Glurge I delete, but people who have my individual email know better than to send it directly to me, so I only get it when somebody decides that the 700+ people on one email list I’m on would just LOVE this glurge!
I’ve been yelled at for giving people a Snopes link and telling them something is a hoax, not only by the sender but by OTHER PEOPLE telling me how awful I am, the sender was trying to do a GOOD THING…somehow it never occurs to them that wasting my time and some perfectly good electrons to send this crap is NOT a good thing.
How timely. I’m in dutch with my sister at the moment because she sent this awful poem and a “Forward this and the American Cancer Society will donate 3 cents to a dying widdew giwl wif cancew,” with a huge music file attached, no less. I did a reply to all (because it she didn’t use bcc, of course) with a Snopes link and a link to the American Cancer Society’s statement that they do not do fundraising with chain letters.
I usually don’t do a reply-to-all for urban legends or glurge or petitions, but hoaxy chain mails that sully the name of a legitimate charity kinda piss me off. Nonetheless, I composed what I thought was a polite message that acknowledged that the people who forward these think they’re doing the right thing, but usually chain emails are hoaxes that were devised by some jerk to exploit people’s emotions, and if you ever want to check out an email forward to see if it’s legit, Snopes is a great resource.
According to my sister’s one-line reply, I “really need to relax.” I imagine that if I’d sent the FIRST DRAFT of the message, she would have disowned me.
I went through the first section of the Saturday Post-Dispatch one day at work and put devil horns and goatees on every picture of Saddam or one of his cohorts. If I had some white-out, or a scanner and a copy of Photoshop at work, I guess I could have taken their moustaches off (All hail the clone brush!!) Of course, I was against the war, so it was more about boredom and amusement than a political statement.
Definitely, reply with a Snopes link. I prefer to reply to only the person who sent the glurge - that way they have to decide, are they going to eat crow and send out a note explaining the previous one was BS? Or leave the original recipients in the dark? Either way, I hope the experience will shame them into thinking twice and researching such drivel before sending it to 50 ‘victims’.
It has now got to the point where a lot of my friends and colleagues will send supsicious e-mails to me only first, asking me to verify the veracity before they send it out. I know, it’d be good to get them to cut out the middle-man and use Snopes. But one step at a time - ignorance is a worthy opponent.
I use a three step program.
Step one I send an e-mail back to the sender telling them that their clue meter needs batteries. I enclose a link to the correct information and suggest that they bookmark vmyths and snopes.
The next time it happens I go to step two. I hit reply all and embarass the sender. "Look I sent you a link to Snopes use it! This piece of drivel is old enough to vote, for crying out loud.
Anti-glurge. It must be effective, I haven’t had to use it for quite some time. After the first few times you reply with the story of little Timmy and how his courageous fight against a rare tropical disease finally ended with Jesus and all his angels showing up and throwing Timmy’s soul into the eternal fires of hell because he had been baptized by the wrong denomination, or the vital news that the American Satanist Society will donate 3 cents to a tobacco company every time their e-mail is forwarded the glurge-folk tend to drop you from their list.
Like DarrenS, the old dept secretary where I work in GA would send me e-mails she got that looked a little suspicious, and I would shoot them down almost every time. She called me “Bulldog”. One that looked as hokey as the rest turned out to be true, much to my surprise. I wish I could remember which one it was.
Sometime Snopes just isn’t enough. I don’t mind doing the Snopes research and sending the link back (depending on the situation, sometimes to the whole recipient list, and sometimes only to the sender). But now, I get ULs and glurge that read like this:
“Ladies – hear’s (sic) something we should all be aware of!!! Crazed monkeys have been luring women into dark alleys and selling their organs on the black market to raise money for Osama bin Laden blah blah blah. I’m sure Delphica will be along in a minute to tell us all that it isn’t really true … isn’t she a RIOT??? Love ya!! But even if it isn’t true it’s still important to be AWARE and SAFE FROM MONKEYS, RIGHT??? Because IT COULD HAPPEN… So foward to all the women on your list, and guys … tell your moms and sisters and GFs!!!”
I’ve tried ignoring it, but hasn’t worked yet; there are still one or two people who consistently send me chain letters and glurge. I don’t have the stones to tell them, point blank, to stop sending me this shit, but it’s really started to get annoying. In the six years I’ve had an active e-mail address, I’ve never even once forwarded one of these things on. The only think I’ve done are surveys, and that’s only because those are fun, serve a purpose, and can result in learning something amusing about your friends.
Glurge, chain mail, and God-porn I can live without, but stop urban legends?
boggle
They’re wonderful stories. I love to see how they change over time, and what people throw into them to reflect the Happenings Du Jour. Plus I looooove new ones.
Plus, they’ve been around in one form or another since long before e-mail, so I’m afraid there’s no stopping them.
I’m a big fan of the polite Snopes-link reply all, mostly as an example to the others on the list. For those you don’t care about offending, a nice bitchslap.
>>Dear [Friend]
>>
>>In future please do not send me any offensive or
>>pornographic material, such as that contained in
>>your last email.
>>
>>This includes human porn, animal porn, and god porn.
>>
>>yours,
>>
>>istara
istara, The concept is, alas, not mine. The specific phrase may be original. I’m not aware of having consciously cribbed from anyone, although I’ve read similar thoughts expressed as “fundie porn,” christian porn," etc.
I hate glurge as well. I especially hate getting emails that say “OMG LOOK AT THIS HORRIBLE SITE!!!”, opening it, and it’s Bonsai Kitten. I don’t know how many damn Bonsai Kitten emails people get. I’ve gotten to the point where every time I see a post/message/email/whatever that says “OMG LOOK AT THIS SITE ISNT IT AWFUEL!!!”, I predict it’ll be Bonsai Kitten before I even open it. And about 60-70% of the time, it is.
Then there was a guy I know who kept sending me chain letters. He refused to believe they didn’t work. He even sent them to people without even looking at it. It’s a chain letter, send it off. Finally, someone sent him a chain letter with a picture of a woman who got hit by a car, and her brains were splattered all over the road. He didn’t bother looking at it, and sent it to his entire family, including several kids. I also got it from him. I sent it back, showing him the picture. His family was pissed. Needless to say, he never sent another chain letter to anyone again.
My technique is pretty nasty, but effective in combatting unwanted “bulk” cutsie e-mail from well-meaning friends. I wait until they send me an e-mail about something important (a lunch date, party, whatever. Then, I ignore it. When they call and ask why I haven’t replied, I act ignorant and say something like “Oh, you send me so much junk, I don’t usually open your e-mails. I wish I’d known that particular one was a personal message instead of just a picture or link you were sending to everyone. Maybe you shouldn’t send me all that other stuff?” Embarrassing, dishonest and tacky. But it has worked for me.
I’ve been in one particular email group with the same people for over seven years, and they will STILL send glurge and urban legends, even though I and several others have politely asked that there be no forwards on the list. There was one time that I included a link to Snopes, and got ripped a new arsehole for being a cold, unfeeling bitch (Because, you know, little Kayla Marie MIGHT have been kidnapped, and how would I feel if I were her mother?). My response to that was less than polite. Sometimes I think people don’t want to be educated on these things.
And I once asked someone very politely to stop sending me seriously obnoxious Christian glurge (and I am a Christian, I’m just not a fundie, nor do I go for so-called feel good glurge), and got the nastiest response back about how they THOUGHT I was a Christian and any GOOD Christian would WANT to know about the good works of Jesus. I wrote back and said that I have the Bible for that, I have my own faith in which I can see Him just by looking out the window on a beautiful day, and that if they need to resort to false stories about Jesus to test their own faith, then that’s their own problem. No response, but no more glurge, either.
(All hail the clone brush!!) Of course, I was against the war, so it was more about boredom and amusement than a political statement.