"If you don't forward this immediately to everybody in your contact list you'll be damned!" Or the one I got yesterday, "Please read this it is REALLY sad and if you don't read this that means you are EXTREMELY mean and selfish!" The tear-jerker stories that follow may or may not be true, but with the devil pointing his finger at me you can bet I'm not going to forward this to any of my friends.
Successful communication is not measured by how many people we can mobilize to emotion but to action. And to grab people's attention in the virtual realm, to get them to respond to our message, we must be real, more real than in any other medium.
When I engage in a message through visual or audio media, I'm expecting to be informed, taught and motivated to change. So if I don't immediately find skill, intelligence, and purpose, I'm on to something else. And when I receive unethical threats of damnation, 'delete' becomes my saviour.
I can be hooked by an up-front presentation of what I might gain from the message, and I am held by creative audio/visual, but I am especially moved by creative use of language. You lose your credibility if you use threats in place of language skill or callowness in place of excellence in your productions.
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