I say, it isn’t.

A friend of mine, Tiffany, whom I have mentioned previously (11/04, 02/08, 11/08, 12/08 ), posted a cute article on her blog yesterday. “Occasionally SPAM is Worth It“.  In this article she attached a SPAM email she received.  As is typical with SPAM mail this email has no author or source, it just randomly appeared.  According to Google the list of items in the email already appears on over 11,000 blogs, and has received many comments from people on how much they relate to this list.

What strikes me as interesting is how the list highlights how similar we are as a society.  This list, in some way defines the culture of my generation.  It’s small everyday things like driving in rush hour traffic, using Facebook, having awkward conversations, and doing laundry that gives us commonality and sense of belonging to a culture.  If you were to go to rural China most of the things on this list would be completely foreign.

Our culture is continually evolving, and it is this very fact that allows foreigners to assimilate and become Americans.  It only took one generation from the time my grandparents came to the United States from Mexico for our family to be 100% American.  My father, aunt and uncle went to American public schools, they shared in the national experiences of WWII, the civil rights movement, 80′s fashion, and the Internet revolution.  This lifetime of shared experiences is what ties us together.  This is also why generations often have a hard time relating to each other, the culture of my father is different than my video game, Internet generation.

So the next time you think that you are having some unique experience and that there is noone that can relate to you, remember that out of the 300 million Americans, chances are that 80% of them are experiencing or have experienced exactly the same thing.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here is “the list”:

Random thoughts from people 25-35 years old…

-More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

-Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

-Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like
check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

-That’s enough, Nickelback.

-I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

-Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the “people you may know” feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards
or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

-There is a great need for sarcasm font.

-Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the F was going on when I first saw it.

-I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little
bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

-How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

-I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

- I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

-The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

- LOL has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.

- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

- Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

- Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart,” all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

- How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

- I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a **** from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

- Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using ‘as in’ examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss’s last name to an attorney and said “Yes that’s G as in…(10 second lapse)..ummm…Goonies”

-What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.

- MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

- I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

-Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

- I would like to officially coin the phrase ‘catching the swine flu’ to be used as a way to make fun of a friend for hooking up with an overweight woman. Example: “Dave caught the swine flu last night.”

-I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

- Bad decisions make good stories

-Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

- Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?

-If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.

-Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be a problem….

-You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

-Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.

-There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

-I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

- “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.

-I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There’s so much pressure. ‘I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren’t watching this. It’s only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?’

-I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

-When I meet a new girl, I’m terrified of mentioning something she hasn’t already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.

-I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

-Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles…

- As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

-Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

-It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

-I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

-Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what do to with it.

-Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time…

-My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day “Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How the hell do I respond to that?

-It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.

-I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

-I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

-I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

-The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There’s nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

Chain letters come in many forms, most are harmless text messages that ask you to forward them to 10 or 15 people for one reason or another, some chain letters come as Power Point presentations or have other attachments that could potentially contain viruses. The two chain letter types that I receive the most are the “about me” chain letter and the “petition” chain letter.

The “About Me” letter, as I have named it, usually contains a list of questions that your friend has answered about him or herself and you are supposed to answer the questions yourself and then send it to ten people including the person who sent it to you. In this way you show your true friendship and multiply the distribution of the email by a factor of 10! This email isn’t that bad in that it can be fun, but after doing this once the fun is gone and the next 300 times you receive this letter and don’t return it with all your personal info you feel like a jerk.

The “Petition” chain letter usually steps up the anti as far as guilt. The petition usually is for some tear jerking cause like a child with cancer, some hot political issue, or anything that will get an emotional response from someone. The normal MO is to add your name to the bottom of the list and forward it to ten people. If you are the 100th person on the list you are supposed to send the email to some unsuspecting email recipient. This form of email is great for flooding the email box of a particular person which usually results in them being able to receive legitimate emails. Sometimes this email makes crazy claims like for every person that signs this Microsoft will donate $1.00 to the cause, or if you don’t forward the email evil dwarves will eat your cat. Ok, I’ve never seen that last one but I have seen similar threats and incentives that are just as crazy. If you ever receive an email like this DO NOT FORWARD IT for three reasons:

1. The story is probably not true or is 5 years old.
2. The email is designed to flood someone’s email with junk
3. Effective petitions are never conducted via email. If you think about it, every time you forward the email the signed names are duplicated 10 times. To reach the 100 signatures the email will have duplicated to 10,000,000,000 emails and of the 1,000,000,000,000 names on the petitions only 1/100 will be unique. If you were to do a petition via email you would create a website where people would go to sign and only send out a link in the email where people would go. Since I’ve never seen a chain letter like this make it a rule to DELETE the email.

With this said you are probably sensing my frustration. A couple days ago I received a really nice chain mail with a touching message about returning to innocence and how to appreciate life you need trials. Then at the end of the email was a riddle and a message that to receive the answer to the riddle you needed to forward the email to 10 people and the answer would appear on your screen. Well, that ruined my good mood. I knew that people would be forwarding this email like crazy hoping to get the answer and not realizing that to have the answer appear on your screen was a likely as dwarves eating your cat. So, as I have done many times I responded to everyone who the email was sent to with the following message:

For all of you who actually forwarded this to ten people thinking
you’d get the answer…. sad… : ) But here IS the answer
-Link to the answer-
Tim

I sent the message to give people the answer they would most likely want and thereby eliminating the incentive to forward the email. Yes, the email was a little condescending and I didn’t look who sent it or who I was replying to, I just mailed it. Well…… A day later I found out the email was forwarded by a family member who I embarrassed a bit. Ouch. I didn’t mean for that to happen. So, I’d like to publicly apologize and let everyone know that if you don’t forgive me and forward this article to 10 people then evil dwarves will eat your cat.