Are you ICQ-less?

OK folks, I just got home and turned on my monitor and spent the next 10 minutes of my life wading through ICQ URL's that have been sent to me - or more appropriately, forwarded to me. We have the typical "Mirabilis is going to charge for each message...", "ICQ is being bought by AOL, vote 'NO' now...", and other similar junk. Yesterday I got barraged by four separate messages stating that one ICQ user or another is sending virus infested files.

The best one yet was earlier today - that message proclaimed that today (Oct 26, 1998) was "Gray Monday" because allegedly one of MCI's backbones was trouble-ridden and the whole of the Internet was running real slow because of it - now whether this was true or not remains to be seen but the real kicker to this ICQ-Spammed message is that it urged the recipient to forward the message to everyone that they know - which of course will result in those people doing the same thing and forwarding it on - and on, and on, and on... causing tens of thousands or more of these messages to be flooding the Internet's backbones... Yup, you got it! INCLUDING the backbone that is supposed to be having trouble, which if true, this flood of packets will only server to make the problem worse! Gee guys, my house is on fire, come on over and help me pour gasoline on it why don't you?

Folks, if you really have something of interest to pass on, please do so. If you just finished a web page that you are particularly proud of and it really does look good (i.e., you can actually read the text on it because the background image(s) aren't so ghastly or are of sufficient contrast that the text stands out) AND it actually has something worthwhile to read or see on it then please send it to me. If you have no clue who I am, where I live, or what I do for a living then chances are pretty good that you should not be including me in your mass mailings because I will likely not be interested.

But if all you got to pass on is something that says anywhere in the message "please forward to everyone you know" be sure that I will not be doing that. If all you got is a web page that tells me that I have just been "cyber-hugged" or something of the effect and that page tells me that my wishes, dreams, etc. will come true if I send the page to 20 other people then you can be sure that I will not be doing that.

Folks, if you have nothing better to do with your time but to be driven by CFS (Compulsive Forwarding Syndrome), please leave me out of it. Remember...

Ignorance is curable, stupidity is not! Don't be a fool drawn in by these clods who have nothing better to do with their time.

For the Official ICQ stand on this issue please click here (http://www.icq.com/urge.html).