Chain Emails and the Reality Quotient

As much as I hate to admit it, like many people I have a circle of friends and family (but never business colleagues) that provide a steady flow of chain emails into my in box. This is nothing remarkable, just something to hide since it's a little bit embarrassing to know people like that. When I do look at these emails before I send them to the trash, it is not because I'm interested or curious about the content, but rather the further insight it gives me into the sender. I never mention this to the individuals in question when we do meet in person, although it does affect my regard for them.

I recently got one of these that especially amused me because it told me something about the forwarders' RQ scores. RQ is like IQ, except that it measures a person's awareness of the real world; RQ is a Reality Quotient**. However, keep in mind that emails containing urban myths only partly measure a person's RQ since these are often forwarded out of laziness rather than a low RQ. The (very) few times I have asked the sender why they sent me a particularly steaming load of manure, the lazy ones are those who, it turns out, barely skimmed the first paragraph before forwarding it on to everyone on their contact list. A typical response I get is along the lines of: "well, I didn't really give it any thought but I thought that since it might be true you might like to know." In other words, the sender is too lazy to devote even a moment's thought to it, and instead off-loads the thinking to dozens of others who, sadly, are likely to do the exact same thing. A month later when they receive the very same email or some variation thereof, they do exactly the same thing. Perhaps this is unsurprising since how can they remember or understand an email that they never actually read the first time.

Which brings me back to that recent email I received. This is the one that is purportedly originated by a computer technician who wants to warn low-RQ internet denizens that chain emails are bad. Some of them are so bad that they contain magical computer thingies that will suck up all your private personal details, bank accounts, health records and who knows what else, and send them to the evil ones in a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, Lagos or Sao Paolo, who will then sell it all to the mafia, and it is they who will proceed to separate you from all of your worldly possessions. When you forward on these dreadful chain emails, the very same thing will happen to everyone you know. You get the idea.

This is nothing remarkable in itself since despite the near-ubiquity of internet access, many people understand very little about the technology and even reasonably intelligent people with a decent enough RQ are willing to at least entertain the idea that there is some small grain of truth in these tales. What amused me about this email from a "computer technician" is that it ends (I'll bet you've already guessed) by instructing you to forward the email to everyone you know so that they, too, will know that they should not forward chain emails.

Pretty soon I expect to start having a recurring nightmare where the world's average RQ finally drops so low that humanity devolves back into a non-self aware and non-intelligent species whose only reality is grubbing for their next meal. Who could have guessed that the internet would come back to so viciously bite its creators.

**RQ is not a widely-accepted term, but it is in use. An internet search turns up many examples, but none that I care to link to.