If You Really Care About Your Friends...

...copy and paste my entire website, from the most interesting to the most mundane detail, into a mass email and forward it to all of them, asking them to forward it to all of their friends. Because, that's how to best show you really care. I mean, someone else's greeting-card-corny words are always better than your own, right?

Do you get the idea that I am tired of those sob-story chain letter emails? I have some really well-intentioned, caring friends that send me some really stupid crap from time to time (that's not to say that I don't like a good joke, on occasion). It almost always ends the same way. Though most of these things no longer threaten you with contracting leprecy, thus causing you to lose several limbs, turning you into a hideous monster, they still make you feel guilty if you don't pass them on. Somehow, they want you to believe that if you don't send their special email on to others, then you are truly not a good friend - in fact, you're a heartless, thoughtless pig. They all claim to have a meaningful message that is worth sending on to any and everyone you know, when in fact it's little more than common sense "wisdom" wrapped in flowery (sometimes irritating) language.

So, the next time you want to show those close to you that you care, write a real email (or better yet, even send a letter or card via the post office), with real words from the real you. Tell them about your life these days. Ask them about theirs. If you don't feel you have the time to write an individual letter to every friend you have, write a mass email to all of them. They're certain to appreciate it far more than the silly words of some anonymous, B-level writer, who tells the world of a non-existent woman who lost her entire family in an freak microwave accident just after having a huge argument with all of them (she is, of course, struck numb with guilt at not having sent on that last chain mail). I'm certain that by sending your own thoughts, not only will your friends be pleased at not having to, yet again, hit the delete key, but you are likely to bring yourself even closer to them with only slightly more effort than it takes to click forward and send to irritate the world with yet another chain letter.

For the sake of my sanity (and that of my delete key hitting finger), please think about it.