Chain Letters Anonymous

This is just a hoot. So you get an email chain letter that threatens dire consequences if you don't send it on. Like your dog will experience a long bout of incontinence. Or you'll burn in some kind of unpleasant afterlife. Nasty. But you don't want to burden your friends with this, they've got enough to worry about without their pets exploding. Chain Letters Anonymous is here to help. They want to be your buds! Just send the email to them and it automatically goes to your 10 new best friends, who are less afraid of cosmic karma than you are. The chain stops there, the sun comes out, all is bright and hopeful again. From the geniuses at the Skeptical Inquirer. If you'd like to read up on different types of, well, hoaxes is the word that comes to mind, here's a dandy book:

An encyclopedia of claims, frauds, and hoaxes of the occult and supernatural : James Randi's decidedly skeptical definitions of alternative realities