8/1/08

I know it shouldn’t, but it still amazes me how dumb otherwise smart people can be. I have received, at least three times now, an e-mail with the subject line, “PLEEEEEEASE REEEEEAD! IT WAS ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA.” [ Yeah, because they are the gold standard of common sense and truth - SM ] Actually, now that I think about it, it must have been more times than that because I usually delete on sight those subject line e-mails until the third or fourth one when curiosity gets the better of me and I go ahead and read it. Nice grammar, eh? Anyhoo, after scrolling down through several pages of the various people this has been sent to, I get to the body of the e-mail. It promises that Tiny and Flaccid, along with AOHell and Intel, will send you $245.00 for every person you forward the letter to and something like $243.00 for each time one of those people forwards it. I decided to do a little math. I took the list of recipients from the latest sender, the one who sent it to me this time, and counted them. The list ended in the Bs with approximately 2,816 names. If that was the sender’s entire list, Tiny and Flaccid would be paying him $689,920.00 for just his forwards! If only half of his list forwards the e-mail, he gets an additional $342,144.00 for a grand total of $1,012,064.00! Over a million bucks for forwarding an e-mail? Wake ye the fuck up. I may have to ask the guy who sent it to me if he really believes Tiny and Flaccid is going to pay out billions of dollars to “test an e-mail tracking system.” Oh, the other thing about this letter which is supposed to lend it some credibility, it was “originally sent” from a lawyer. She said, “…AOL and Intel will follow through with their promises for fear of facing a multimillion-dollar class action suit similar to the one filed by PepsiCo against General Electric not too long ago.” Do what!?!?!?!?! That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. First off, they would be better off getting hit with “only” a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. If every one of those 2,816 people got the same $1,012,064.00 that the guy sending it to them got, the grand total would be $2,849,972,224.00 or two billion, eight hundred forty nine million, nine hundred seventy two thousand, two hundred twenty four dollars. But that doesn’t include all the people above them! If I've received this four times, at least, then there are at least four or five more levels up toward the pointy end of this pyramid. Figure a very conservative 1,000 names in each of those levels and we add another billion dollars per level. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Tiny and Flaccid is going to pay you for your forward, the forward from the next level, and their forwards as well! So let’s go back a bit, if the guy who sent it to me got $689,920.00 for forwarding to just the 2,816 names I counted, and half of them forwarded the letter, he’d get $1,012,064.00, right? Now if half of those folks forwarded the letter, our dude is going to get paid an additional $241.00 per forward for another $169,664.00 bringing our original guy’s take to $1,181,782.00 or almost 1.2 million dollars. Oh, I just had another thought! Those numbers are if each person only forwards the letter once. This thing will rapidly explode exponentially until Tiny and Flaccid owes everyone all of their profits for the rest of time, each! Wow, I guess I'd better get on the stick and forward that letter! Look for it in your inbox soon. I want my trillion dollars!