Thinning the heard...

screennameofidiot: Yahoo is shutting down Dec 17th Yahoo wants to get rid of Free messenger. If you delete this don't pass it on, your name will be deleted. Right click on your buddylist and click 'send to all in this group' each person you send it to will count as a signature on a petition they have to get!! pass it on!

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Ah yes, the internet hoax.

How many times have you received that important opportunity letter from the African banking representative? You know the one, it's "lucrative" and full of just enough misspellings and grammatical errors to make you think its legit. All you have to do is help him open a joint account somewhere outside of IRS jurisdiction so he can "deposit" the funds. Of course, the minimum balance to open the account is like $1000, but think of all the money you'll be getting for doing this favor.

And what about the countless "Copy and fwd: to 10 friends" letters?

I love these, really....which brings me to my point about the Yahoo! Messenger hoax I just received from this total ignoramus. Tell me, just how exactly DOES a replied email, or instant message qualify as a signature for a petition?

And to be more specific, just how exactly does an e-mail or instant message that has CLEARLY been copied, and forwarded to thousands of people...somehow become the driving force behind a special interest group? Do they somehow have a law in their back pocket that supercedes the federal statute on signatures and binding legal contracts? Or maybe they have found a way to convince some corporate fat cat out there that they have the power of the people behind them because a bunch of people reproduced a few lines of text and pressed a button?

Did they somehow find some "hacker" that can transform those button presses into virtual signatures? Did they find a way to digitally transfer the motivation of the masses, via the reply tab???

Seriously people, stop perpetuating this crap!

Did you know that spam accounts for nearly 300 million dollars in damages each year? This is just the ISP's charging us extra for the overload work they have to handle just to carry the 31 billion daily spam e-mails across their servers. Spam Instant Messages have reached somewhere around 12 billion a day, and that is climbing. When you account for corporate and government losses, as well as the money spent on handling the problem in the legal system, it gets catastrophic.

Then when you begin to account for the mental effort put forward to continue this mental masturbation, it becomes freighting!

Really people, do us all a favor and stop passing this shit on.

And just to cover the message....Yahoo Messenger is one of the most profitable endeavors that Yahoo! Inc., has ever engaged in. It is the cornerstone of their online community, and provides billions of people the opportunity to view advertising space they sell to companies with lots of money. They also work out multi million dollar deals with special third party companies to make Yahoo Messenger features that market a specific product, service, or venue.

Do you really think they're gonna lose nearly all of their client base and all that money, just to charge the handful of people a fee? When the masses could gladly jump to any other FREE messenger service in an instant?

(insert sound of donkey here)