Like many people, I only really want to belong to parties, clubs and groups that don't want me, but even I was relieved that I was one of the few people who didn't get bombarded by the Love Bug last week. For those of you who've just returned from Ulan Bator and haven't read the papers, the Love Bug was a particularly virulent computer virus which arrived disguised as an email with the words "I Love You" in the subject field. Once you opened it, the virus jumped head-first into your address book and had a lovely time sending itself to everyone therein before popping all your addresses into the waste basket. The House of Commons, the Pentagon, Ford, Vodafone and all manner of terribly important people were all wiped out by the thing.
I was away in London over the weekend, but was able to join in the general chat about the Love Bug by saying very jauntily that I was sure I had been bombarded with Love Bug emails in my absence. However, when I did get back to the office, the only sign of bogus emails was a message from a friend in New York which moaned about all these I Love You emails he kept getting. "You poor divil, isn't it fierce difficult being popular?" I thought rather sourly, before realising that, although I was a little peeved I didn't feature in very many address books (as I hadn't been forwarded a single one), this was probably a Good Thing. Because really, did I trust myself not to open it if I did get one?
I have a feeling that even if I approached my email account with asbestos gloves, a bee-keeper's mask and a looped tape chanting: "Not the one that says `I Love You'. Not the one that says `I Love You'," the temptation to open an email that said "I Love You" would have been just too much. I'd look at it sitting there with its coy little request to "kindly check the attached love letter from me", and I'd get to thinking that maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe this was a genuine love letter which somebody just happened to send me on the same day that billions of other people were getting bogus ones and before I'd know it I'd be double-clicking away and boom!
Because what all the techies and finance writers seem to have overlooked in their extensive coverage of the Love Bug is the real reason why this particular virus was quite so lethal and why it spread so rapidly. It's not because it replicates the whole address book rather than just the first 50 addresses like its predecessor virus, Melissa. It's not because it's capable of destroying graphic and audio files or of obtaining copies of private passwords. It's because its Philippine creators were brilliant enough to pretend that their time bomb was a love letter.
I find it quite endearing that all around the world, there were people opening their email accounts, scanning down the incoming mails and spying one that said "I Love You". I can imagine some bigwig in the Pentagon or the Head of Wing Mirror Design in Ford, sneaking a look to see if anyone's watching and then opening their love letter with a little smile.
Unlike other viruses, which rather unimaginatively promise A Very Funny Joke or Important Information, the Love Bug knew that the only thing that makes suckers of us all is the promise of love.
Of course, nasty virus manufacturers are not the first people to lure us in with love. The advertising fraternity are divils for it - the latest culprits are Maltesers, promising a lovely cuddly man who will feed you chocolates, and the Pantene ad, which seems to suggest that the hair products will have you frolicking a deux in a couple of washes. Foods with aphrodisiac qualities also trade on this yearning for romance - we long to believe that oysters will make us sexy rather than give us a gyppy tummy and will willingly down bizarre concoctions of rum, rhino horn and blotting paper if they are said to enhance that loving feeling.
Then of course there's the romantic novel industry, soap operas, personal ads, horoscopes, pop songs, hairdressers, movies, multiple-choice quizzes in Cosmo and make-over features - they're all about looking for love and full of promises to bring it on. What the Love Bug debacle shows us is that even the most technologically advanced, hyper-productive, wealthy and sophisticated people in the world, the people who have their finger on the pulse - and on the nuclear red button, for that matter - still can't pass up the possibility of love.
This has all sorts of parallels beyond the world of bytes, jpg and MP3. The devastation caused by the Love Bug may have caused up to $10 billion in damage and lost time, but if you ask me, this is nothing compared to the damage caused by somebody actually saying "I love you" and not meaning it. In those magazine polls that ask famous people questions about what time they get up in the morning and their favourite Greek motto, it is astonishing the number of people who admit to saying "I love you" without meaning it.
This is doubtless because it is just so damned effective. Just as advertisers can make us buy unwanted products by promising love, people can make us do unreasonable things with the words "I love you". Those stories about con artists who whisk away people's fortunes always feature a quote from the deceived: "But he said he loved me". People who are abused by their partners usually say "But s/he loves me" - as though this is a reasonable excuse for why they were battered. I'm the worst in the world for it. Just last week I was holding forth to a friend about how cynical I'd become about love:
"Pah, it's just a hormone reaction caused by boredom and lust". I huffed. Yet only hours later a guy who was practically a stranger told me he loved me in a drunken fit and I spent the next week mooning away, imagining what our babies would look like and writing my new married name. Luckily I came to my senses and realised that as he had just come out of a long-term relationship, he was probably only saying it out of force of habit, but I was very close to abandoning all my principles regarding love on the rebound and all because the man said the magic words "I love you".
You see, the Love Bug on the Internet operates in a way that's not unlike how the Love Bug operates in real life. Someone says "I love you", and it makes you want to tell everybody in your address book that you love them. Then love makes you suddenly forget everybody else in your address book because you're so in love. Next you start handing over your passwords, those keys allowing somebody access to your private feelings, feelings that can hurt you or heal you.
It's all part of falling in love, and it can be wonderful, but it can also be a terribly seductive, intriguing way of wrecking your head. So it's worth keeping the Love Bug in mind and make sure that the words "I Love You" herald a beautiful love affair and not just a terrible dose of a virus.
Louise East can be contacted at wingit@irish-times.ie