Over reaction to chain email?

I've just checked my email. There was one from a girl I haven't seen/properly spoken to for ages. It was one of those HORRIFIC chain emails. I don't know why I read it, it made me want to eat my own eyeballs.

It was a slide show that started with 'before you start a warning' 

case 1 - a woman, her boyfriend proposes she rushes back to the office, she has received this email, she deletes it, her boyfriend gets killed in a car accident.

case 2 - a woman, reads this email only forwards in to a couple of people, she gets killed by a drink driver that evening.

case 3 - a man, reads this email forwards it to everyone in his address book as he's leaving his office  he bumps into the woman he has loved but lost she declares her undying love for him. They get married. 

Then follows the most vomit inducing 'poem' about keeping in touch with friends, loving your family and seizing the day. 

Good god why? Why? WHY? 

I usually don't even read these things and just delete them but today I've just had a bit of a 'discussion' on Horse and Hound and just felt like seeing what it was. Is it really bad that I have replied to all and said

"The people who write this *** and start these emails should be tracked down and SHOT! The people who believe them or forward them 'just in case' are imbeciles. Please do not forward any of this crap to me I find it offensive beyond words.

Thank you" 

I've over reacted haven't I?

Nope, not at all. I would reply in a similar vein.

(Another option, that I have used previously, is to just reply with "unsubscribe")

I like the 'unsubscribe' option but today I felt a little more venomous  

No overreaction.  Turn them into fuel.

Nope not over reacted.  I can't stand these chain emails!!!!  I seem to get them forwarded at work every blimin week.  I refuse to let myself believe them and never forward them on. But it still makes me so angry that someone has been twisted enough to write them - 'if you don't reply within 2 minutes, you will have bad luck for 13 years!'. 

What sort of people sit down and start these!?

no an over reaction at all.  My daughter (who was 6 at the time) was once sent a chain letter containing stickers from my SIL and I immediatly emailed her asking her to refran from sending unsoliciated mail to my daughter in the future.  i was called all sorts by my brother and was accused of over-reacting and said SIL didn't speak to me for over yea claiming it was 'just stickers'. not the point IMO epsecially when she didn't ask my permission in the first place.

I tend to delete such chain emails without even reading them now, however if i get any that are scarmongering - such as the safety precautions type (i.e the one where if you're approached at a garage and someone ask you to smell a new purfume but it's actually laced with arsenic etc) then I reply with a link to Snopes.

I had a 'friend' that would send me those emails, because she was too scared to break the chain but she knew I would just delete them.

Turns out that after a while I realised I was able to delete the friendship too!  

I may invent one about the serial chain email starter who got malletted by a depressed, dipsomaniac hitcher.

I find these emails a bizarre mix of the macabre and the utterly twee.  Very, very odd.
Would it be wrong to send one in reply that had NO good outcome?

If you don't forward this email to everyone in your inbox, the person closest to you will die.  Their head will explode.  Have you seen Scanners?  Have you?

On the other hand, if you do foward this email, the person you thought of above, well, the person closest to THEM will die.  Their insides will liquify and ooze from every orifice.

Make your choice.

L
xx

I loathe chain emails, texts etc. Most of my friends are of the same opinion, so I don't get many. On the rare occasion that I do get them I rarely complain and just ignore them. The two exceptions have been from religious friends who have sent me the 'its no coincidence' ones (man working at the world trade centre had popped out for a coffee when the first tower was struck etc, saved obviously by god....). I contacted both to tell them that the messages were a)deeply stupid and b)deeply insulting.