An old college buddy and former roommate of mine sent a chain letter out to a bunch of his friends today. It was the same old BS... "if you pass this on to a bunch of people, you'll have good luck, but if you throw it away, bad luck will get you."

I've blogged on this, so I copied a few bits out of that blog post, edited it a bit, and replied to all with:

Amazing what you'll do for luck, [friend's name].

What kind of good magic threatens you with bad luck? Any magic that does harm is black magic... evil magic.

Basically, you're not sending people good luck. You're sending them bad luck that they must pass on to others to avoid. And if they do what the evil magic tells them, they will be rewarded.

If you pass on chain letters like this, you become a tool of evil. So by sending this to all of us, you proved you're a tool.

He didn't respond, but two people did. His sister e-mailed to agree with me. And the woman who sent the chain letter to him (a conservative whom I've chided in the past for some racist crap disguised as "humor", and who I added to the "reply all") wrote this:

How to tell Greg's a liberal:
Read his manifestations. If he's angry about stupid little chain letters, there's a good chance he's a liberal.
Lighten up, Dude.

Hire [her name] http://www.geocities.com/[rest of URL obscured so no one harrasses her]

So I responded...

Who's upset? Did my suggestion that sending on chain letters is evil make you feel defensive?

How to tell [her name]'s a conservative:

She'll talk conservative values and then engage in petty acts of black magic (i.e. chain letters).

That kind of hypocrisy can only be found among conservatives.

"What the heck" isn't a valid excuse. If you believe it can confer good luck, then you're giving credence to its claims, and the other claim is that it will confer bad luck. So in a selfish act, you send it to all your "friends" so you can get good luck, ignoring the bad luck you're potentially passing on to them, because you got what you wanted.

Also a typically conservative mindset: the "I got what I want, so screw everyone else" philosophy.

And her signature still sports a Geocities URL, despite the fact that Geocities will close in less than 2 months and she was told about it over 3 months ago (by a liberal who put his differences aside to help her).

Just like a conservative, she sees a problem and does nothing. Guess she's hoping magic chain letters will make her so lucky she doesn't need to do something about it.

Kisses,

Greg

P.S.: It's not just me who dislikes chain letters. You sent the chain letter to [friend's name] using your Yahoo! Mail account. Let me quote from the Yahoo! terms of service.

6. MEMBER CONDUCT

... You agree to not use the Yahoo! Services to:

...g. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation, except in those areas (such as shopping) that are designated for such purpose (please read our complete Spam Policy);

You agreed not to send chain letters. But I guess calling someone on breaking their word is just another liberal trait, seeing as how we had to do it so often during the Bush administration.