It seems in the past few months our personal inboxes have been regularly flooded with emails of a similar ilk. The subject line usually begins with something akin to “This is just too good” or “Read from the bottom, this is pure class” and so forth. Before we even open the email, we have a vague idea of what the content might be; a hilarious tale of woe involving a number of poor souls who have somehow embroiled themselves in the latest email faux-pas.

One that was recently sent made it to national papers. Many of you can probably recall laughing out loud to yourselves at work as you read the series of comments made by certain males about the female in question being rather attractive and wanting to take her on date. Accidentally one of them c-c’d her into the entire email thread rather than just sending his friend her email address. Their prediction “Oh my god mate, I’m going to be in soooo much trouble” was correct. It took approximately 24 hours for pretty much the whole of the UK, and likely the rest of the world, to forward this onto everyone in their contacts list. It was such amusing content, which no doubt made so many males up and down the country cringe, that most pressed “Send to all”.

With email content such is this; it is perhaps unsurprising that people don’t hold back when pressing “send”. No person’s dignity is spared at the expense of a good laugh. All it took is for the email to find its way into the inbox of a reporter at the Daily Telegraph and the Metro, and “voila” what was once a private email, became a very public one.

This is nothing new, jokey emails have long been sent between offices. However, what gives viral emails such clout these days and makes them newsworthy, is that now people can easily search for the (usually young) participants on Facebook or their highly embarrassing pseudonyms on Twitter. Just take for example one poor girl we read about recently, whose desire to echo Kate Middleton’s wedding plans were revealed in a Telegraph column just a few weeks ago. The article was spectacularly executed; it included so many snobbish faux-pas and portrayed the girl in a particularly poor light by making her look self-congratulatory, that once again it popped up all over Facebook. The Telegraph immediately censored the column, and Twitter was suddenly awash with about ten different individuals pretending to be the girl, giving an entire combined audience of over 10,000 followers’ regular updates on her supposed wedding plans. To say such incidents are not funny would be a lie.

Latest reports on this girl reveal she has removed herself from Facebook, cancelled her wedding due to a flash mob arranging to visit, and reporters from other tabloids have been camped outside her home because its location was idiotically revealed in the original Telegraph column. The two males mentioned in the previous story have subsequently been suspended from their jobs in insurance and property. It is precisely such ineptitude that makes us spare little concern for their downfall. To these men and women, we say hard luck, or quote a colleague: “They deserve a social media smack-down!”

There is no smoke without a fire, and these people clearly know how to PR themselves. Infact we wouldn’t be surprised if that was the career in which these hapless wonders were now headed. Just think, you too could have your fifteen minutes of fame with the right content!