Internet Lottery is a fascinating phenomenon. You can win tens of millions of dollars without purchasing a lottery ticket. Or, to be a bit more precise, that is what some ingenious Internet entrepreneurs would want you to believe.
I began getting winning notifications after signing up for a free e-mail address. At first, there was no overt mention of any kind of lottery. They were all addressed to my "undisclosed recipient" e-mail account. These charitable individuals wanted to give me some cash because an Iraqi major had left behind a big stash of dollars or an elderly Christian lady in an Islamic country who had suffered a stroke wanted me to help her to start an orphanage.
Somehow, the emails made me think about the Ig Noble Prizes, which, as you might know, are parodies of the real Nobel prizes. In 2005 the Ig Noble Literature Prize was presented to a group of Nigerian Internet entrepreneurs who had e-mailed amazingly touching short stories to readers all over the world.
So, since these entrepreneurs obviously noticed that I was not much into responding to short stories, they changed their strategy and began offerings me notifications of lottery wins instead.
However, before I start collecting my 20 million dollars in prize money, I would still want to get some questions answered. First of all, why does Mr. Ban Ki-moon write to an "undisclosed recipient" personally from a Yahoo address in Hong Kong? Second, why do the Vatican and Mr. Kofi Annan also write to "undisclosed recipients" personally?
I would have thought that these gentlemen were too busy to send e-mails to undisclosed recipients. At least, I would expect that the current UN Secretary-General has a secretary who would mail his posts from New York. But perhaps I am being too hasty and am jumping to conclusions. Maybe the current recession is to blame. Perhaps the Secretary-General has had to outsource his Internet lottery business to Hong Kong.
It does seem a bit odd that many lottery firms send their e-mails from Hong Kong. I'm not claiming that all do. I have received a notification from a Kenyan address announcing a huge win from a British lottery.
Yes, indeed. The world of Internet lottery is fascinating enough. Might it be time for the Ig Noble Committee to look into this matter? Or am I just being a bit too skepical?
Joel Kontinen is an author and translator currently living in Finland. His bacground includes an MA in translation studies and a BA in Bible and Theology. He mostly writes about origins issues.
Thanks for reading. It makes you think what they could achieve if they took to writing novels or short stories instead of emails. They don't seem to lack imagination.
I find it humorous that I can't win two bucks on a scratch ticket, yet when I'm online I somehow always turn out to be the , "one millionth person to sign on" to a site I've never tried before.
This has happened so often I believe I am becoming skeptical Joel!! :)
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