Timothy Flyte Chain Letter
Netlore Archive: Circulating via forwarded email, the Timothy Flyte chain letter - a new variation of an old 'help save a dying child' hoax.
Description: Email hoax
Circulating since: Jan. 1998
Status: False
Example:
Email text contributed by a reader, Jan. 1998:
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Hello, my name is Timothy Flyte. I have severe ostriopliosis of the liver. (My liver is extremely inflamed). Modern Science has yet to find a cure. Valley Childrens hospital has agreed to donate 7 cents to the National Diesese Society for every name on this letter. Please send it around as much as you can.
Thank you, Tim PS: For those of you who dont take 5 minutes to do this, what goes around comes around. You can help sick people, and it costs you nothing, yet you are too lazy to do it? You will get what you deserve. |
Analysis: The premise is simple and appealing: Forward a brief message to as many people as you can and, with no more effort than that, help save a dying child's life. It's a classic chain letter hook: offer something for next-to-nothing — money, luck, or, in this case, a clear conscience. Trouble is, in the real world when a stranger offers you something for nothing, what you're most likely to end up with is... nothing.
The Jessica Mydek letter claimed that the American Cancer Society would donate three cents to cancer research in seven-year-old Jessica's name for each time that message was forwarded. (In response, the ACS issued a public statement disavowing any knowledge of the supposedly dying girl.)
The David Lawitts letter and its direct mutations, the Tamara Martin and Rick Connor chain letters, all open with exactly the same phrase found at the beginning of the Timothy Flyte message: "Hello, my name is..." The similarities don't end there.
Mr. Lawitts, Ms. Martin, and Mr. Connor are all supposedly dying of lung cancer. The virtually identical messages circulated in their names promise that "the national lung and cancer association" will donate three cents towards research for each time they're forwarded. No such association exists. No such people exist!
Valley Children's Hospital
Of all these dubious variations on a theme, the Timothy Flyte letter is probably the least credible.
There is no such organization as the National Disease Society; there is no such disease as "ostriopliosis of the liver."
There is, I'm obliged to report, a Valley Children's Hospital in Fresno, California; but — correct me if I'm wrong — hospitals don't normally donate money to foundations for medical research. It's the other way around.
According to Jim Page, marketing director for Valley Children's Hospital, his office has been receiving several inquiries daily regarding the Flyte case since the chain letter began circulating last month. "Valley Children's is in no way connected with this hoax," he says.
The 'real' Timothy Flyte
Then there's the matter of the name: Timothy Flyte. Sounds a bit like the moniker of a fictional character, doesn't it? Voila. A character named Timothy Flyte (played by Peter O'Toole) happens to figure prominently in a movie released just last month called Phantoms, based on the book by Dean Koontz. Interesting timing, eh?
What's most baffling about the popularity of this chain letter is how anyone might think, in practical terms, it could achieve its stated purpose. Previous hoaxes of the same ilk have at least instructed the recipient to send a copy of each forwarded message to a particular address for counting purposes, a nod toward the need to tote up how many times the message has been passed along. The Flyte letter contains no such provision.
Karma
Lastly, the threat of karmic retribution for not forwarding the message is both jarring and inconsistent with the rest. We're supposed to believe this thing was written by a very sick child. Poor little Tim. He begs for our sympathy and help, then upbraids us for laziness should we not take the trouble to forward the message. And doesn't "what goes around comes around" seem like an oddly sophisticated notion for a child to express?
At any rate, it's clearly not the case that "what goes around comes around" — if it were, people who clog the Internet with fraudulent garbage such as this would be found out and have their email privileges revoked for all eternity.
