Weekly Whack: A Wise Ass Response to a Pointless Forward
A Wise Ass Response to a Pointless Forward
August 3, 1997

Well I didn't really have time to throw together a real Whack this weekend, so I thought I would share with you a response to an individual who created a forward that I received not too long ago. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it.

Dearest Amanda,

After receiving countless forwards at school I came to the conclusion that I hate forwards, and I hate people who solicit forwards.and who have no need or want for it. It's an invasion of space if you ask me. But anyhow, the reason I am e-mailing you is that very rarely can I actually pinpoint the exact source of a forward, and since I caught you red-handed, I thought I would make the most of the situation. So let's take a look at this little forward of yours:

>To whomever is receiving this message:

Which, unfortunately for you, happened to be me.

>After receiving countless forwards at school claiming that everyone in

>this world knows each other,

I have received countless forwards myself, but never one of that specific nature. I find that odd. I mean if you have received "countless" forwards like that, and we are somehow on the same forward pipeline (being that I received your forward), I would think that at least a couple of those "countless" forwards would have gotten to me. But no, I haven't received a single one. It just defies all laws of probability. Unless of course those "countless" forwards only happened to be in actuality just two or three, then that would help explain things. So I am accusing you of either gross and unnecessary exaggeration, or not being able to count that high.

>I decided I wanted to try this theory myself,

What are you nuts? Am I hearing you wrong or are you actually trying to test the theory that everyone in the world knows each other? You don't have to test that, I can tell you right now that not everyone in the world knows each other. And unlike you, I don't have to run some experiment to prove that, because I have a little thing called common sense. There are nearly seven billion people in the world, and even if you got to know a new person every second for a hundred years, you would only know a little over three billion of them. I don't even claim to know everyone in my town, let alone the entire world. It's preposterous. You're theory does not need to be tested because it has no connection to the real world.

>and use it as my thesis for my sociology class.

Ahh, sociology, that explains why you would even consider testing an extremely faulty and useless theory. People who take sociology classes might as well read Tolkein's The Hobbit, because there is more dealing with the real world in the latter than in your basic sociology class.

>The purpose of this experiment is to see how many emails I can receive >from people that I don't know, that are somehow are connected to people >that I do know.

I don't know you, and I don't know how I'm connected to people you do know. What I do know, is that you have WAY too much time on your hands, and you are wasting a lot of people's time.

>I am also curious to see how many people actually continue this email on.

Well I assure you that I won't continue this e-mail. I have too much respect for my friends to waste their time with such nonsense. I'm only responding to you, and that's it.

Please forward this to as many people as you know, and send it also to me
at my school email address. For example, if you sent it to
Jon123@aol.com, Mike123@aol.com, Dave123@aol.com, Chris123@aol.com...also
send it to me at MJLENNER@WAM.UMD.EDU. That is my address at school
>where I will be recording and tallying the results.

Wait a minute, if I forward it to as many people as I know, then according to your theory that should be everybody in the entire world.

>Again, DO NOT REPLY TO THIS ADDRESS... forward this message to all of
>your friends and send a copy to me at "MJLENNER@WAM.UMD.EDU"

Actually I'll most likely reply to both addresses just to make sure that this reaches you.

>Thanks again for your help with my sociology project. Those who write
>back to me will receive a COOL gift via e mail. Thanks.

A cool gift! Oh gee! Like what? Another pointless forward?

>____
>Amanda
>
>Follow your heart, it will lead you to beautiful things.

Yes, like the inside of your rib cage.
>Class of 97 Rulez!!!!

Oh, so you already graduated. So this whole little project of yours must be over by now. Just out of curiosity, I would like to know what sort of grade you got for something like this.

>Amanda and Bernadette Best Friends Forever

Wow, how sixth grade.

Well I think I said enough to you. I hope you learned your lesson about starting e-mail forwards. If I can just stop one person from creating another e-mail forward, then I have succeeded.

Stay real,

Douglas Palermo

EMAIL: dpalermo@drew.edu

WEB: http://www.gti.net/dpalermo ______________________________________________________________________________

Well that just about wraps that up, so to conclude for this week, sociology has no basis in reality; e-mail forwards are more dangerous than pornography; and The Hobbit kicks ass.

Now for this week's special feature, Feff's top ten favorite college majors that are almost as useless as sociology:

10. Latin
9. Theater
8. Physical Education
7. Religion
6. Psychology
5. Physics
4. Political Science
3. Philosophy
2. English
1. American Studies