The Bad times virus emerged in response to the Goodtimes virus hoax. The email was given the subject 'Bad times virus', and similarly to the goodtimes virus, implored the reader to delete any email with that title immediately. The main difference between the two is that the various effects of the bad times virus were highly implausable, and inspired by humor.

Like any meme, the bad times virus mutated rather rapidly, however some of the purported effects included:

• It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer.
• It will order one truckload of horse manure dumped onto your neighbor's front yard and bill it to your Visa card-- the only card stripe it didn't demagnetize.
• It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretations of key sentences.
• It will give you Dutch Elm Disease.
• It will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub.
• It will make you fall in love with a hardened paedophile.

The parody even inspired a musical version, by the group Laika, where the female lyricist recites the contents of one of the versions of the virus.

External links

• Bad Times Virus
• Another version
• Website of Laika