Stubie Newbie

Stubie Newbie was checking his email one day, when...click...he got a message about a new virus. It would erase his hard drive, demagnetize his credit cards, and make HBO come through as the Discovery network. "Oh my.", he said. "The Net's infected. The Net's infected. No wonder my computer doesn't run as fast as I thought it should. I must run my virus scanner to make sure my system isn't messed up. But first, I'd better forward this to everyone in my contact list." Of course, he never found a virus, and three weeks later sold his system for a bigger and better system that must also have been infected since he still couldn't win at online Quake.

One of the people that got Stubie Newbie's email was Becky Treckie. "Oh my!", she said. "The Net's infected! The Net's infected! I'd better run a complete scan on everything that's been in my computer for the last two months. But first, I'll send this out to everyone in my contact list and post it on all my favorite web site message boards." She, too never found the virus. In fact, she never ran the scan because she forgot all about the threat when she saw the latest bootleg script for Nemesis, which proved to be totally inaccurate, ironically enough.

One of the people that read one of Becky's posts was Murry Worry. "Oh my!", he said. "The Net's infected! The Net's infected! I'd better run all four of my virus scanners right away, and buy two new ones I saw yesterday just in case. But first, I'd better send this to everyone in my contact list, and cross post it to every newsgroup and forum I've ever been on." Also ironically, one of the new virus scanners Murry downloaded was infected itself, and erased his entire collection of The Paranoiacs Monthly Newsletter, which he wrote himself since he didn't trust anyone else to report the facts right.

One of the people that read Murry's cross posts was Zachy Hacky. He said, "Huh. I could design a worse virus than that. In fact, I think I will. But first, I'll send this out to the media and get them in a froth." After sending the message out to the most gullible news people he knew, he went on to create a virus that would corrupt any computer, or network, that accessed any web site with XXX or Porn in the site name. Thus he single handedly destroyed over 3000 major corporations in the span of a single day.

Actually, the only media person Zachy sent his anonymous tip to was Ricky Quicky of Action 5 News. When he read it he said, "Oh my! The Net's infected! The Net's infected! I must get this on the news to scoop my rivals!" His news team had learned that it was easier to just post apologies later than argue, so they let him go ahead with the story. As a result, seven hundred people went out to live in the wilderness to live as hermits and avoid the collapse of civilization that these things always cause.

Unfortunately, they all chose the same patch of land to live as hermits, and ended up forming a small town instead. It quickly became a tourist mecca since the town square was the last nesting ground for the albino ground squirrel in the Continental United States.

To its credit, Action 5 News did produce an apology for the panic it had caused when it discovered the virus was a hoax. It was broadcast at 3:00 AM the following Thursday during an infomercial for the citam-o-matic, the new gadget that could juice fruit, wax the floors, roast a whole chicken in five minutes, help you loose ten pounds a week eating nothing but pizza, and cure the common cold.

The moral of this story is...well it doesn't really have a moral, but if I get one more virus hoax in my mail box, I swear...