I hate these stupid chain emails. I've yet to find a single one actually written by the random bigshot that it was supposedly written by. It's just some douchebag exploiting current events for a kick, perpetuated by the Internet (aka the world's gathering place for the gullible).
I'll bet dollars to donuts that a bit of research would reveal that this guy has nothing to do with this spam. Furthermore, the logic is absurd. It claims that if it worked perfectly (which it of course will not), 300 million people will get the message to stop buying gas from Exxon and Mobil. Unfortunately, as of the 2006 census, the United States' population is only 298 million. Therefore, not only would every man, woman, and child, including people who don't drive, have to stop buying gasoline, but so would 2 million people that don't even exist. Last I heard, the "imaginary driver" demographic wasn't highly targeted by the oil companies. Of course, all of this is assuming that of the 298 million real people and the 2 million imaginary ones, every last one of them owns a car- from infant to bedridden 90-year olds.
Seems to me that something doesn't check out.
Don't bother bringing Europe into the equation. A huge majority of these companies' sales are in the US. The EU and Britain have their own standards for fuel and vehicles. Diesel is far more common there, as are users of mass transit and human-powered transportation. Losing sales in Europe is a non-issue.
Do the world a favor, and the next time you see a forwarded email allegedly written by someone famous or important, just hit delete. Don't even read it; it's not worth exposing your mind to the ridiculous garbage within. And, for God's sake, DON'T forward it to all four thousand people in your address book...
I would also note, however, that there was no 2006 US census. They're only done every 10 years, so whatever you saw was an estimate.
I, however, will be fighting the good fight in this case. I will never knowingly buy ExxonMobil gasoline when I'm back in Iowa City and driving again. It shouldn't be too hard, actually. There are no ExxonMobil stations in most of the state.
You're right. I don't know how I misread that, and I definitely don't know why I didn't remember the 10-year thing.
I buy gas wherever it's cheapest. That's typically a locally-owned Amoco station (for whatever reason), but I'm a typical American consumer in that respect- I look for price, not origins.
Just so you know, this is about the fifth time I've seen this particular message, so it sure is getting around. And "perfect math" often doesn't take into account many limiting real-world factors, that's just an extrapolation based on some simple math to get people to pass the word on. Picking on the whole message for that one logical appeal to people to pass it on to as many people as they can is really dumb. And even if the guy who they claim to have originated the idea had nothing to do with it, it's still a valid message that is being passed around en masse. So maybe it'll do something, if enough people react positively to it and actually pay attention.
I'll bet dollars to donuts that a bit of research would reveal that this guy has nothing to do with this spam. Furthermore, the logic is absurd. It claims that if it worked perfectly (which it of course will not), 300 million people will get the message to stop buying gas from Exxon and Mobil. Unfortunately, as of the 2006 census, the United States' population is only 298 million. Therefore, not only would every man, woman, and child, including people who don't drive, have to stop buying gasoline, but so would 2 million people that don't even exist. Last I heard, the "imaginary driver" demographic wasn't highly targeted by the oil companies. Of course, all of this is assuming that of the 298 million real people and the 2 million imaginary ones, every last one of them owns a car- from infant to bedridden 90-year olds.
Seems to me that something doesn't check out.
Don't bother bringing Europe into the equation. A huge majority of these companies' sales are in the US. The EU and Britain have their own standards for fuel and vehicles. Diesel is far more common there, as are users of mass transit and human-powered transportation. Losing sales in Europe is a non-issue.
Do the world a favor, and the next time you see a forwarded email allegedly written by someone famous or important, just hit delete. Don't even read it; it's not worth exposing your mind to the ridiculous garbage within. And, for God's sake, DON'T forward it to all four thousand people in your address book...
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I, however, will be fighting the good fight in this case. I will never knowingly buy ExxonMobil gasoline when I'm back in Iowa City and driving again. It shouldn't be too hard, actually. There are no ExxonMobil stations in most of the state.
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I buy gas wherever it's cheapest. That's typically a locally-owned Amoco station (for whatever reason), but I'm a typical American consumer in that respect- I look for price, not origins.
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http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=&src=Netx
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http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=&src=Netx
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