The Timothy Flyte chain letter

The premise is simple and appealing: forward a brief message to as many people as you can and thereby help save a dying child's life. It's a classic chain letter hook, whereby the recipient is offered something for next-to-nothing – money, luck, or, in this case, a clear conscience. Unfortunately, in the real world when a stranger offers you something for nothing, what you're most likely to get is... nothing.

Case in point: the following message, which began making the email rounds in late January, possibly earlier...

Parts of this message may ring familiar to many readers. That's because it closely resembles previous chain letter hoaxes of the same ilk, several of which are still in circulation.

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.

Of all these dubious variations on a theme, the Timothy Flyte letter is probably the least believable.

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.

Then there's the matter of the name: Timothy Flyte. Sounds a bit like the moniker of a fictional character, doesn't it? That's because it is. A character named Timothy Flyte (played by Peter O'Toole) figures prominently in a motion picture released just last month called Phantoms, based on the book by Dean Koontz. Interesting timing.

What's most baffling about the popularity of this chain letter is how anyone might think 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 practical consideration of toting up how many times the message has been sent on. The Flyte letter contains no such provision. Valley Children's Hospital has its work cut out for it if it's supposed to donate funding on the basis of the circulation of this message.

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.

Related articles:

Anatomy of a Hoax
A thorough debunking of the David Lawitts chain letter

Slow Dance
A treacly variation on the "dying child" theme

Current Net Hoaxes
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