Seriously - are people stupid???

OK, today I'm going to have a bit of a rant about an old favourite with a new twist...

Chain Letters

Now I am aware that these are as old as the hills, being as I used to receive them regularly by e-mail (and still do very occasionally), and I'm told that they used to be sent on real paper back in the pre-internet days (which of course I don't remember, being too young... honest :P ) but this weekend, whilst browsing around Facebook, I've discovered them popping up in comments all over the place. And they're hilarious. And stupid. People would need to be really messed up in the head to believe in these things.

So I thought I'd look at one in detail, and see how stupid it could be...

"In 1997 a girl named Lauren was walking in a forest and suddenlydisappeared; she hadn't been discovered untill 2000 when a young girlnamed Mary found Lauren's body which had chest markings that said, "Iwasn't pretty enough.""

So this is the opening, the setup if you will, attempting to tell you a scary story to freak you out. Except it's not particularly scary. Forgive my jaded 21st Century mind, but while girls vanish while out walking more often than we would like, it's not a rare occurrence. And there have been much more disturbing things found carved into corpses than "I wasn't pretty enough." Also, the lack of specificity in this example is breathtaking. No place, surnames or any hint as to where this happened. Also, you will notice that the person typing this has a specific lack of skills as far as spelling, grammar and use of the space bar is concerned. Moving on...

"Lauren's ghost will appear in your mirror,telling you that you're not pretty enough and ................................. See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See More... See MoreSee More"

OK, firstly (and I hate to ruin this for anyone) GHOSTS DON'T EXIST! Secondly, even if they did, I'm damn sure that the ghost of a murder victim would have better things to do than appear in mirrors to random girls (and I'm not being sexist here, this specific chain letter appears to be targeted towards girls as I can't think of many boys who would care that they were "not pretty enough". Except maybe Carl :P), and I like the fact that the first part of this threat is so lame. Oh, she's going to appear and say "You're not pretty enough?" I'd turn round and reply "At least I'm not dead!" And what's with the repetition of "See More"? It's to fill up the comment box because, on Facebook, if you write more than a certain number of lines, (I think it's four or five) then you have to click on a "See More" button to reveal the rest. It's basically the same dramatic effect as they used to achieve by putting loads of line spaces in an e-mail. Let us read on...

"she will kill you. She'll will repeatedly tell you, "See more,see more, see more.." The same happened to Mary, and she died shortlyafter."

This seems like an awfully stupid plan to me. She'll kill you and THEN tell you "See More?" or she'll tell you "See More" first? It seems awfully strange that she'd say it anyway, being as she was murdered in a time before Facebook, so the phrase would mean NOTHING to her!! This section ends the story, as Mary, our inquisitive non-specific young lady has been killed. So what can we do to avoid this terrible fate?

"To save yourself, copy and paste this into five other band'scomment boxes. THIS IS TRUE! Since you have started reading this, donot stop. Keep in mind that you need to send this to five other bandsin 143 minutes."

This is where what little reality was left is torn up, stuffed in a box and casually tossed out of the window of common sense and run over by the dustbin cart of fantasy. Firstly, the page I found this on was NOT a band's comment box, so that girl's dead anyway... Secondly, anyone who feels the urge to state "THIS IS TRUE!" in capital letters is overcompensating. It's not true, it's bollocks. And why 143 minutes? They could at least have used some number that corresponded to something in the original story... Also, on a purely logical note, how on earth did this story get out if Mary died without posting? (Which she can't have done, because Facebook didn't exist at that time) And does this ghost have a giant server permanently tracking every iteration of this message to check everyone's doing it correctly? Sounds like a lot of work to me...

"When you're finished, press "F6" and your crush's namewill appear on your computer screen in big letters as a "reward" forpreventing yourself from being killed."

Oh dear god. Where to start? Press "F6" and your crush's name will appear? What kind of programming whiz is this ghost? And why would she want to tell you something YOU ALREADY KNOW?? Are you seriously suggesting that she is floating around in her ghostly way, checking everyone who's posted it, reading their mind and then reprogramming the source code of Facebook with a specific name so that when you press F6 you can see it? And what kind of reward is that anyway?? I'd much rather she programmed next weeks winning lottery numbers into my computer so that when I pressed F6 i could see that instead! Why do I want to see something I already know?

"This is scary because itactually works"

No it isn't. Because no, it doesn't. You bunch of fucking retards.

End Rant.