Hidy-ho, friends and neighbors! This is yet another friendly public service announcement!
I know, I know, I've posted a lot of "check this out" and "do this" and "don't do that" lately. I'm sorry, but I just gotta. It's all relevant! It's all for your own good!!!!! ;o)
Anyway, today's helpful hint is, yet again, about those pesky EMAIL FORWARDS! Today, I am taking to task those who hit "forward" without checking their facts first. You know what I'm talking about. Those emails saying such-and-such a network is gonna air such-and-such a program that violates every ethical and moral principle that every sane and pure human being holds dear. The emails saying that Celebrity A has been talking trash about ______________, while Celebrities B and C just donated 10 years' worth of movie-made money to some liberal organization that supports killing infants and small fluffy dogs.
Yes, my sarcastic streak is showing.....but c'mon, guys, enough is enough! Imagine a friend comes up to you and says, "Did you hear about Person XYZ? Well, you'll never guess what he did......"
Do you believe every "fact" whispered into your ear?
Do you rush home, whip up a "fact"-sharing email and fire it away to everyone in your address book?
No. Of course you don't.
Especially not without checking to see if all these "facts" you just heard are true.
And why don't you do that?
Well, because it's called "gossip."
And that, my friends, is all a tell-all, tattletale email forward is. It's gossip. It's telling a story about someone you don't know, with facts you can't verify, all to rile other people's emotions up into a frenzy of email-forwarding busybodiness. When you forward an email like that, you're gossiping. And it isn't pretty.
Especially when other people can, upon receiving your gossip, immediately head over to sites like these to check on whether or not your gossip is true:
Hoaxbusters
Hoax Busters
Snopes.com
ScamBusters.org
Truth or Fiction? (thanks for the link, Alisha!)
Sarcasm aside, guys.....please check one of these sites before you hit "forward"! They all have search engines that pick up on key words from that email you want to send on to your friends.
You wouldn't gossip in non-Internet life. Don't be a gossip over email.
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2 comments:
I always check on Truth of Fiction when I read something like that. I think once the email was actually true, but it was about something that had occurred years earlier and had already been resolved.
I frequently get forwards that have some grain of truth in them, too, but people have changed words and facts to make the story more emotionally provocative. Hooray, let's all become more and more reactionary. :o/
I'm gonna add the "Truth or Fiction" site to my list--thanks for the feedback, Alisha!
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