STOP! JUST STOP! STOP, READ, THINK!

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, here is what instigated that reaction. Over the past year or so I’ve been getting emails from my friends, similar to the one bellow, with subjects such as “MSN is shutting down”, “MSN will stop being free”, or the most recent “MSN is chutting down” (chutting? Was the person who wrote the email from Spain or something?)

The rationale that these dimwits are putting forth for their really annoying email is a news story from the BBC from September 2001. Well, guess what, it’s 2008 and Microsoft is still not charging anyone to use their basic services (which include msn spaces, hotmail and MSN Live messenger).

I have high regard for my friends, I do believe that they are intelligent people, but every time I get a message like this in my mailbox I tend to question how much critical thinking my friends do. If you look at the message (beyond the out-dated article), the email message has many grammatical errors, IT USES THE ANNOYING CAPS LOCK TO GRAB YOUR ATTENTION, the directors are tara and john and they claim that inconsiderate people are taking up all the usernames (really? Wow! It’s Y2K all over again!)

I urge my friends to STOP, for a moment. READ their email messages. Critically THINK about the content of that email message, and then take appropriate action. In this case creating a new email message, copying, and pasting this text in the body of the new message and sending it to your friends is not the appropriate action. The appropriate action is hitting the delete button. You are intelligent people, don’t spread this kind of non-sense on the internet!

Your MSN buddy did become blue by the way, he held his breath until he became blue in the face…

Hey it is tara and john the directors of MSN, sorry for the interruption but
msn is closing down. this is because too many inconsiderate people are
taking up all the name (eg making up lots of different accounts for just one
person), we only have 578 names left. If you would like to close your
account, DO NOT SEND THIS MESSAGE ON. If you would like to keep your
account, then SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. This is no joke, we will be shutting down the servers. Send it on, thanks. WHO EVER
DOES NOT SEND THIS MESSEAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE CLOSED AND YOU WILL COST 10.00 A MONTH TO USE. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. NOW YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEASE DO NOT FORWARD THIS or REPLAY. COPY THE WHOLE EMAIL.
GO BACK TO YOUR INBOX AND CLICK ON NEW. AND PASTE THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION. It's no joke if you don't believe me then go to the site
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1189119.stm ) and see for yourself.
Anyways once you've sent this message to at least 18 contacts, your msn dude
will become blue