The Text________________________________________________________________________________
In my email box I received, from you, what my email program interpreted as a chain letter. I have set my emailer to filter out chain letters and return this reply. This is an automated email delivery -- an auto response to your message which should appear at the end of this text. Your message was filtered and deposited directly into my special chain mail trash folder; I have not read it, nor will I. If you feel you have received this message in error, please send me a nasty note describing such.
Respectfully,
Bill
_________________________________________________________________________________
The following was copied from: https://kith.org/logos/things/chain.html
This is an anti-chain letter written by Jed Hartman (not by a missionary
from South America or Asia) in November
of 1994 and modified slightly several times since then. There's no
way to tell how many times it's been "around the world" or
even what that phrase means though at the time of writing it has never
been around the world in any sense.
You are under no obligation to forward this letter. Nothing bad will
happen to you because of failure to forward it.
Furthermore, this letter absolves you of all bad luck you might otherwise
have experienced through failure to forward other
chain letters. That means you never again have to write "I'm not superstitious
but..." on a chain letter and send it on; you never
again have to worry that if you don't forward a chain letter Bad Things
will happen to you. Next time you get a chain letter, read this letter
again and throw out the other one without forwarding it. If you want to,
you can send this letter to the person who
sent you the padlock chain letter, but again, you will not experience
bad luck because of failure to pass this letter on. You may
wish to keep a copy of this letter around for future use, but you may
also dispose of it immediately without ill effects. If you do
pass this letter on, please send only a single copy of it to any given
recipient; never send multiple copies of anything to anyone.
Mail bombing someone with this letter is every bit as bad as any other
form of mail bombing.
Please note that by forwarding a standard chain letter to someone, you
are saying, in effect, "If you don't do what I tell you to
do, something bad will happen to you." Would you make such a threat
under any other circumstances? Would you be upset if
someone else made such a threat to you? Just say no. Don't be a victim
of bad luck wished on you by others. Refuse to
propagate the chain.
In 1994, Liz Berry received a chain letter. She sent it on, with this
note attached: "Fully aware of the perversity of perpetuating
this silly superstitious nonsense, and sharing the annoyance I know
you now feel upon receiving it, I nevertheless feel compelled
to hit you with the following... besides, who knows?" Don't be like
Liz. Don't feel compelled to forward arrant nonsense (in the
form of a patently false letter which, after blatantly lying, insists
that you obey it or suffer). Any potential bad luck resulting from
failure to forward such a letter is negated by the letter you're reading
right now.
Gloria Acosta received the same chain letter. She sent it on too, adding,
"I'm very sorry, I hate to do this but I'm not about to
break this also..." Don't apologize and don't feel bad; break the chain
and demand to know why your friends are threatening
you. If they're worried about bad luck, give them a copy of this letter.
Don't threaten people just because you've been told that
you must or else.
Please feel free to modify or excerpt this letter to suit your circumstances.
It's in the public domain. Nobody ever modifies the
standard chain letters (have you ever known anyone who's changed them?
If you changed one, you wouldn't be forwarding it
exactly, so you might get bad luck, right?), so how did the testimonials
get into them? You know the ones"Mikhail Sarnikov
received this letter and didn't forward it. In ten hours he was pummeled
to death by thugs. Two days later he remembered the
letter and sent it on; he instantly won the lottery and was elected
President of the US." I got news for you: those testimonials are
fakes, written by the original authors of the chain letters. Consider
this: how could the information about what happened to a
recipient get into the letter, after the person forwarded the letter
(or failed to)?
And while we're dissecting chain letters, how does a chain letter know
how many times it's been around the world? Does it
come with a map? Does it have a visa? No; the author simply thought
it sounded good to say it had been around the world a
bunch of times. (Does it count if the letter only makes it halfway
around the world and then gets sent back? What exactly does
"around the world" mean here, anyway?) Besides, the most popular chain
letter in circulation claims to have been written by "a
missionary from South America" and says it "comes from Venezuela"if
so, then why is the "original" of it "in New England"?
Good Luck but please remember: In ten years of receiving chain letters,
I have never once passed one on. I've never once
experienced bad luck because of not passing one on. I've never known
anyone who's experienced good luck because of
passing one on. Others I know have also refused to propagate the chain,
and have never experienced bad luck because of it.
You can do it too; disbelieve those letters and break the chain. And
if you can't disbelieve, just remember that this letter will
prevent any bad luck you might experience from breaking any chain letter.
This is no joke.
_________________________________________________
Here's one as selected by Jim Griffith and copied from http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/txt/St.Paul.chain.letter
THE CHAIN LETTER OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS
The Chain Letter of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians
WITH CHARITY
ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE This epistle comes to you from
Philippi. Grace
be to you and peace. Spiritual gifts will be delivered
unto you within
four days of receiving this letter--providing you in turn
send it on.
2. This is no joke. Send copies to whomsoever among the
gentiles or
superstitious peoples of other denominations you would
comfort in all
their tribulation. Do not send material things. Charity
vaunteth not
itself, is not puffed up.
3. While visiting the Household of Stephanas, a Macedonian
proconsul
received the epistle and was greeted by his brethren by
a holy kiss.
But he broke the chain, and now he is become as sounding
brass or a
tinkling cymbal.
4. Gaius bestowed all his goods to feed the poor, and gave
his body to
be burned, but it profited him nothing. He failed to circulate
the
letter. However, before his death, he received the unleavened
bread of
sincerity and truth.
5. Do note the following: Crispius had the gift of prophecy,
and
understood all mysteries, and all knowledge, and had all
faith, so
that he could remove mountains. But he forgot that the
epistle had to
leave his hands within 96 hours, and now he is nothing.
6. In A.D. 37, the epistle was received by a young Galatian
woman who
put it aside to copy and send out later. She was plagued
by various
problems: thrice she was beaten with rods, once she was
stoned, and
thrice suffered shipwreck. On the last day of these occasions,
she
spent a night and day in the deep. Finally, she copied
the letter. A
trumpet sounded, and she was raised incorruptible.
7. Remember: Believeth all things, hopeth all things. The
chain never
faileth.
St. Paul
____________________________________________________________
This is from https://w2.eff.org/Misc/EFF/email_facts_of_life.txt
YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO BE A VICTIM!
This message has been e-mailed to you for no good reason. The
original sender has been hunted down and executed. It has been
sent
back and forth to the same superstitious dorks for about 20 years.
This stupid piece of trash has now been e-mailed to you. You
will
spread the boredom within seconds of receiving this message -
provided you, in turn, e-mail it on.
This is no joke. Not even I, the sender, am amused. You will gets
lots
of angry e-mail in return, but no money. Send copies to people
you
think are as stupid as you are. E-mail your credit card number
and
expiration date to as many people as you can. Don't send money
as it
will clog up your Net connection. Do not keep this message. This
message must leave your hard drive in 96 hours.
* A United States Crack Dealer received $470,000 Dollars.
* Another Man received $40,000 Dollars and lost it because he
couldn't find it.
* In the Philippines, Gene Welch lost his wife 51 days after
receiving
the message. He failed to circulate the message. However, before
his
death, he received 7,555,000 new wives.
Please e-mail twenty copies to Canter & Seigel and see what
happens
in four days. The chain comes from Venezuela and was written
by
Saul De Groda, a plumber from Cleveland. He has been hunted down
and executed. Since the copy must tour the Net, you must make
twenty copies and e-mail them to friends and associates. After
a few
days you'll get a flood of angry responses. Nothing is true,
even if
you are superstitious. Do note the following:
* Constantine Dias received this chain in 1958, several years
before it
was created. He asked his boss to make twenty copies and send
them
out. He was fired and became a prostitute. A few days later he
won
two dollars in the lottery.
* Carlos Daditt, an office droid, received the message and forgot
that
it had to leave his hard disk in 96 hours. He lost about 20KBytes
of
storage space. Later, after finding the message again, he erased
it
from his hard drive. A few days later he was fired and went into
business with Constantine.
* Dalan Fairchild received the message and, not believing, deleted
it.
Nine days later he choked to death on a ham sandwich while
watching the "Space Madness" episode of Ren & Stimpy.
* In 1987, the message received by a young woman in California
was
full of garbage characters due to line noise, and was barely
readable.
She promised herself that she would retype the message and e-mail
it on, but she set it aside to do volunteer work at an orphanage.
She
was plagued with various problems, including being beaten up
by
the kids at the orphanage. The e-mail did not leave her hands
within
96 hours. She finally typed the letter as promised and was beaten
so
severely by the children that she was hospitalized for 18 months.
So, Good Luck, but please remember: 20 copies of this message
MUST
leave your computer in 96 hours...
You must not sign off on this message...
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
__________________________________________________________
What the US
Postal Service thinks about chain letters can be found
at https://web.archive.org/web/20190404031725/https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/MailFraud/fraudschemes/sweepstakesfraud/ChainLetters.aspx
__________________________________________________________
If you haven't had enough yet, try going to this page
full of chain letters. Read them; enjoy them; just don't
send them to me. The address is
[link removed as original page is now gone].
__________________________________________________________
This text can also be found temporarily, at [link removed as original page is now gone].
Here's what you sent me: