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Everybody remembers the old days of getting "Fw:Fw:Fw:Fw: Fw:Fw:fw:fw: Re:FW:Fwd :fwd:Haha" in their inbox, and it seems as if those days have disappeared. But have they really?
Anyone with internet-active friends would get about 10 of these a week, and they would be the most annoying thing ever. Especially since most of them didn't have any content and many of them were duplicates due to people simply sending the e-mail off to everyone in their contact list (either out of sheer laziness or because it was a chain letter which told us to do so). They were usually badly formatted as well, and contained multiple copies of the same message within one e-mail.
Those of us who are a ltitle older may or may not remember chain snail mail, but I personally don't so I won't delve into it.
If you do remember these annoying e-mails, you've probably noticed that the amount of forwards that you've received in the past year or so have dropped off, perhaps even leading you to believe in a general increase of intelligence among the human race. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. They've simply been moved to other venues, which may be a good thing to some of us, specifically those of us who don't browse those venues.
Offline IM Messages
Anybody who uses Yahoo! Instant Messenger knows about the 'offline message' feature. Basically, a person can send a message off to a contact even when the contact is offline, and when the contact signs in they see all of their offline messages. Personally, it's one of my favorite features of Yahoo!'s IM product.
Unfortunately, all good features are prone to abuse. People tend to send messages such as 'Hi...this is the president of Yahoo! We will now be charging for new accounts and deleting all those that are inactive. Send this to all your contacts to prove that you are active' (usually they're more elaborately worded). There was a peak point at which I could login after one day of being offline and receive about 10 of these. Fortunately these dropped off, but I think it's largely a consequence of most of the high school crowd moving to our next contender.
Myspace Bulletins
Many of us have heard about the so-called dangers of Myspace, which we can debate on until the cows come home. In my opinion, the greater danger of Myspace is brain cell loss by association.
Practically every single stupid e-mail/chain mail forward I have ever received in my life has been reiterated as a Myspace Bulletin. For readers who haven't used Myspace before, a Bulletin is like a message, but it gets placed in the 'bulletin boards' of all of your friends. It's essentially a message to all of your friends.
Everything from 'repost this bulletin or the girl will stab you in your sleep' to 'it's terrible that these cats are being abused' has shown up. Recently, there have been bulletins where you see a link to a site and it says 'get a free Myspace tracker' or something of the sort, and when you get to the site, you click a button which posts that same bulletin from you. I've seen at least 15 of these and each has been reposted by at least 7 of my 'friends'.
Ergo...
Unfortunately, many of us are forced to use the badly made and badly formatted services and websites that are characterized by their users' ignorance because aboit 99% of the people we want to keep in contact with use the same websites and services. I, for one, am simply happy these annoying things are out of my inbox where I am forced to store them with my e-mail quota.
