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Chain letters spread faster via InternetAs a child, I remember my mother diligently hand-copying a letter she has just received in the mail. It stated she must send 20 copies to other people within 24 hours or she would have bad luck for the next 5 years. I later learned this was a "chain letter". Today, this phenomenon of the chain letter has moved onto the Internet. With the speed of email, it is quite possible for a letter to be replicated several thousand times in a single day. Others have grown so large they have earned the title of "urban legend". These are modern day myths that sound so good, they refuse to die. They're so popular, a movie based on them was released in 2000. One of the best and worst urban legends I have seen is the Craig Shergold incident. Craig was a boy, age 7, who had a brain tumor and was expected to die. He wanted to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for receiving the most greeting cards. It was a simple request, and he succeeded.. in 1989. A copy of his letter requesting greeting cards fell into the hands of John Kluge, a billionaire who paid for the surgery Craig needed in 1991. He is now totally healed and 21 years old as of this writing. Does the story end there? Not by a long shot. The request is going strong on the Internet today, in addition to still being distributed hard-copy by fax and U.S. mail. He has received over 60 million cards (they stopped counting years ago). Requests to ask people to stop sending the cards have failed. The Children's Wish Foundation and 40 volunteers are using a donated warehouse to handle the 300,000 + cards which continue to arrive each week. Read more at urbanlegends.com/classic/craig.shergold/craig_nyt.html, or call 800-215-1333 for a recorded message that will confirm the story. Did you hear that Britney Spears was dead, or that Eddie Murphy scared someone in an elevator? Visit urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends and you will not have a doubt that these are also not true. Snopes.com has set up a special search engine just for myths, chain letters, and urban legends. If you receive a request to "send this to 10 friends", just visit their site, type in a few keywords from your letter and see if this is a hoax that is already listed. Have you ever wondered if there is any fact to the rumor that water runs in the opposite direction south of the equator? Or is the American Cancer Society really going to pay $.03 to help a young girl with cancer each time you forward an email? Are there carcinogens in your shampoo? The facts are available at the Urban Legends Research Center, located at ulrc.com.au. Even our religious beliefs have become prey for these hoaxes. Did you hear that Madalyn Murry O'hair wants to ban religious broadcasting? At religioustolerance.org/chr_cul.htm you can read about this hoax and many others that you'll find familiar. If you go to none of the other links in this article, at least visit religioustolerance.org/chr_cul3.htm and get a good laugh! See how many of the chain letter fragments you can spot in this article which sums it all up for you. My request to you is, if you receive one of these chain letters from a friend, please send this article to them. Ask them to forward a copy to all the friends whom they forwarded the letter to, along with the person who sent it to them. They will think either you're pretty smart for not being taken in by it, that you have a great sense of humor for being able to laugh at yourself for actually believing it at first, or that you are honorable enough to go back and make amends for hitting the forward button too quickly. And think what you'll be able to do with your extra time once you don't have to spend it forwarding all those emails! |
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