was a demand that I forward the email to ten of my best friends or have a shitty life. The guy's a lawyer, how could he saddle me with such responsibility?
Men, though, more typically badger in other ways; one that I've been witness to lateley, since opening a Skype account, is ePropositioning.
"DING!" I see my Skype window open and display the profile of someone I've never met before in my life. My virtual phone is ringing.
"Joe Loser wants to add you to his contact list." Great, I've just unwittingly entered an online pick-up bar. I click the dialogue box closed; thanks, but I prefer to sit alone and buy my own drinks.
Sure, Skype's free service is a great model for boosting user adoption, but even 1-900 lines offer a barrier of entry. I've included very little in my Skype profile--just my name. Apparently, these days, a name is too much.
Somewhere, probably someplace very remote but wired, Skypestalkers live in a colony of digital shame, along with the humiliated subjects of mass email exploitation--the woman whose dress fell down at a wedding and whose picture was mass distributed, the couple caught on camera screwing in a dorm room--people who got their 15 megabytes of infamy. The bars are filled with people named Dirk Finger and Lola Candida--people you know send mass emails begging you to try a penis enhancement cream, or buy their black-market software. You just know by looking at them that they have some sort of virus. Some introduce themselves like they do when they spam the comments section of your blog:
"Hi try me now.Hi try me now.Hi try me now."
Hopefully you will never have to emergency land in this remote place. Hopefully you will not get hungry and have to stop into the local greasy spoon looking for sustenance. But if you do, don't settle in. Don't engage them in conversation. Just look for the exit; it's prominently marked DELETE.
I know, I know....I feel the same way when I get these "gems." Just to make you feel better....I DON'T send you ALL of them. -Mom
Posted by: Joy DJ | May 05, 2005 at 08:16 PM
My sister used to be bad about sending around e-mails containing highly unlikely cautionary tales, but I introduced her to Snopes.com and it eventually cured her. ;)
Posted by: Jane | May 06, 2005 at 05:08 PM
Jor-
I agree that nothing is more eagerly awaited than the email warnings and/or chainmail. I have told my friends to let me know that it is a chain, so this way they can send and I can happily delete. I always check out mom's (since it is usually her) warnings at the following sites: TruthorFiction.com and Urbanlegends.about.com. Mom if you read this comment (which I know you will, becuase you are mom) then you also may want to check these sites as well. F.Y.I. the last gem about the can and rat piss actually has been circulating since 2002 according to the last site I mentioned.
Posted by: Jen | May 08, 2005 at 05:52 AM