The trouble with text messaging

For this I got the unlimited text-messaging plan for our family?
My 12-year-old daughter showed me an MMS she got the other day from one of her friends. It starts off with a picture of a blood-soaked girl’s face and reads: “Hello. I am Emily Ann. I am 13. The blood around my mouth will soon be the blood of you if you don’t forward this.” And it goes on. It’s an MMS chain letter. Here I’ve been covering the wireless industry for longer than I dare say and I didn’t know these existed. My daughter has had her phone since Christmas and this is her second or third one. (One was equally disturbing about a dog and I think there was another one about a clown.)
One of her best friends sent it to her because (obviously) if you don’t forward it, you’ll die. After I explained that we were not calling the police to report it, and that indeed, if she forwarded it on, she was only perpetuating the problem, did I realize she didn’t necessarily know it was fake. (This motherhood thing is a lot harder than they let on.) So I had to explain what a chain letter is, and that they aren’t true.
But it got me to thinking: Who started this? As much as I don’t want my children exposed to mobile pornography, this was kind of creepy too. And the fact that 12 of her friends had already seen it was beside the point. Is this the 21st Century version of a ghost story? Try as I might, I can’t think of the business case for this. (What’s the point if there’s no business model?) If my child was not on the unlimited text plan, I’d be a little more upset that we were charged to get this junk. Wireless carriers cannot be in charge of deciding what is and what is not acceptable over their networks (I am sure this is not anywhere on the carrier’s deck) but the carriers will be the ones getting the customer service complaints.
On the other hand, I signed up for a 30-day free trial of a daily text alert awhile back (a long while back – either one or two years ago) at a smaller industry venue. The daily text focuses on celebrity gossip. Guess what? I love it. It’s just about always good for a laugh. But here’s the problem: I’m a little disappointed in this company’s business plan too. You see, I’m still not a paying customer. And I don’t know who is sending the service because there is no branding anywhere. Not only has this company not bumped me off the system, it also has not tried to cross sell or promote to me about any of its other services, or collect any money from me. However, the company is still in business because I’m still getting fresh funny stuff every day.
I’d willingly pay for it. And they wouldn’t even need to use scare tactics.