Armchair Revolutionaries!

I'm busy with work, when I get a new mail notification. I open it to see the following -

------------------------------------------

Subject: Shocking Hi Friends, Sorry for giving you all a very bad news, it may be one of the worst news after the Independence. Subhash Srivastav an AIIMS student died at 6:44 pm on 20/05/2006, because of hunger strike protesting against reservation. Media is not allowed to cover it. Please pass this to all and help not to let down his sacrifice.

------------------------------------------

Sure - this is just another one of the email scams where someone with a vast amount of spare time and imagination composes and dashes off an email that catches on like wild fire, and the next thing you see it's all over the WWW. From bringing good luck, to preventing bad luck, and from spreading warnings to simple words of advice - these emails come worded such that most of us want to forward them in order to "spread the word". This motivation in all the cases may be different. I am looking at the above email again, and I wonder what drives a person to forward junk like this. We all want to be revolutionaries. We all want to fight the system. We want to fight 'injustice' when we see it. But we want to do it all from the comfort of our armchair. We're the armchair revolutionaries. We'll forward emails, we'll apply and minds and discuss what ails society, we'll discuss how things should be, we'll blog.. but we won't...?!!! We're revolutionaries!