Question of the Week 4

My friend Braden is very intelligent, socially adept, and talented in a variety of ways. Last week, he sent me an e-mail informing me that in the coming weeks, Hotmail would begin charging its clients for access to their free web based e-mail service. It is not the first time that I have gotten this particular e-mail, and so it was not the first time I have been annoyed and frustrated by it. I confess, on a number of levels, I don’t understand. This experience forms the basis of my question of the week, which, in order to make up for last weeks dereliction, will actually be a series of questions, any one of which could, I think, be answered with some variation on “People are dumb.”

1. Why did Braden send this to me? He is, as I said, very intelligent; prior to this unfortunate incident, I would have said that he is one of the most intelligent people I know. I have to suspect that if he had brought even a small portion of his intellect to bear on this issue, he would have realized that this is ridiculous. Did he think, “Oh no! This is such bad news! I have to warn my friends!” Or did he just read the first line, the part where it says “Forward this to everyone in your address book!” and then skip the rest?
2. Can he have read the whole thing, and think that it is true?
3. Is it possible that this is the first time he has been told that everything is changing at Hotmail? I have received this message probably a dozen times. It has never been true before… Maybe Braden suspects that, this time, they’re not just crying “Hotmailischarging”? (Crying “wolf!” is much more rousing and poetic, but in this case, a little too figurative.)
4. Why would Hotmail charge for its service? Wouldn’t they be worried that people would switch to one of the myriad competing (and vastly superior) services rather than pay a fee for turdmail?
5. If Hotmail were going to charge us, why would they care that we forwarded the message to our whole address book? What benefit is there for Hotmail in annoying me? (though I admit, being annoying does seem to be a part of the business plan over at Hotmail.) What would motivate Hotmail to say “We will reward you for presenting our future clientele with a way to prevent us from charging them”? That’s stupid, right?
6. I confess, I can understand what happened to Braden: he figured he had nothing to lose, and there was the possibility of some advantage. He didn’t think about it too hard, he just sent the message on; it took two seconds... why not? What I really cannot fathom is the person who started this rumor. Why would anyone do that? Was he just sitting in his basement, thinking, “I know what would be cool! I’ll tell people that Hotmail is charging, and everyone will believe me! It will be soooooo funny, and when I tell them that they have all been had, we will all laugh, and many years from now, when our grandchildren’s grandchildren are all grown, we will reminisce about how I once deceived them in such a humorous way!” I can understand starting a rumor about Tom Cruise’s deteriorating mental health – that is a funny topic (or would be if he weren’t poisoning the lovely Joey Potter with his craziness (Katie, if you’re reading this, I understand, I forgive you, and we can work this out.)). But why would you start a rumor like this? Where is the punchline? Is this more of that ‘dry wit’ the British are famous for? Either way, I do not understand.
7. Why does this bother me so much?