Once upon a time there was an inspirational story. It was longer than it needed to be, not really all that accurate, and sappier than Mrs. Butterworth’s, but it was a story.
Then it was transcribed onto an email and sent out to someone.
Then it was sent out to every person int that person’s address book.
Then it was forwarded again to every person in all of those people’s address books, some of whom had already seen it.
Some people complained about getting to much junk mail, but they forwarded the email to everyone else in their address book anyway because the note said to do so or else they would be labelled as a person of moral turpitude.
A few months later the United States, China, and the other members of the G8 surrendered to underdevelopped nations in Africa. It seems that the internet, their communications backbone, was paralyzed by an exponentially growing amount of email that, while inspiring, was clogging the internet so much that nobody could think of anything else nor could they get any real emails.
“And that,” said Mbutu to the crown prince, “Is how we took over the world.”
(HT: A.S. Hodel)
