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Internet Mind Viruses
Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Internet is becoming infested with mind
viruses.
Never mind the recent study that shows a link between Internet use and
depression These mind viruses cause something much, much worse than
depression: they cause us to waste our time.
The viruses I'm talking about are the next generation of chain mail. Loyal
readers will remember the "Make money Fast" Internet chain letter I used in
Virus of the Mind to illustrate the new phenomenon. Even MORE loyal readers
will remember the "Good Luck" chain letter I used in my first book, Getting
Past OK, to illustrate the unconscious control that memes have over us. But
those are now old technology, dinosaurs made obsolete by the melting of the
ancient ice caps known as slow modems.
No, the new mind viruses are full-color multimedia all-singing, all-dancing
extravaganzas They spread by use of two new technologies: HTML mail and ICQ.
HTML mail is the ability that new mail programs, such as Microsoft Outlook,
have to send actual web-page content (called HTML for Hypertext Markup
Language) in a mail message so that it can be instantly displayed. ICQ is a
program made by a company called Mirabilis ( http://www.mirabilis.com ) that
is to email what a telegram is to regular mail. The beauty of ICQ is that
you have to answer messages right away; there's no inbox to let them sit and
gather dust. Funny how the ABSENCE of this feature makes the program more
useful, or at least useful in a different way.
Both of these technologies were ripe for infection by mind viruses. As loyal
readers will remember, all viruses must have encoded within them an
instruction to spread the virus to other hosts. I loosely refer to this as
the Evangelism meme, although there are all sorts of subtle and unsubtle
ways to do it. (I sprinkled a bit of all of them throughout my book Virus of
the Mind, which is why its sales keep increasing rather than following the
usual "blip" curve of a newly introduced book. Finding them is left as an
exercise for the reader.)
The content of these new mind viruses is still quite tame and follows the
usual chain-letter pattern of good luck, friendship, and so on. I haven't
yet received a "Make Money Fast" one over ICQ but I get plenty of them over
regular email. ICQ has the advantage (to me) that I can tell who's sending
me stuff. But how can you snap at someone for sending you a huggy bear?
Until now, the best you could do was to sigh and try to explain to them
about memetics. But now there's an antidote! See the end of this article.
Meanwhile, there are still some nasty strains of regular email mind viruses
going around. In particular, the one that says Bill Gates will give
something to every addressee if the mail gets forwarded to 1000 recipients.
I got one of those with about 50 nested attachments -- and I'm so curious I
had to open them like Russian dolls, only to find the same old lame chain
mail inside.
In an ongoing effort to remain inconsistent, I have created three related
web pages. Feel free to send them through ICQ or email to anyone you like.
Heh heh.
The first two are generic pass-it-on mind viruses. I have attached counters
to each so we can tell which one does better. Go wild!
http://www.brodietech.com/goodluck.htm
http://www.brodietech.com/lovehugs.htm
The third is a mind-virus "antidote." You may want to send this one to
gently enlighten any "friends" who send you unwanted chain mail.
http://www.brodietech.com/antidote.htm
Let me know if you have any interesting experiences...
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Free Sexual Favor!
Surf on over to http://members.aol.com/dasgozst2/fantasy.htm and hurry
before supplies run out! [exercise for the reader: find the memes!]
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Archive of Misheard Lyrics
Named after one of the most commonly misheard lyrics,
http://www.kissthisguy.com/ is a growing database of memetic mutations in
song lyrics. What do the Beach Boys really sing in between verses of "I Get
Around"? You won't find out here! But you will find out what people THOUGHT
they sang.
And 'scuse me while I kiss this guy...
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