Jolt Country

Every other month on Facebook I see a flurry of "posts," "likes," and "shares" in regards to "Moneybags." Typically I skip right over these posts, mentally ranking them right up there with "Please click LIKE to help me get some virtual horse shoes for my virtual horse," however due to the most recent rash of posts (I have three on my Facebook Wall from this morning), I decided to look into this mysterious phenomena known as "Moneybags."

Here is the text as it appears on my wall:

THIS IS THE ONLY TIME WE WILL SEE AND LIVE THIS EVENT IN OUR LIFETIME Calendar for July 2012 . This year, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years. Based on Chinese Feng Shui, this is called money bags. If you share this info, they say money will arrive within 4 days. The one who does not share.....will be without money. Well, I'm not taking any chances. :)))

So, let's break this stupid myth down.

01. "This year, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays." Actually, no it doesn't. You can verify this by clicking on your computer's calendar and moving forward three months. For a month to have 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays, the month has to have 31 days, and the 1st has to fall on a Friday. July 2012 has 4 Fridays, 4 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays.

02. "This happens once every 823 years." Actually, no it doesn't. October 2010 had 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays. That's 2 years, not 823. And if you're strictly sticking with October, the next one with 5F/5S/5S is in 2021. So that's every 23 years, not 823 years.

But here's the thing -- it's not just October -- it's any month. Some guys on Reddit did the math and the odds are 1 in 12 each year that a month with 31 days will begin on a Friday. So if it happens in March, then March is the Moneybags month. If it happens in December, then December is the Moneybags month.

AND, sometimes it's not 5F/5S/5S. I went back and looked and the last time I saw this stupid thing being posted, it was because a Moneybags month is any month with 5 Sundays, 5 Mondays, and 5 Tuesdays. Any month with 31 days will have 3 days that repeat 5 times. THAT'S ... THAT'S ... THAT'S A LOT OF MONEYBAGS!

AND, sometimes (like with this post) the month doesn't even HAVE the 5 days repeating like the post claims. Apparently Moneybags is powerful enough to change space and time as well.

03. "Based on Chinese Feng Shui, this is called money bags." Actually, no it isn't. First of all, as one web site put it, "[A]ncient Feng Shui masters never used chain letters to bring luck" Plus, I'm pretty sure in China, this is the Year of the Dragon ... at least that's what the last paper buffet place mat I consulted said.

If you Google "Feng Shui" and "Money Bags" the only hits you'll find refer to this stupid chain mail message. There actually is a "money bag" in China (some depictions of Buddha have him carrying one) but it has nothing to do with Feng shui, or calendars, or multiple days of the week, or ... brain explodes.

04. "If you share this info, they say money will arrive within 4 days." Actually, no it won't. Of course "they" are always saying stuff, aren't they? So i guess if you forward this to all your Facebook friends and find a quarter on the ground, you can attribute this wonderful discovery to the magical power of Feng shui.

Because, after all, that's what Fung shui is all about, really -- finding loose change on the sidewalk and pissing off all your Facebook friends.

05. "The one who does not share.....will be without money." Actually, no you won't, but what a great threat it is. It's right up there with, "How can you win the lotto if you don't play?" But hey man, if you want to be a bankrupt asshole just because you didn't forward this message to all your Facebook friends, be my guest. And when you're broke and starving and need a nickle for a cup of coffee, don't come begging to me pal, because my only response is going to be FUNG SHUI MOTHER FUCKER. I will seriously stand straddled over your emaciated body with a Big Mac in each hand, licking the special sauce that has run down my arm as I watch you take your last breathes while painfully starving to death.

Wow, this took a dark turn.

06. "Well, I'm not taking any chances. :)" This may be the most annoying part of the message. In six words, the author issues both a mea culpa and a "why not?" type of response. "Hey, I probably won't get any bags filled with money from forwarding this, but hey, you never know, and wouldn't it be foolish if I didn't try?"

And there's the problem. At least with old chain letters, it cost the sender a few minutes of their time, along with the price of a stamp and an envelope. But with e-mail, and particularly Facebook, forwarding this bullshit along costs the sender literally nothing. Just a mouse click, and it's over.

Who it costs though is ME. *I* am the one that has to see it. *I* am the one that has to skim it and see if it's something important or not. *I* am the one that has to waste time on the Internet bitching about it. *ME*.

And, oh, what a con-veeeeen-ient little clause the sender put in there. If they don't come in to money, no harm no foul. But if they DO come in to money, they can attribute it to sharing this crap on Facebook. I don't know which is worse, the fact that the person might attribute finding money to forwarding some stupid freakin' icon on Facebook, or the fact that I know this surely guarantees that I will get MORE of these posts from this person. Stupid positive reinforcement!!!

So let's put this to rest, shall we? There are no money bags, no magical months, no easy way to get rich by clogging up the intertubes with your bullshit. Feng shui has as much to do with the ancient art of money bags as Confucius, Sun Tzu, Egg Fu Young and Miao Yin. It's stupid, stupid bullshit and an embarrassing waste of the technology used to power the Internet. Stop it.

This brings to mind AOL chain letters from 98, 99 when there was a random pairing of the letter and every name on a given accounts buddy list. Add to the mix that "members@aol.com" was a valid, catch-all way to send a message to the entire user base, added to a number of odd messages I found in my inbox after I excitedly clicked the raised flag after hearing "You've got mail."

Two stick out in my mind as the most obnoxious, interesting, and fairly nostalgic because after seeing them forty or fifty times back in the day, they have become associated with other fleeting memories of my adolescence.

The first is the "Bill Gates will give you a $1 for every person you send this to" note...

1999 wrote:Subject: FW: Microsoft and AOL merger
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999

I'm forwarding a forwarded message...read on, it it works you may get $$ from Microsoft. Certainly Bill has enough to share-maybe today we'll be blessed financially!

I am forwarding this because the person who sent it to me is a good friend and does not send me junk. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet company and in an effort make sure that Internet explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $5.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $3.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $1.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a check. I thought this was a scam myself, but two weeks after receiving this e-mail and forwarding it on, Microsoft contacted me for my e-mail and within days, I received a check for $800.00.

Four or five variations come to mind that played on this theme; some company or well known celebrity, or pass a dollar or two in your direction for soliciting that they will pass you a buck or two for soliciting that they will...

The second which I remember mainly because it was the first time I saw a picture embedded in an e-mail, amounted to a "death note" or "plea for life from an evil entity" which at one time, was likely at least vaguely original.

Send it out or you die wrote: Dear Friends:
A few years ago at a high school in Nevada Something really sad
happened. There was this girl named Amy who loved this guy named Brian. They
were both popular and they were going out. There was this other girl,
Jessica. She Hated Amy and she also really liked Brian and Brian liked
Jessica. One day, when Brian and Amy were going out Jessica asked Brian out
to the movies behind Amy's back. However, Amy heard about it and followed
them. In the theaters and Brian weren't watching the moving, they were just
"making out." Jesse asked Brian to go to her house about half way through
the movie so that they could be alone. Amy followed them to Jesse's house
and watched them "fool around." The next day, Amy didn't come to school and
she didn't come to school the day after that. After about a week, Amy's Mom
was looking around Amy's room and found, in the closet the dead body of Amy
and next to it was a suicide not that said:
Dear Brian:
I killed myself because of you. I want you to tell everyone you
can about what you did to me or I will kill you and anyom=ne who stands in my
way of telling everyone about Jessica!
I love you,
Amanda

Now you have to send this to at least 15 people or the vengeful ghost of
Amy will kill YOU! Amy has to tell everyone about what Jessica did! This is
serious! One girl, a friend of mine deleted this because she thought it was
junkman. The next day, her mother found her dead in her bed and the autopsy
revealed no possible explanation for her death. You have 24 Hours to send
this out

Insert a random, poorly drawn and edited in VideoToaster image of a ghost at the bottom of this last one. After seven, eight years of the Internet being described as a haven for murderers, pedophiles, and others of dubious allegiance, the difference is perhaps that these and even the moneybags chains, at least have the air of being innocent and void of maliciousness.

Oddly, the only feelings I have are ones of disappointment that I didn't associate my AOL mailbox with Thunderbird, outlook, hotmail, or even touch the pop3 options under the menu bar. Even the junk mail I discarded in 1997 now feels as if it had historical merit as the world as changed, though I guess all I need to do is look at my facebook account for a bit of nostalgia, to remember that the world always spins back in on itself.

Flack wrote:01 "This year, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays." Actually, no it doesn't. You can verify this
02. "This happens once every 823 years." Actually, no it doesn't. October 2010 had 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays. That's 2 years, not 823.

Some guys on Reddit did the math[/url] and the odds are 1 in 12 each year that a month with 31 days will begin on a Friday.

My math is probably weak, but I'm not sure how they got 1:12, I would think the probability is 1 in 7. There are only 7 days in a week. Or maybe it's the proabability of any particular month which would then be 1 in 14.

There are only 14 years in the calendar. Seven years, one starting each day of the week, that have a 28-day February, and seven years, one each starting each day of the week, that have a 29-day february.

I did an analysis once where I ran through the calendar and the months seem to come up about even over a long enough time, about a century.

Anyone else have examples of chain letters or random crap that is being posted to Facebook?

Where would you like to start?

01. My aunt just shared a picture that said "Please read and share this!" (Fact: any post that begins with "Please read and share this!" you should neither read nor share.) The article said that Starbucks is "against war and America" because they refuse to send free coffee overseas to soldiers. Because of this we should all boycott Starbucks.

I can think of a few reasons to boycott Starbucks but this is not one of them. This has been floating around the internet since 2004. It's so old that Starbucks has actually commented on it on their official website!

My wife has called Starbucks on at least half a dozen occasions and asked for free gallon boxes of coffee for meetings and such. They give it to her every time. One time she called and said she had 12 girl scouts and they wanted to come in, get a tour of the place, and have free hot chocolate afterwards. "No problem!" The fact that our local Starbucks has given us at least 20 free gallons of coffee makes me think they would have to really, really hate America to not serve people in the military. Which of course is stupid.

02. Someone on my friends list YESTERDAY posted the supposed "foreign college student ID" of Obama, PROVING that he wasn't born in the US. 3 seconds on Google shows this is fake. I sent the person a link to the Snopes article about the ID. Their response? "Why would I trust Snopes over the Tea Party's Facebook page?" I deleted them because to be honest I don't want to be friends with people who would believe the Tea Party's Facebook page over Snopes.

I try hard to block all those things and as many of those e-card blabs as possible. I cant wait for Facebook Purity to code some kind of bullshit blocker..I mean an additional bullshit blocker in their next release. I suppose I should simply block the people who routinely put that crap up but somehow I never do it.


THE
ROUND
TUIT
AARDVARK

The fact that the moneybags thing was so easily debunked makes me wonder why people would STILL send it around. I guess people are stupid.


THE
LIGHT A CANDLE
AARDVARK