Breaking the Chain

You've all probably seen the chain floating around. It's the normal "Send this to x people in y time or you'll have bad luck in love for z years" that we've seen a thousand times before, yet we still continue to forward it to people, generating more anger than love. What disturbs me most is that I've seen people that should know better sending this out (you know who you are, and you should be ashamed.) So I decided to take an in-depth look at why it's so dim-witted, poorly thought out, pretentious, and above all, just plain stupid.

"Once you read this letter, you must send it to 14 people that you really care about, including the person that sent it to you. If you receive at least 7 back, then you are loved."

If not, you have no friends and should probably just give up on trying to make them. And who's to say I care about the person who sent it to me?

"Nobody knows what they have until they loose it."

Either this person means 'lose' or 'loosen'. We can assume she meant the former. (I say 'she' because a guy would never write something like this.) It's a common error, and it makes the writer sound like a five-year-old. In any case, while this statement is true, it's about as helpful as "You'll never hear the tiger until it has ripped your throat out."

"You never leave the person whom you love for the one you like, because that person who you like will leave you for the person whom they love."

No, you never leave the person whom you love for the one you like because you love one of them and not the other. Duh.

"Tonight, right at 12:00am, your true love it is going to realize that they LOVE you!"

Not only are "they" going to love you; they're going to LOVE you. With CAPITALS. In fact, they're going to LOVE you so much that they're going to want to have KIDS with you. LOTS of them. RIGHT NOW. And you'll live HAPPILY ever after with lots of BILLS to pay.
And did she just call my true love "it"?

"Then something is going to happen to you between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m."

Probably dreams about me throttling you.

"Tomorrow, be ready for the greatest shock of your life."

It's not actually going to happen, but be ready for it anyway.

"If you break this chain, you are going to have bad luck in love for the next years of your life."

But not before you lose a limb, develop jock itch, fail all your classes, lose your family in a freak juggling accident, and find yourself attracted to furniture. Hey, why not?

"Send this to 15 people in 15 minutes."

Fifteen minutes? That's a lot of time to be wasting. Know what you could be doing instead? How about telling the people you care about that you care about them? or making your "true love" love you instead of hoping for it to magically happen?

"Do it if you wanna know who your real love is?"

Wait a minute...how will this help me figure out whom I love? Shouldn't I know that already?

All in all, this isn't as bad as some chain letters I've seen, but it's still hard to understand why people would start this kind of thing, much less continue it. You don't need a chain letter as an excuse to tell people you care about them. Most of the time you don't even need to. Come on, people. Smarten up.