Around the world with spam

So today I decided I wanted to find out what really is on the other side of the earth from us here in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  And amazingly, what I found was the second most isolated major city on the earth!


Now the exact spot is under several hundred feet of the eastern Indian Ocean, but the nearest land-ho to the other side of the planet is Perth, Australia- 11,109 miles from Ft Wayne.  That is to LA from my house and back about 3 times.

How isolated is Perth?  Well, let's start with- it is 1,661 miles from the nearest city of Ft Wayne's size, Geelong, Victoria.  (For comparison, Ft Wayne is 105 miles from Indianapolis- about 1/16th the distance.  Perth is 1,324 mi from Adelaide, 1,648 mi from Darwin, 2,043 mi from Sydney.  It's 1,919 mi from Perth to the capitol at Canberra- while Ft Wayne is only 451 mi from Washington DC.  Only Honolulu is more isolated from a comparably populated city (San Francisco).

In all fairness, there are two or three little communities near Perth that are actually a bit farther, along with New Amsterdam Island, a French possession with only a seasonal population.

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale..."

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Today Facebook has been awash with the latest go round of a message that is being passed on both by bots in some machines and by gullible people that believe about anything.  It usually comes to you in Messenger, and it looks like this:

Hi….I actually got another friend request from you yesterday…which I ignored so you may want to check your account. Hold your finger on the message until the forward button appears…then hit forward and all the people you want to forward too….I had to do the people individually. Good Luck! PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT A NEW ONE FROM ME AT THIS TIME


I have had about four of these in the past, and another one just as all the official posts about "don't fall for the latest hoax" started getting posted, and other friends started "warning" that they weren't sending them out.  Here's what I think you should all think about:

1- How many of your friends start a message with "Hi..."?  This we shall call "clue you don't have #1".

2- "I actually got another request..." ACTUALLY?  REALLY?  Gimme a break, do real people talk like this?

3- I got it yesterday, and just at random decided to tell you about it today.  Awfully prompt of you...

4- The sender now spends twice the time telling you how to FORWARD the message to everyone you know as they did telling you there was a problem.  So, what is the PRIORITY here?

5- Not to mention these instructions you didn't figure out until you told everyone BUT ME ("I had to do the people individually. Good Luck! ")  But, through the goodness of your heart, you decided to devise away to spread the news much more efficiently BEFORE you finally got to me?

6- "and all the people you want to forward too…"  Nice grammar, there.

7- PLEASE DON'T ACCEPT A NEW ONE FROM ME AT THIS TIME... Why not, you took one from me, right?  But, if not at this time, should I wait a few weeks before accepting more requests from you?  After all, how will I get to the Facebook Friend Limit of 5,000 without having you on my list multiple times?


Sigh...


Long story short, I just delete these messages.  Because with the skills I gleaned from a semester of Critical Thinking are more than enough to deduce that the point of this message is for me to keep passing it on.  Why, I don't know.  I don't care, either.  And I sincerely hope that those who send it to me are just unaware that a bot is using their account for a base camp.  But it's hard to tell, a few months ago when this swept the world the FIRST time, I pointed out to a FB friend and her Sister-in-law that they should probably just change their passwords.  Their replies?


"I don't know how"
"Me neither"

Sigh.