The Good Times Virus Hoax

1994

Date: November 1994 · Place: AOL chat, then global email · Figures: Anonymous AOL user, originator · CIAC (US Department of Energy), official debunker · Tags: Hoax, Chain Email, Moral Panic 01. Do Not Open Any Email Titled Good Times A warning appears on AOL message boards in late November 1994. An email with the subject Good Times contains a virus that will erase your hard drive if you open it. The warning urges you to forward it to everyone you know. People do, by the million. There is no virus. There is no email titled Good Times. The warning itself is the payload. CIAC, the US Department of Energy's incident response team, publishes a formal debunk in December 1994; it does not help. 02. The First Self-Replicating Hoax Good Times is the first widely-studied example of a memetic virus in the strict Dawkinsian sense, an idea that hijacks human attention to replicate itself with no payload other than its own propagation. Every forward this to ten people chain email that follows works the same way. It also previews the entire grammar of internet fear: an unspecified harm, an authoritative-sounding warning, an instruction to spread. QAnon will use the same template thirty years later. Sources • CIAC Notice E-19, 'Good Times Virus Hoax' (US Department of Energy, December 1994) • Les Jones, 'Good Times Virus Hoax FAQ' (1995, archive.org) • Wikipedia, 'Good Times virus'