It Has Made Me Blind And Deaf And Weak

I have some kind of nasty throat infection/head cold/flu, but hopefully I can still put something coherent together.

I'm forever (at least once a day) getting emails from friends of the sort passed from person to person to tell me how loved I am; to share a sweet story; to say how important friends are - you know the sort.

Now that's all very nice, though I'm very much getting to the "cried wolf once too often" stage; especially given that none of these are ever written by the sender and they're often tenth hand by the time I get them.

That's not really a huge issue. What really bugs me is that the majority either have guilt trips or blackmail associated with them - and they're all a form of chain letter.

"Send this on to 10 friends you love" they suggest, and then often there's an addition of "I hope I'm one of them.".

Great, so if I don't get time to send it back I'm going to feel guilty right?

Or you get the "If you don't send this to X friends within Y amount of time you'll get bad luck".

Are the people sending me this really my friends?  They claim I'm important then dump this shit on me.

Now I'm mostly not superstitious, but I admit a small part of my mind winces every time I delete an email that says "If you don't send this on...".  Obviously I mean a lot to these people that they want to do this to me.

I think I need to write a policy document and reply with it to anyone sending me one of these emails.

Hey, I'm flattered if you love me/think I'm a great friend/whatever. But why not just tell me that instead of forwarding on someone else's idea of a sick joke?

Sheesh.

For the record, with few exceptions, my policy is to simply delete said emails.  Sometimes an 'innocent' (I.e. non blackmailing, guilt tripping) one will get caught as collateral damage. I apologise if that's the case.

{Lyrics:  Chain Letter - Todd Rundgren }