Chain E-Mails and Unnecessary Bulk Mail: Stop the Insanity

Not everything that comes through the mail is valid. Most of the mail I receive--be it through US Post office or my e-mail--is just plain annoying. Still, there must be some people, even friends, who assume that I enjoy receiving so much garbage. They do not get it, even when I tell them, that the deletion of such stuff is an imposition on my time. Why do they do it? I think, because someone else has sent it to them to be forwarded to a number of people, friends being the key word, and they don't have the backbone to stop the chain. When this type of a chain e-mail comes from a friend, it is worse than getting it from a stranger, because I can't block his e-mail since I want to keep my friends. Chain letters, first in snail mail then in e-mails, started out as pranks or jokes or for circulating information, whether the receiver wanted to get such mail or not and whether he got the joke or the purpose of the mailer or not. In the beginning, I used to send the chain e-mail back to the sender to make him understand, but now I just delete it. Then sometimes, I get another e-mail scolding me why I broke the chain. Some of the letters used to come with a warning such as: "If you break this chain and do not send this to seven other people, great misfortune will follow you and someone close to you will face adversity." Nowadays, these types of warnings are pass