yep. and when you forward that joke email that was forwarded to you eventually it will end up in a spammer's inbox and he will have hundreds, if not thousands, of new email addresses to send out more to. the next time you get one take a minute and see how many addresses are on it before you send it out to 10-50 friends.
and i will tell you right now - no matter how many people you forward something too you will never get free stuff or have something magically appear on your screen