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Yesterday, I came into work to find my inbox full. Well, relatively full, for me, since I don't get a lot of email at work. There has been a spam email going around the agency, one of those that promises that Bill Gates will pay you $245 per person you forward the email to. (This one!) Well, some employee, in a fit of "intelligence," managed to wrap his brain around the mathematics of $245 times the thousand or so people employed by DPSCS and decided to forward the email to every single person in the email address book.

Which, predictably, resulted in others jumping on the bandwagon and clicking Reply All to share in the bounty.

Someone replied to all with the Snopes article about the email.

Someone replied to him (using Reply All, of course), saying, "You better hope you're right!" I mean, gosh, if he's not, he stands to lose out on a quarter million dollars at least!

Finally, someone from IT replied and reminded all of the enthusiastic and soon-to-be-rich and -retired participants in the ~~scam~~ scheme that it violated department policy to use the email system for non-work-related purposes, and all the forwards flying around to everyone in the address book was really taxing the system.

Not like that stopped the email. Next, people started replying (to all, of course), asking to be removed from "the list" or griping about spam. The fact that they themselves had become spammers by their love of that Reply All option amused me but apparently failed to sink past those three inches or so of bone to reach the quivering, jellied mass that stands for a brain.

It perturbs me that these people are considered professionals.

It perturbs me even more that we are the Department of Public Safety, and the same people who will be eagerly checking their mailbox for the next few weeks, looking for that check from Bill Gates, are the same who make decisions about which offenders are and are not allowed back into the community.

There's a comforting thought.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: my desk at work
Current Music: traffic on 175

Tags:

work

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I love it! That one is soooo old. I think I first received it (at work, of course) somewhere around the computerization of the most high tech offices (early to mid-80s? my memory fails me).

I liked the one with the supposed Nieman-Marcus recipe for chocolate chip cookies, which at least had some lasting social value. It claimed that you were getting a copy, "keep it a secret," of a recipe that could only be had by paying $500 to Nieman Marcus for it. (The "keep it a secret" advisory did not prevent people from spamming everyone the knew with it, including the entire email last of the major firms I worked over the course of about 10-15 years.)

I really try not to be a snob about my mad Internetz skillz ... but really, folks. Think! Even Bill Gates can't afford to give quarter- and half-million dollar rewards to thousands of people ... and how scary is it to imagine if the technology to "track" emails really existed!?

I do often wonder if people sit at home, eagerly awaiting the check Bill Gates owes them. Or if anyone has ever forwarded the email to the entire address book at their workplace and then quit dramatically a minute later.

I've never received the cookie recipe email. I know of it because I used to read on Snopes a lot (read: before I discovered fandom! :^D), but that one has avoided me so far.

I really do find it disturbing that, considering the amount of responsibility some of these people have, they aren't more intelligent. Of course, I suppose this is a symptom of a nation that is considering electing for President a candidate who brags about the fact that he doesn't know how to use email.

It is scary. I have received, over the years, multiple copies of those that say: “Forward this email to 10 people in the next 10 minutes and you will have 10 years of good luck, if you do not you will have 10 years of bad luck.” I would receive it from people I had previously considered intelligent and thoughtful with notes like this prefacing it: “I am sure this is probably b.s., but I got really anxious when I read it and decided I ought not to take a chance. So here it is.” I would write back “Shame on you,” if I knew them well.

Sorry, I do not currently have a copy of the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe, but I still love the one for Toll-house cookies on the back of the chocolate chip package! OMG!

I would write back “Shame on you,”

Am adopting that answer! :D

Feel free to do so. Just remember that people can be very delicate and irrational about these kinds of things! Superstition seems to be hardwired into the psyche of a lot of people.

I solemnly swear to use it with caution and delicacy. ;)

Superstition seems to be hardwired into the psyche of a lot of people.

It does, doesn't it? I wonder if there is an evolutionary explanation for that. *looks around for Pandemonium*

Superstition and magical thinking* certainly do seem to be hard-wired into our brains. Conveniently enough, in the midst of blogging about Dawkins' The God Delusion, I wrote about "natural born dualism" and the human predisposition to believe in the supernatural a while back:

The Accidental Deity and in particular, Is God an Accident? contained therein.**

The late (and great) Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark addresses the problems of superstition nicely. Sagan's approach is also less shrill than Dick to the Dawk's is.

*Not that magical thinking or imagination is bad. In fact, it's probably good and necessary for our brain function. One just needs to know where the boundaries are.

**Disclaimer: I acknowledge my (lack of) belief system may be as popular as Sauron at a hobbit picnic (yes, I am inordinately fond of this stupid phrase) in some circles.

Thanks so much for the links. I've spent the last hour reading them--fascinating stuff!

This discussion is kind of serendipitous because I am currently working on my final essay for American Fiction and looking at Poe's use of psychology in his short stories; one of the points in my thesis regards dualism: that the psychology in Poe's stories not only represents but requires dualist beliefs to work. I got to go back to some of my old psych texts in providing some background on this and found a statement along the same lines as Bloom's research that "everyone begins as a dualist." This has always made intuitive sense to me; it's fascinating to see the science underlying the idea.

Hi, Talban ...

0;^)))

Why hello there!

That was really quick!

My Nelyo sees your Talban. ;)

(My Talban would be all over my Nelyo, but that's a whole different story ...)

*behaving now*

ROFL! I only have one image of Talban so he has to be King, Queen and Ace in this game. ;)

Please don't behave! ;)

talban has his own LJ from when

digdigil and I used to RP my Midhavens characters. There are lots of images there that Jenni used to use for him, though Caspian is much closer to my own own mental image. ;)

Bobby and I RP my characters sometimes. (We call it "character development.") Tal is a world-class perv. Someday, I'm going to actually finish the stories, and everyone will be disappointed in how un-pervy Talban really is! ;)

Yeah you have to be careful with your flist, because we all have dirty minds and there is no one around to stop us. :D *goes to look at his lj* And also - Caspian and his horse were the contenders for the most pleasing eye-candy in that movie. I debated with myself all the way through. ;)

Oh speaking of icons! That one you have with the magnificent seven, is it one that is snaggable?

Caspian and his horse were the contenders for the most pleasing eye-candy in that movie.

Wot? No Peter Pevensie?? I often think that if we had Ben Barnes and William Moseley for Tolkien characters, there would be no stopping the deluge of slash communities! >;^)))

Oh speaking of icons! That one you have with the magnificent seven, is it one that is snaggable?

Yes! Just please credit

aramel_calawen; she put it up for grabs a few years ago. :)

Thanks! *uses it immediately!*

Oh LOL! Now you make me want to look if there is any Peter/Caspian out there... ;) Because you are so right!

I've never gotten the impression that there was a big Narnia fandom. I could be wrong on that ... but if there is, they're very quiet.

And I'm sure, given the overtness of Christianity in the Narnia books compared to Tolkien's, that slash is even more taboo than here. >:^)))

Tal is a world-class perv.

OK. Shame on you. Now you've hooked me. I want to read those!

The Midhavens stories or RPs? The stories will be finished eventually. I'm not sure if any of the RPs are publicly available or not.

I've gotten those sorts too, though not many ... most people on my flist don't seem to be into that sort of thing. The two who were seem to have fallen off of the face of the earth. My other personal favorite is the "send this to ten friends including the person who sent it to you or else you don't like them!!!!11!11!" I absolutely will not respond to those. Imho, friendship is not defined by clicking "Foreward" or "Reply All." I feel absolutely nothing warm and cozy about getting emails containing bad poetry and images of angels rendered entirely in zeroes and slashes sent to a person's entire address book, and the last way I want to express my regard for the person who sent me such a token of, erm, affection is by contributing to the deluge of spam she is guaranteed to receive from uneasy "friends" who feel they are slighting her if they don't respond by sending the email back. (Which makes me wonder if she then has to resend it to them? I imagine a bizarre ping-pong match of emails. No thanks.)

My dad makes really awesome chocolate chip cookies using pudding, either vanilla or chocolate. They are the family favorite so far. I can send you the recipe so long as you keep it secret. ;)

My dad makes really awesome chocolate chip cookies using pudding, either vanilla or chocolate. They are the family favorite so far. I can send you the recipe so long as you keep it secret. ;)

Oh, yes. I promise not to spam my considerable email list with it.

Since I'm on your email list, I'll know when you do. ;) True spammers don't know how to remove addresses from the "Send To" field, after all!

True spammers don't know how to remove addresses from the "Send To" field, after all!

Ain't it the truth!

wow, yes, those e-mails are usually formatted in such pressing language that it makes you the anti social being if you're not in. I just don't have time for it, so if that makes me anti social, so be it.

I have one sister-in-law who I have always admired for never answering any of even the least offensive of those, or buying into the meme-style email spams (which have far less content and are quite useless compared to the LJ meme things, which more often than not reflect shared interests).

I've never understood email memes. Part of the fun of memes on LJ, for me, are the crazy conversations that tend to develop from them. This is impossible on email unless everyone replies to everyone else, which will annoy the hell out of at least 90% of the recipients.

Personally, I think it makes you sociable to consider whether the people you're forwarding actually want the forward you're sending. ;)

My personal policy with forwards is that 1) I never send anything to my entire address book (especially since my address book is filled with people I've talked to once or twice for SWG purposes; they don't need glurgy friendship forwards) and 2) I always write my own message to go along with it. If I can't find something to say to the people I'm forwarding to justify why I'm forwarding them, then I need to rethink it before clicking SEND.

Oh, and I trim all the previous forwards and leave just the message. When people can't be bothered to take thirty seconds to trim this stuff for me but expect me to take thirty seconds scrolling to find their message in all that mess, that says something.

I encountered something similar to that, only it was all about the end of the world. Quite annoying. ;-(

Now that is downright nasty! As if global warming weren't scary enough! ROFL

Edited Date: 2008-09-23 04:38 pm (UTC)

Wow, really? (Of course, a good 20-33% of my country truly believes that God is going to suck all the good people up into the sky some day and leave us "sinners" to our own devices here on earth so ...)

Btw, I've gotten all but one of the postcards! They came en masse today and yesterday! Mine should be arriving to you soon, judging by the pace of things, though the post office is always a mysterious entity. ;)

Yey!! I just drank a ton of caffeine before writing that so the notes are worthy of a perky tour guide. :->

I'm excited about your postcards. :-D

I love the notes! They help to put everything into perspective.

And I love when you show on the miniature maps where things are. I'm so much a map person, that I had to squee at this!

Bill Gates giving away money would have made me go like: if he was like that, we would't pay so much for his products. *bin* But the herdlike behaviour is astounding, isn't it?

I guess we are social creatures ... ;)

I agree that if Bill Gates was interested in giving anything away, Microsoft would be open source. Then it would not only be less expensive but would probably work better to. IE might not constantly screw up my CSS layouts! ;)

LOL! Reading it as you put it is sooo fun! (That´s what I consider the greatest proof of useful genius: being able to write off stressful or stupid experiences into funny stories).

It does keep me sane! And it's so much more fun than ranting! :^D

I'm glad others see the humor in it, though. That's the good thing about LJ friends!

The spam emails that really make me laugh are the ones that go for a while with nice stuff about how great friends are, and how we should all love each other, and then end with, "if you don't forward this to 50 more people everyone will hate you and your life will be miserable for the next 50 years"...

Yes! It's never enough to simply declare your friendship for a person. You must declare your friendship and also place upon them an inane demand, like "FORWRAD TO EVERY ONE U KNOW!!!!11!1!" Add a touch of bland threats and presto! Spam mail!

I am slightly freaked out now.

Lol! Welcome to the club! ;) If this job has done anything for me, it is to realize the amazing stupidity of most people in power in government and the general ignorance of most people in law enforcement. It is scary and has made me skeptical and cynical all at once.

It perturbs me even more that we are the Department of Public Safety, and the same people who will be eagerly checking their mailbox for the next few weeks, looking for that check from Bill Gates, are the same who make decisions about which offenders are and are not allowed back into the community.

You know... as much as I can sympathize with you and with your aching in-box - that last paragraph just sent me off. ROTFLMAO!!! As sad as it is, I fear it is also really too funny to believe.

I hope the IT service will cut all of them off their mailing privileges for a few days.

It's a nice thought that IT would do that, but they won't. If this agency punished stupidity, 90% of the employees wouldn't be able to work! ;)

Before I had this job, I knew that a lot of people were either unintelligent altogether or simply lacked common sense. However, I never realized how many people with jobs requiring considerable responsibility were the same!

The other day, in a newspaper article about the current US financial crisis, I saw a quote about how most Americans assumed that the people at the top of the ladder in financial institutions were much smarter than they (the average citizen) were. The article said that it has come as a shock to a lot of people to realize how untrue that is!

The article said that it has come as a shock to a lot of people to realize how untrue that is!

Oh, I fear some of them *are* smarter - at least those who made sure that their personal gain is safe even inb the current crisis.

(Excuse me while I fume)

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