"...your selfishness knows no bounds."

Note: The following is pretty much a rant. If you want to maintain the illusion that I'm nothing but a nice guy, you may wanna skip this one.

Maybe it comes down to, I don't like being told that if I don't do something, I'm simply a bad person.

One of my best friends just sent me an e-mail. In essence, it's a chain letter. Now, I hate chain mail. I make it a personal policy NEVER to answer or even acknowledge such mailings, because I think in 99 cases out of 100, they serve only to take up inbox space for their recipients and the people they send them to. Show of hands: how many folks out there sent a "send this to five friends" e-mail to five friends, and actually GOT a run of good luck/a new car/1,000 bucks/Bill Gates's private e-mail account/whatever? I'm not seeing many hands out there. This is all part of a promise I made years ago, as part of an Online User Pact, to never add to the already insurmountable internet clutter. Now, occasionally (VERY occasionally) I have broken with tradition and answered a form letter, but only if it was something silly and fun, one of those "get to know your friends" things. And now that I have the blog, I don't send those out, either - I just post 'em here, and anyone interested can check 'em out. No mess, no fuss.

But the one I was sent today is different. This one comes billed as being from MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In the body of the text is a poem - a long piece written from the point of view of a teenager who swears against drinking and driving, but then is struck and killed by a drunk driver. The e-mail asks you to add your name to the list at the bottom, and then, when the amount of sign-ees reaches 5,000 people, the poem is to be shipped back to MADD, and then it will be mailed to President Bush.

Okay. Let's get something straight right of the bat - I, Jeff McGinnis, hate alcohol. I can count on my hand the number of times I've ever drank anything which contained alcohol in my life (and even then, a very small amount - I've never, ever been buzzed). And if through some amazing set of circumstances I ever end up drinking, I would never drive drunk. Ever. If ever anyone finds out that I have indeed driven while being legally intoxicated, you have my permission to beat the cr@p outta me. But that won't happen. Because I hate booze. Period. This is not an ethical judgment or a moral stance, it's a personal choice informed by what I've seen alcohol do to people, both on a long-term and a short-term level. I don't see the upside. I don't like the idea of being out of control of my faculties. I personally feel like I can face my life without getting liquored up as a release. And I just HATE the way it tastes. I wasn't kidding when I said, "This stuff tastes like s#!t!" at Masque that one year, however much I was cribbing that speech from a beloved Theta alumni. I have no qualms with anyone else who wants to drink - it's their life, their choice, and if they wanna get plastered, fine. But just don't EVER ask me to join you. And I'll always be the first to swipe their keys and drive them home myself - because you try go out on that road, it no longer becomes your call, it's a call you're making for everyone else on that road. So that's my stance.

But all that said...I can't bring myself to sign this letter and send it along to more people. Why? A few reasons.

First and foremost, I don't see the point of the drive. We're not signing a petition here, with a clearly stated purpose and goal in mind. We're adding our names in approval of a poem, which will supposedly then be sent to the President when enough signatures have been added. For what? What will this accomplish? Nowhere on the e-mail does it say what the goal of the collection of signatures is. It just says, read, sign, and we'll send it to Bush. And what's supposed to happen then? He reads it and becomes so inspired by not only the poem but all those signatures that he decides to become tougher on drunk drivers? This man who has a summons for drunk driving on his record? Is the goal ironic, given its target? I just don't get it.

Secondly, the organization of the petition seems...a little off. Okay, this gets a little complicated, but try and follow. You're told to sign, and then pass on the letter to all your friends and family. Then, apparently, the 5,000th person is supposed to send a print-out of the whole kit and kaboodle back to MADD. Okay, but let's follow the logic. If that first person who got it sent it to not only one person, but a few, then we have more than one branch of this thing going. And if everyone THEY sent it to sends it to a few people, then we already have quite a few copies of this thing out there. Keep it going a few more steps, and already you have literally hundreds of different copies of this thing floating around the net. And that's just after a few steps, potentially. The copy I got already has 545 signatures. If everyone of those folks sent it out to, oh, let's say, only 5 other people, and then they sent it to 5 other people...you're getting the picture, and I'm not patient enough (or good enough with math) to come up with a final figure, but it's gotta be in the tens of thousands. Keep that up, and there may be no way any of those branches reaches 5,000 different people. I mean, folks will eventually get this thing who already got it, will say, "hey, I already got it" and not bother to keep it going. And by the time you reach its conclusion, it either will take forever or you may end up with thousands of different branches of this thing with 2,000 or so signatures apiece - the total of all of them well exceeding the goal, but none making it back to home base. Wouldn't it have been simpler to just, say, ask everyone to send their name to an e-mail address and total it up yourself?

But all that is just me being overly analytical, and I could have skipped all that and happily signed and sent it along, since I support the basic cause, however vaguely defined that cause is in this case. But then, I came to the sentence that just stopped me dead in my tracks. And now, I won't sign it. Period.

Quoting the e-mail directly: "If you receive this petition and do nothing but delete it, your selfishness knows no bounds."

Ahem. Beg your pardon.

I really, really don't like that. The idea that being told that one action, and my choice in that one action, means that I am a selfish person. So, let me get this straight - I decide not to sign this thing, this odd, good-intentioned, but curiously undefined thing, and that makes me a bad person. Whoever wrote this thing, all the way back at person 1, is going to put themselves in a position to judge me, potential person 546, as selfish - all based upon one choice I would make. No. Uh-uh. No way. I don't play that kind of game, even if it is for a cause I support and apparently issued by an organization I endorse.

I hate drinking, and I hate drunk driving. This is the way I am, and the way I will always be. Deciding not to sign a simple e-mail petition does not make me evil, nor does it mean I do not support the cause. It simply means that, after weighing all my options, I will not add my voice to this particular form of protest, because I feel there are far better ways to express my stance - here, in my blog, for example, or by supporting the organization through donations, or making sure that when I'm around someone who's drunk, they don't drive. All far more effective, in my mind, than a random chain letter clogging up the inboxes of internet users around the world could ever be. That's my choice. And no matter what anyone says, it doesn't make me selfish.

Would someone PLEASE let the author know that such holier-than-thou blanket statements don't help your cause, but only serve to p!$$ people off?