Stop Sending Me Lies!

Most people have at least one person who sends them forwarded emails constantly. Instantly distinguishable by the “Fwd:” in the subject line and the

> usually
> very >> poorly
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(not to mention that they’re coming from “that friend who sends those friggin forwards”), these emails are generally inane, sometimes profane and occasionally hilarious.

I have a few friends that fit into this category of e-mailer. Some have a great track record and I always read their forwards, others I delete as soon as I see the “Fwd:” in the subject line. But every so often I get an email, often from someone who very rarely sends forwards, that fits into a different category: the earnest warning email, the earnest boycott email, the earnest petition email. I’m here to make it clear to all of you who engage in this practice: stop making yourselves look like fools. Stop sending me these lies!

Let me start with the earnest warning emails. These follow a well-established formula: start by warning of a grave and urgent threat, describe what to look out for, and then urge the recipient to act like a good citizen and pass it on. I recently received an email that said that the latest scheme hatched by clever deviants and muggers is to hang out in parking lots at shopping centers asking women to smell a sample perfume. BUT IT’S NOT PERFUME! IT’S ETHER, AND IT CAUSES YOU TO PASS OUT, LEAVING YOU UTTERLY VULNERABLE!

Except that’s complete nonsense. You can’t render someone unconscious with a sniff or two of a substance, and there has never been a credible report of this happening. Just like you don’t have to worry about someone calling your cellphone and asking you to press 9, leaving you with massive phone charges, like the email I received today. Stop sending me bogus warnings!

The earnest boycott emails follow another established formula: establish a case against a particular company (Starbucks doesn’t support the war in Iraq), tell you what you shouldn’t be buying from them (coffee), and then urge the recipient to act like a good consumer and pass it on. I just got an email, pretty much identical to one I received last spring, urging me to boycott Petro-Canada so that oil prices come down. The idea that by boycotting a Canadian refinery and petroleum distribution company we can cause world oil prices to fall seems silly at best, but that didn’t stop the author from urging me to pass it along to everyone I knew. Stop sending me misguided and illogical boycotts!

Then there’s the earnest petition emails. I distinguish between petition emails that ask me to sign by going to a website and entering my information, and the petition emails I get that ask me to add my name to a list contained in the email and pass it on with instructions to send it back to the original author when it gets long enough. Petition emails like the former make sense. Petition emails like the latter lead to lists that look like this:

> Andrew
> David Uzbeki, AUSTRALIA
> Susan Higgins, I totally agree and I think that this is ridiculous
>> Dave H.
>> this is bullshit
>> Ziggy

I don’t think legislators take “petitions” like this very seriously. And how does forming a petition like this even make sense? If the list is 200 people long and you’re supposed to return it at 300 people, and I forward it to 5 people, it just split into 5 different copies where the first 200 people will be the same and the last 100 will be completely different. To make matters worse, this split occurs every time someone sends it to more than one person. All you’re really doing is clogging inboxes with digital versions of “Ahmed was here”. Stop sending me self-indulgent digital crap!

I’m always getting (generally untrue) warnings about computer viruses. These emails are the REAL viruses, designed to be as infectious as possible (SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!) and they’re spread by well-meaning but gullible people who don’t realize they’re the Internet equivalent of a juicy cold-sore on the mouth of a compulsive lipstick sampler.

You can fight the herpes of the Internet by protecting yourself with Snopes. They live to debunk this stuff, and to give the green light to the occasional tidbits of truth that pop up in my inbox. They researched the perfume rapists, the press-9 scammers, the Starbucks and gasoline refinery boycotters so I didn’t have to. So before you forward, check Snopes.

And please, pass this along to everyone you know.