The Top 8 Reasons Not to Respond to Chain Letters
I do not like chain emails at all. Nor do I like Facebook challenges. Both arrive when you can least afford to look at them or do them - and they come from someone you trust and like who you do not want to let down. I would rather have real personal interactions. Furthermore, it really is SPAM FROM YOUR COMMUNITY. And how can you block them in your Spam or junk mail filter?!
What we never consider is that these chain messages come with a different type of “chain” attached. Guilt, stress and agitation. I often do not send them out as a requested to “50 of my closest friends and family” for a few reasons:
- it guilts or obligates people to do something they often do not want to do
- it adds to the deluge of information
- it creates stress
- it includes threats of fates worse than the ten plagues
- it allows you to breach the privacy of the people you send it to as their emails are shared as the list gets passed around
- it ends up on spam lists that they never would have signed up for
- they can and sometimes do include viruses
- they take time away from more important things
Yes I know I have a choice to open it or not. When it is from a trusted friend, family member, business colleague or a client and it says: “If I do not get this email back from you, I will know that I am not important to you!” Oh what pressure 
.
While I often like what I read – Surprisingly the world does not come to an end within a few minutes or hours of not following orders to forward to others. It never does. Nor do my limbs fall off. Or equally happily, nor do I get run over by a car; watch my house burn down; miraculously go bald overnight; or have my armpits infested by the fleas of 10,000 camels! Even though the letter promised! So from today, by the powers vested in me to control my own behavior:
- I am no longer going to take on any guilt for not forwarding the chain letters
- If I do forward it, is because I like the message – NOT BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME TO
- I will do unto others as I expect to be done unto me – If I send it I won’t expect it!
- I am absolving all recipients from the embedded requirement that is most usually the sting in the tail.
Do you feel the same way?
Comments
Completely agree – chain emails make me crazy. I have learned to hit delete and delete the guilt as well. Guess that’s why I haven’t received that $10 million and those 3 wishes haven’t come true!
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