At first I thought this wasn’t exactly a rant, but then I reconsidered that this is a rant, albeit a mild one.
Just received the following forwarded email, originally from NBC no less:
Talk about your responsible journalism! :rolleyes:
Naturally, I did a “reply all” with the pertianant Snopes link. What do I get for my trouble? Two complaint letters! Here’s one:
Here’s how I wanted to respond, but because we’re talking cow-orker here, I couldn’t. “Huh? What? Did you even read what Snopes said? I’m not saying if it’s true or not, they are!” I was in the middle of composing a toned-down version of this when I received the second complaint. This prompted another “reply all” of the original message:
At least the person who forwarded this piece of crap to me in the first place thanked me for the link.
I’ve replied in the same manner as your second letter- this is not the time to be spreading around rumors, innuendo, and panic. It irritates the shit out of me. Prior to Sept 11, this shit was annoying. Now it’s dangerous.
I had a relative that sent me various e-mail, including UL’s. I got tired of it and used Snopes to debunk one of the forwarded e-mails. After a tiff back and forth, I told her finally: OK, keep on sending me such e-mail and I’ll keep on debunking them. I haven’t received such e-mail since from her…
Thankfully when I bought my mother a computer and got her hooked into the internet when I moved across the country she already understood that anything that said, “forward to all your friends” was a complete waste of time (she had a friend who started forwarding her everything under the sun at work and it drove my mother crazy). I did tell her it was ok to send me a joke if it made her laugh out loud since we sometimes have a similar sense of humor. Otherwise I make it clear to people not to add me to their distribution lists, humorous or otherwise.
Sadly, the times that I’ve done this, I have actually gotten responses that read, “Well, how does this Snopes guy know it’s not true?” :rolleyes: I’ve even managed to annoy my good friends, but now they all know about snopes!
A couple of years ago, a local radio station was talking about the alleged Paul Harvey “the rest of the story” regarding Mel Gibson and how the movie The Man Without a Face was based on his own life. Which is and was absurd. Someone called to debunk the story, and somebody else called, saying the debunker had no proof that it WASN’T true.
Ugh…this kind of shit has been happening to me more and more. Fortunately, I don’t have anyone in my life who sends me this stuff, but my roomate will sometimes inform me about stuff that her mom sent her.
The other day, she told me about the girl whose Afghan boyfriend told her not to go to malls on Halloween, and we actually got into a fight about it. I went to Snopes, and read to her about how terrorists wouldn’t tell people their future plans, etc. Her response: “Who are they to presume to know what terrorists are thinking?” Um, I don’t know…the CIA and FBI, maybe? (Which was where these quotes were from.)
Then, she asked me what harm these emails do. Argh! God damn it…I just CAN’T understand why people don’t see the harm in forwarding this reactionary crap. So we finally agreed to disagree (because I was getting too mad over something that really wasn’t worth it, in the long run.) She got in the last word by saying “Well, I’m still not going to any malls on Halloween.” Whatever.
I wouldn’t go to the mall on Halloween, but only because I imagine they’ll be crowded with trick or treaters. (A lot of stores around here do this now).
