HUMOR IN LETTER'S 

DON'T FORWARD EMAIL

A rule to live by in the age of the Internet: Never
forward any e-mail that contains the sentence, "PLEASE
FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN."

Because if you do, there's a very good chance bad 
things will happen to you. Not bad as in "the last 
person who broke the chain was killed in a Freak roller-
coaster accident." Bad as in having your cell phone 
explode with hundreds of calls a day. Bad as in having 
your name, address and phone number preserved forever in 
the amber-like stickiness that is an Internet hoax. Or 
just having everyone you know think you're an idiot.

We're talking hoaxes here. Those stupid, many-times-
forwarded e-mail messages that involve fast money, absurd
claims or just about anything to do with Microsoft. The 
ones where you always wonder, "Who in the world believes
this stuff enough to actually pass this along?"

Well, now I know. First came a copy of the infamous 
"Chicken memo." That's the one that claims -- according
to a study supposedly done by the University of New 
Hampshire -- that Kentucky Fried Chicken had to change 
its name to KFC because it no longer uses real chicken 
meat, but genetically engineered organisms cultured from 
chicken cells and grown in vats. It's so silly that I 
was still giggling when I called the folks at UNH. They
weren't laughing. Their phones were lighting up like 
Christmas trees with people calling to find out more 
about this "horrible story." Computer specialist Jim 
Cerny finally put up a link on the university's main Web 
page on "The Chicken Hoax," and he says it's getting 
10,000 hits a day. But at least that wasn't as bad as 
the poor woman I'll just call "Mary" at the Massachusetts
environmental police. She forwarded an early incarnation
of the message and in doing so attached her work 
signature file to it - which included her full name and 
both of her work numbers. As the message spread, so did 
her name and phone number. That resulted in an avalanche 
of calls to the beleaguered state agency. "It's been 
crazy," said her supervisor, who declined to give her 
name or tell me whether "Mary" will still be working 
there next week.

Then on Wednesday I was sent the Microsoft one (you 
know, "Forward this message and Microsoft will send you 
$245 for everyone who forwards it on.")

It came from a friend back East with the note "I find 
this hard to believe
but maybe worth a try -- it came from one of the most 
famous Kant scholars
in the world, so what does that tell you?" This 
friend is nobody's fool.

She's a serious intellectual who discusses things over 
lunch that would take me weeks to even begin to understand.
But a stray e-mail promising easy money seemed, if only 
for a moment, plausible to her. Which got me wondering -- 
who are those people in the multiple headers that make up 
the bulk of these hoax messages? Printed out in a small 
font, the e-mail took up 12 pages. I got out my 
highlighter and started doing some archaeological work.

The first name that popped up on Dec. 16 was the chairman
and CEO of a fairly important company in Montreal. He 
didn't appear to have originated the message, but, 
unfortunately for him, when he forwarded it, his signature
file (containing his full name, title, address and phone 
numbers) was appended to the message. I called his 
office and got his secretary, who immediately asked, 
"Are you calling about that e-mail?" in a more than
harried tone. When I identified myself, she sighed a 
heavy sigh and said, "He's getting zillions of calls. I
don't know how it happened; he doesn't either. It's a 
disaster."

The next layer came from Montreal Internet strategist 
and computer consultant Kathy Silverstein on Dec. 17 at 
12:11 p.m. Slammed is the only possible word to describe
what has happened to her since that fateful moment
when she hit the Send key. She was, she told me, 
"temporarily insane. I know better, but I said, 'What 
the hell, I'll give everyone a laugh.' " So she sent it 
along -- to all 300 people in her address book. Ten 
minutes later, her cell phone started to ring, and 
e-mail began pouring into her mailbox. It hasn't stopped.
While we were talking, the call waiting on her phone
clicked in two or three times a minute. "It's crippling 
my business," she says.

Next, the message bounced to ATT.net, then to an AOL 
address on Dec. 17. That person sent it along to six 
others on Saturday, the 18th. For a few days it looked 
as if it might have died out, but on Wednesday, the 22nd,
another AOL user shipped it off, starting the chain up
again. On the 23rd, it hit the @Home network, where it
again almost died out. But not quite. On New Year's Eve
someone else at AOL sent it out again, and this time it
hit a mailbox at the philosophy department at the State
University of New York.

From there it went to the department's graduate and
faculty mailing list. And in a fit of collegial madness,
the contagion was passed on to what looks like the better
part of the faculty at New York University. On the 3rd, it
left the keyboard of one of America's most
distinguished ethicists, with a note saying, "Apparently
this is legitimate. They will pay you money if you
forward this. Please do so." They won't, but that didn't
stop it from going on to staffers at Princeton, the
University of Chicago, Barnard, Rutgers and Dartmouth 
and to Jules L. Coleman, the Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld 
professor of jurisprudence, who on Jan. 4 sent it to
"the longest address book I had."

"My point was I wanted people to see just how many
incredibly smart people were prepared, while even 
mentioning their skepticism, to send it along and
encourage others to do so," Coleman says. These were 
some of the leading philosophers in America, skeptics 
for whom the existence of an external world is an open
question. But that didn't stop them from forwarding the
message. "We may be skeptical about many things -
but not about free money," Coleman says.

Brilliant people may lose all objectivity when 
confronted with the lure of free money when it comes
cloaked in a facile bit of writing over the Internet.
But the lesson here is that anyone with some street
smarts can strike a blow for Truth, Justice and a
Less-Clogged Internet by just being a little smarter.

And not hitting the Forward key.