Stevie and Amanda 'VIRUS' WARNING

[William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com>]

On Fri, 24 May 1996, Paul Camp wrote:

> Received this message recently. You might want to respond. Doesn't 
> sound like the most complicated project in the world but I suppose 
> they are trying to illustrate just how far the Internet can reach. 
> Take a minute to help Stevie and Amanda out.
>
>
> Hi, our names are Stevie and Amanda.  We are in the 5th grade at the
> Phillipston Memorial school, Phillipston, Massachusetts, USA.  We are
> doing a

I recall seeing an announcement about this recently.  In essence,
it said "HELP! PLEASE STOP!"  

I suspect Stevie and Amanda learned far more than they wanted to about
email dynamics.  They unfortunately neglected to put a time limit on their
request.  And so their message has become an internet virus-meme-urban-
legend, a meme plague living a life of its own via email as good hearted
people pass it on to friends, and everyone mailbombs poor Stevie and
Amanda continuously with greetings long after their project was complete.

Is everyone here aware of this particular form of internet dynamics?  If
you ever receive a message which says "Please pass this message along to
friends," all your alarm bells should go off, because chances are that the
message is a self-replicating email meme. 

Last year just such a message got loose and almost killed the Santa Claus
site.  It said "please pass this message to your friends, and please send
lots of email messages to the Santa Claus site because a big company
donates $.01 for each message received."  The message was a mistake, the
donations were for webpage hits, not emails, but the message had just the
right characteristics to "catch fire" (or maybe "start epidemic" is a
better analogy,) spread to thousands of users, and cause them to
unwittingly mailbomb santa claus. 

Another occurrence was the "Good Times" virus hoax.  The message said to
warn all your friends about a virus which spread by email.  This message
caught fire and spread all over the entire internet, causing several large
companies to go into conniptions about a virus plague which didn't exist.
Well, actually it did.  The warning messages WERE THEMSELVES the virus
plague.  And the virus did not infect computer systems, it infected human
minds and convinced them to replicate the message and propagate it to
others.

These epidemics aren't limited to email.  There is a famous case where a
request went out to send postcards to a young cancer patient in England,
who was trying to collect a million postcards.  Years later the thousands
of postcards kept pouring in.  Another case of an intentionally started
meme which unfortunately did not carry a time limit as part of the
request.

These email-plagues are too simple really to be called viruses.  They act
more like naked genetic material, like the self-replicating "Prions" which
cause Mad Cow disease.  "Mad Email" disease?

Don't become part of these waves of self organizing email-virus epidimics. 
Be suspicious of strange email which asks you to do something kind and
also to forward a copy to your friends.  Sometimes these messages are
real, such as requests for donor organs or medical expertese.  But if
there is no mention of a time limit, it is a sure bet that the message has
gone feral, and is circulating unnecessarily as an email-virus.

For more info on this mind-virus concept, see Richard Dawkins THE SELFISH
GENE, the part about Memetics.  Or read the alt.folklore.science,
alt.folklore.urban, and alt.memetics newsgroups. Or search the net for
info about the history of "Good Times" memetic virus plague.

......................uuuu / oo \ uuuu........,.............................
William Beaty  voice:206-781-3320   bbs:206-789-0775    cserv:71241,3623
EE/Programmer/Science exhibit designer        http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/
Seattle, WA 98117  billb@eskimo.com           SCIENCE HOBBYIST web page