In the past week I’ve gotten the following message three times through my facebook inbox:

Attention all Facebook members.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you’re active please send
to 15 other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.
Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerber

Okay, this is going to sound just a little harsh and if I hurt anyone’s feelings, I’m really sorry. Come on, this is the dumbest email I’ve ever seen. I’m absolutely amazed that anyone would send it along to anyone… yet I got it three times. Honestly, does anyone really think that facebook needs your help to know if you are active or not? If this really was an issue, don’t you think you would have gotten a message from facebook instead of a message from facebook sent you to via your facebook buddies? No really, facebook is a very powerful application and they really don’t depend on it’s users to pass along critical information to ensure that everyone gets it. Last of all, the name isn’t even right. It’s Zuckerberg… not Zuckerber.

I realized something though. All three of these messages I was sent was from teenagers. I think this is significant. Most of us (older than teenagers) have been getting these kinds of emails for years. You know, send this message on to 20 people or something bad will happen, or send this on to 50 people and Bill Gates will give you a copy of Microsoft Office. We’ve gotten used to these scam email chains (most of us). But the next generation hasn’t. This is new for most of them. Many teens I know don’t regularly check their email. Actually, many of them change their email every 24 days. They are much more prone to check wall posts, facebook mail and their text messages. So most of them haven’t experienced the email chain like the rest of us. I’m sure many who forwarded this message had a feeling it wasn’t true, but who really wants to take that chance? And if I really might win a free copy of Microsoft Office, it’s totally worth annoying all my friends, right? Hold on everyone, I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this stuff. Here we go again…