3rd
Repeatedly Forwarded Email Loses Original Point
February 3, 2009
CHICAGO, IL — Area man Frank Atherton received an email from his grandfather, retired accountant Dwight Lundquist, titled, “Fwd: FW: Fwd: Fw: FW: Fwd: FWD: FW: Fw: Fwd: FWD: OBAMA CAN’T BE TRUSTED MAYBE!” Lundquist was presumably the 11th person to send the email along since it was written on January 24. Unfortunately, the email had been forwarded so many times that Atherton had a difficult time deciphering its contents, even after carefully removing numerous forward marks and merging sentences.
The email contends, “President Obama is trying to set up a permanent government under his control and will use the FCC to do something with taxes or stem-cell funding. Or, maybe FEMA. Yeah, FEMA.” The third paragraph casts this warning, “Now, on some Thursday or Friday in August, maybe October, it is strongly urged that you DO NOT DRINK WATER FROM THE TAP. No wait, DO NOT WATCH YOUR LOCAL EVENING NEWS. I think.”
Email expert Charles Rumack of Netron, Inc. concludes, “Clearly this email as it was originally composed had a clear warning of some kind about the Obama Administration, but the ten-paragraph argument has degraded considerably. For example, paragraphs four through seven are simply a bunch of ‘@’ and ‘#’ symbols in random patterns.” Rumack says this happens all too often with emails that are forwarded with abandon. “It’s like making a copy of a copy of a copy in a Xerox,” he adds, “Eventually, it looks like garbage to the human eye.”
Atherton admits to receiving three to four forwarded emails from Lundquist each week, but says this is by far the most incoherent. “This is definitely worse than the one from last summer about how sugar or any sugar substitute will give all humans or rabbits cancer in maybe a few years.”
