With facebook, google plus and email there is a problem on the internet. It doesn't matter what name it goes by, it's still a problem that will never actually be taken care of. I don't even think SOPA would take care of it (although I don't actually know that much about SOPA). This problem makes me sad whenever I log in to any of these sites. Have I piqued your interest yet? Chain letters, reposts, forwards or whatever you call them is this parasite of these websites.
At first, these things were silly. "If you send this to 10 of your friends, and then hit ctrl and F11, the name of your crush will appear on the screen!" or "If you send this to 15 people, at midnight tomorrow, the love of your life will admit to you how much you mean to them." Then they started turning scary. "If you don't send this to 7 people in the next 7 minutes, something very bad will happen to you." I remember one specifically that talked about a lot of scary stories where the people ended up dead or seriously injured. Then it finished with "if you don't send this on, the same will happen to you!"
Recently, another has shown up and become the most prevalent to me. This one bothers me the most. It is posts about God and religion. Most of them have a wonderful point: God exists, he loves us, Christ died for us, and we need to remember these facts more often. The problem I have with these is, at the very end, it guilts you in to sending it on. "Are you ashamed of God?" or "If you deny God in front of your friends, he will deny you on the day of Judgement." or "Only 15% will repost this. Are you part of the 85% that hate God?" I am a strong believer of God. I know Christ atoned for my sins. I know He has felt my pains. I know God lives, loves me, and knows me personally. Just because I don't feel like reposting exactly what your post says doesn't mean I don't know any of those things, and the same goes for all your other friends who haven't reposted it. I am a strong believer that saying things in your own words means more. I believe in Christ because I do, not because one of my friends guilted me into saying I believe in what He has done. We do need to remember Him more, but posts that keep going around because of guilt are not the way to do it.
This isn't to make people who do post those things upset. I know many people who do it because they really do feel strongly about those things. They don't feel guilted in to posting them; they think the way that post was phrased was better than they could have done it. It is quite possible that I am just over sensitive to this, and no one else feels that way about these posts. If you feel that way, please, continue to post them. Just don't expect this believer to join in.
