Krista Marie Brain Cancer Hoax
Summary:Message claims that AOL will donate money to help newborn baby Nathalie battle brain cancer. Donations are supposedly based on how often the email is forwarded (
Full commentary below.)
Status:False
Example:(Submitted February, 2005)
Dear: All,
Hello, My name is Krista Marie and I have a newborn baby named Nathalie.
She means the world to me, and just recently, the doctors have discovered that my little Nathalie has "Brain Cancer."
Unfortunately my husband and I don't have the money to pay for the bill.
But my husband and I have worked out a deal with AOL and they have agreed to give us 5 cents to each person that received this e-mail.
So please, forward this to everyone you know, and help out my little Nathalie and I.
Thank you.
Yours Sincere :
Krista Marie
*This is NOT a joke e-mail, this is regarding to save a new life. Please dtake this message seriously. Thank you!
A version that arrives as an image file:
Commentary:
The baby in the photograph is not named Natalie, nor is she dying of brain cancer. According to an
article about this hoax on Snopes.com, the baby's name is Megan Olivia Cronce who was born in 1998. The perpetrator of this hoax apparently stole her picture from a baby photos website and attached it to the spurious message. The hoax has been circulating since 2002.
This hoax is just one in a whole series of emails that make the absurd claim that a given company will donate money every time a message is sent onward. No legitimate company, including AOL, would consider organizing or supporting a charitable campaign that was based on how often a particular email is forwarded. In any case, there is simply no feasible way to keep track of how many times an individual email is forwarded.
Any email that tries to convince recipients that a donation, prize, or other benefit is somehow contingent upon how many times the message is forwarded is almost certainly a hoax.
Another similar, and equally ridiculous, hoax urges recipients to click the forward button to help fictitious ten-year-old "
Rachel Arlington", who is also purportedly dying of brain cancer. Again, AOL is the company supposedly "tracking" the message and donating accordingly.
Nonsensical emails such as these should be relegated directly to the trash where they belong. Forwarding them achieves nothing except perhaps for the highly undesirable goal of boosting the twisted ego of the imbecile who started the hoax to begin with. Anybody who believes that creating a hoax about a dying child is funny or fulfilling in some way obviously has serious psychological problems.
Write-up by Brett M.Christensen
