>WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
WARNING!
IF YOU RECEIVE A GIFT IN THE SHAPE
OF A LARGE WOODEN HORSE DO NOT
DOWNLOAD
IT!!!!
It is EXTREMELY DESTRUCTIVE and will
overwrite your ENTIRE CITY!
The "gift"
is disguised as a large wooden horse about two
stories tall. It tends to show
up outside the city gates and appears to
be abandoned. DO NOT let it through
the gates! It contains hardware hat
is incompatible with Trojan programming,
including a crowd of heavily
armed Greek warriors that will destroy your
army, sack your town, and
kill your women and children. If you have already
received such a gift,
DO NOT OPEN IT! Take
it back out of the city
unopened and set fire to it by the
beach.
FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU
KNOW!
Poseidon
* *
*
FROM:
hector@studmuffin.com
TO:
laocoon@gloondome.edu
RE: Greeks bearing
gifts
Laocoon,
I hate to break to you, but this is one of the oldest hoaxes
there
is. I've seen variants on this warning come through on
other
listservs, one involving some kind of fruit that was supposed to
kill
the people who ate it and one having to do with something called
the
"Midas Touch." Here are a few tipoffs that this is a
hoax:
1) This "Forward this message to everyone you know"
rap.
If it were really meant as a warning about the Greek army, why
tell
anyone to post it to the Phonecians, Sumerians, and Cretans?
2)
Use of exclamation points. Always a giveaway.
3) It's signed "from
Poseidon." Granted he's had his
problems with Odysseus but he's one of
their guys, isn't he? Besides,
the lack of a real header with a detailed
address makes me suspicious.
4) Technically speaking, there is no way for
a horse to
overwrite your entire city. A horse is just an animal, after
all.
Next time you get a message like this, just delete it.
I
appreciate your concern, but once you've been around the block a
couple
times you'll realize how annoying this kind of stuff
is.
Bye
now,
Hector.
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