how gullible are we? - June 21, 2006

"Everyone needs to take the time and read this. Just take a break from all your other stupid bulletins about who is gonna die or if your love life will suck for 7 years and be serious and do the right thing. Repost this or you have no soul seriously. A kid needs our help so do the right thing.


Hi, my name is Bryan Warner. I am 21 years old, and I have a large tumor on my brain and severe lung cancer. The doctors say I will die soon if this isn't fixed, and my family can't pay the bills. "The Make A Wish Foundation" has agreed to donate 7 cents for every time this message is reposted. For those of you who repost, I thank you so much. But for those who don't repost it, I will still pray for you. Please, if you are a kind person, have a heart. Please, please, PLEASE REPOST THIS MESSAGE!


Bryan Warner
631-648-8089 Home

Please feel free to call me for anything.

*hey it wont cost you but 10 seconds of your time"



OK people. You really are not morally obligated to repost this trash. Do just a little thinking and this falls on its face in more ways than you would imagine. Lets go through them all shall we?

How about starting with Mr. Warren's situation. I'll give him thebenifit of the doubt and say that he was terribly unlucky to get this brain tumor (or otherwise involved in an industrial related accident, unlikely for a 21 yr. old). With a tumor such as his, radiotherepy is the only option, and his chances of survival are already well below 50ÃThen you must account for the lung cancer, the most fatal kind of cancer. If it is severe, I wouldn't bet on our buddy Bryan to pull through, even with your loving support.

So all hope is lost for the "Make a Wish Foundation?" Yeah, especially since they wouldn't have been involved in the first place. That foundation's aim is to grant the wishes children who are terminally ill (albeit, probably not the wish to stay alive). While it is easy to say Bryan is terminally ill, he is not a child, and he would not be recieving funds from the Make a Wish Foundation to pay for medical expenses. What kind of heartless organization would use such a method to donate funds anyways? If the money is there to save lives, use it. Don't wait for misguided teens to repost a message.

Not that they would know if you ever reposted a message. No technology is available that tracks forwarding of emails (where most of these come through). And while all of these bulletins are stored on a hard drive somewhere, it is doubtful that Myspace would allow any organization to count the number of times a message is posted. They probably aren't stored in a coherently searchable form anyways.

So, Bryan's not getting money nor will he survive. Feeling sorry for him? Don't. There is no Bryan Warren in the area of NY provided. The phone number works, but it is, in fact, the number of a Patrick B Hill. I would love for someone to try it, to prove me right. I'm just using information from the whitepages.com, if anyones curious.

I must be a horrible, horrible person for pointing all this out, right? At least we could all get warm, fuzzy feelings from reposting such a message. You shouldn't. The true sick person here is the one who originated the message in the first place. What kind of insane person derives joy from telling a terrible lie, and then seeing how far it would propogate? Do everyone a favor, and when you see such a message, reply to the poster to learn the facts. If you want something decent to post, repost this, and maybe one day these stupid and terrible lies will stop.