This is hilarious, but doesnt take the cake as "YOU ARE WHAT?"...

One way I have found to stop these spammers promoting some God or Holy Place in distant Arabia is to 'Reply all' to the very same 50 or whatever amount of people to whom the mail is sent. The only thing I change is - this idea was given by my super-intelligent wife - instead of say 50, I would add one or two zeroes to it and make it 500 or 5000.

So the same goes to you Manas, forward this to 5000 people in 5 milliseconds or your undies will stink tomorrow.

Hilarious read! :)

Then i am a spirit...
brought from the dead to be killed again..
i have never forwarded this stuff..
Ever!!!

hah!! some people really forward them. i don't..

As the saying goes, there is sucker born every second !! there are still people around who do not trust themselves, but believe in a silly email scam !!! I have been through the different era, it started with post cards, inland mail, telex, fax, SMS and now email - I have discarded them all, without any hesitation - and still standing !!!!!!

really these mails are a nuisance. one mail began thus:" Dont read this. if u will read it and forward it 2 ten ppl then u ll be kissed by the person u like most. if not u ll find a boy with sharp teeth and bloody face under ur bed!! "

ofcourse i did not forward it.(but i didnot look under my bed that day :D )

Hillarious Stuff Mr.Manas! This is an everyday headache for those who regularly check their email accounts. I mean, reading the context in it is fun. Such made-up stories, I tell you! And then these days its like, they emotionaly blackmail you by saying "the more you send, the more the needy will be helped as one email=one penny, so please send it to as many as you can". Frigging Hillarious! And another stupid thing is these somalian's mails. A most common story of their's is daughter's father was killed because of business rivalry, and now the daughter needs someone who can keep her millions in his/her bank account. And you know what you get in return? 50% of the amount! Millionaire in Overnight!! Even the Ambanis and Gates should try that!

ERLIAR IT WAS QUITE HORRIBLE,NOW IT HAS BECAME PAIN IN A**.

you people even open those mails, and read ? You have lot of time to waste. Till now you could not differentiate between spam and mail by just sender and/or subject. Shame on you ! there are better things to do ...

I had a friend who sent a text msg (created by her) which said "i have rotten eggs on my head" in Telugu to all her Bengali friends and asked them to forward it to 50 people because it was a holy chant.. people actually fell for it..

Bang on target...these fwd mails are really a sucker..

Manas, am I glad that the blog writers of TOI have taken time off from ranting on Hinduism & Hindu gods & written on some really superstitious practices of cyber zealots. This nonsense has been going around for quite sometime. I am quite surprised at a relation of mine who teaches modern pharmacology in a medical college & who is an avid follower of these “You-must-send-it-to-ten-people-in-24-hours-otherwise-a-curse-awaits-you” things. I have put her ID in the spam category, but then I investigated her psychology. Now it has so happened that this lady has seen real bad luck in her family for a long time—losing near relations with a sudden & short illness, male relations taking fancy for maids, well brought up girls eloping with third raters, you name it & the poor lady has seen it happening to near ones. Her psychology is a fertile ground for such cyber conmen. And mind you, even if one out of 100 people get anything near bad luck out of the defaulters in the “chain”, it makes a far greater impact than the fact that the remaining 99 have come out unscathed.
But more than these threatening calls for immediate faithful compliance, I am put off by emails which assure me that if I used so & so potion, “your manhood will grow to enormous proportions”, or that “if you give her a sip of it, she will beg for violent sex”, & all that………… And like the kind of emails you discussed, these are probably faithfully (& hopefully) responded by a great many surfers. I sincerely hope the respondents have at least some luck with these unlike with the other type.

hahahahahah!!! cant stop laughing.I used to forward them but now I dont even bother to open the forwrded mails...and trust me..I would have died long back if this mails were/are true and give sense..

I opened up my email
One unholy saturday
Found the magical mantra
To cure my sex life on the way

Tired of banal advertising
I was about to close gmail
Until I saw a juicy forward
It was a mail without a tail [a forward!]

It promised me catharsis
From my woeful single life
All it asked me to do
Was to hit send to 50 guys[?]
[If I knew 50 women I wouldn't need a forward, now would I?]

While I ignored the mute protest
Of the foreboding bytes in my mail
I woke up Sunday morning
And found myself transformed into a snail

So lets all learn a lesson
Don't frown upon my advice as waste
Next time you see an email forward
You hit "send" with post haste

@HarryV
The bloke with a joke and a rhyme every time. Welcome back Harry

Hey MG,
Aye Matey, The hits just keep coming from you!

In this crazy world,
We keep our wits in place
A little bit of humor
Is great when its in taste!

Laughter is the soothing balm
When the world's a zany place
So I rhyme to wipe that frown
Right off your pretty face!

I delete all mails that threaten me with dire consequences if I don't forward them to 50 more people!

But what's REALLY ROTTEN, is when in such emails, they tell tales about some poor baby/kid suffering from an incurable disease and some major company promising to donate 5/10 cents for every email that we forward. THAT'S A REALLY DISGUSTING FORM OF BLACKMAIL!!

ALL SUCH EMAILS ARE SPAM! DELETE THEM INSTANTLY AND WARN THE GULLIBLE SENDER TO BE WISER!

Certainly a very nice topic to discuss about but the writer looked in a hurry while writing. Could have used a better example. Could have focused on ill effects of email blackmailing which include...
1. Wastage of resources and time
2. Increasing the network traffic which may lead to congestion in the network.
3. Leading to more CO2 emission which is not a greener sign. Email blackmailing comes second only to spamming in supplying the non-wanted CO2 by the email servers.
4. Mental disturbance for some like if i didn't forward a mail which says forward to 5 people or u may get an accident within a day. The same evening if i happen to met one..then i may start believing in this bullshit and i will certainly curse the one who send that mail. Though this point is not that much significant. And many more such points..i hope u get an idea what i mean to say

@Ankur
He could do all that you said but then peopel like me will be yawning not laughing

What a sense less topic, same everybody knows kinda discussion. such a waste of time. Dude everyone know this story atleast one who can read your blog. just because u have a platform u keep writing such worthless blog.

Dear, oh dear, my good man Manas
Your blog has broken many a shackle
I say this straight from my heart so full
It’s a pleasure to read thoughts so playful

Sure am happy ‘cause it is much much better
Than things that crowd the blog & create rancour
The Grrrrrs & snarls & gestures fierce
Neer met a reader whose ears don’t pierce

How does it matter if gays are allowed
Or, even in a dream, the Maos are subdued
Nimble chatter should give us a breather
And bestow the freedom to fire off a bloomer!

Tee hee hee
The rhymes are infectious :-)
@Singr: ;-)

Manas fikar not - people want to read the more "serious" blogs on TOI, like cricket, and cricket, and oh yes cricket. Subtlety is lost on India - come on guys! Humor isn't all slapstick.. You know how hard it is writing a humor piece?

Hmm how about this :
http://hvishwa.blogspot.com/2009/04/icc-world-t20-2013-swat.html

the best way is to delete the mails and mark them as spam.

If you read this blog, email this to 10 people else you will be damned.......

Yeah... good one! I hate those damn spammers. According to Microsoft, spamming is still one of the Internet's biggest problems even though the anti spam softwares have improved greatly.

nice one:)

nthin much can be done, until we star thinkin abot this stuff.......
its now time to do sumthin- how many of u r ready to join hands with me....

Cyber blackmail..nice subject..
Good sense of humour !!!
I m impressed

I am happy I am immune to the spam and junk email bug, may be my mother has given me a anti-spam jabs when I was a kid, its a pity lot of folks out there don't has access to these jabs, called "common sense".

Toooooooooo good!!

forwarding mails is the worst on the name of "forward it (20-30) otherwise their will be ill fate.."these are really horrible....people usually forward it with thought of ill fate.....all of do dat.....really a awesome article

Hilarious, Impressive, awestricken.. !!and yeah..i completely agree with amit . Thanks to the idea given by his super-intellingent wife .. :)