How not to forward chain letter emails

Chain emails can be very annoying but many people think they are fun. Everyone has at least once received an apparently silly chain that claims it will make your dream come true, provided it is forwarded to enough people.

Important :If you do enjoy forwarding email chain letters, please use the undisclosed recipients technique when filling the destination field.

If you are not of the superstitious kind, this junk spam will slowly clutter up your 5Mb limited email box, possibly resulting in a loss of important documents. But the worse is still to happen : even though you have informed relatives and friends that this kind of mail doesn't interest you, one day or another your address will be included in a non undisclosed recipients-ed mail, sent to tens of people around the world that will likely forward it again and again, resulting in your email being given to hundreds of other prople very keen on sending spam in return. Determining the consequences is left as an exercise to the reader.

Do not think, because you believe in the existence of chain email demiurges working all day to fulfill your dreams, that these letters are blessings. When you get about 10 such emails a day and feel that you MUST spend the 10 minutes it takes to do what's written in it, well, you loose an hour a day. And don't forget that the more you send chain letters, the more you get. I am convinced that above 20 letters per day, you do not have enough time left to take advantage of the demiurges' work.

You might be thinking : "this situation can't last long, there must be a workaround". And you are perfectly right ! Here is one.

If you analyze how chain emails are constructed, you will notice that they all start by a short introduction :

Hi, this letter was sent to me by my sister who is a strong believer in witchcraft and magic.

Think of something you want to happen and forward this letter to your friends. If you forward this letter to at least 20 beloved friends, your wish will come true.

It worked for me. The next day my dream came true. I heard of a friend whose wish came true in one hour.

If you do not do this, the exact opposite will happen. Trust me.

All you have to do is think at the exact opposite of what you want to happen, and do the exact opposite of what the letter instructs you to do. For the given example, you were instructed to forward it to at least 20 beloved friends, the exact opposite is not to forward it to 20 beloved friends : you can either forward it to less than 20 friends, or to 20 or more people that you hate.

This workaround works whether you believe in chain letters or not. It has many advantages. Firstly, you get the opportunity to try if the chain letter works since it has the exact same consequences as if you had done what was instructed. Secondly you avoid the drawbacks of the classical chain email forwarding technique. Thanks to this method, it is possible to deal with (and possibly make your dream come true) as much as 10 chain letters in less than 5 minutes.