Almost all of the time, the e-mails are just... wrong. They're either flat-out hoaxes, funny but fake stories passed off as true, misattributed or made-up quotes, real-life photos with wildly inaccurate captions, political opinions disguised as facts, etc.
They typically include the text "pass this along to everyone in your address book." And the more breathless and overheated the mail, the more likely it is to be false (or at least substantially incorrect).
Most of the time, I can find it's been written up and debunked to death over at Snopes.com, which is pretty much the authoritative site on Internet hoaxes, urban legends, chain letters, etc. (So much so, it's the subject of its own conspiracy theory.)
And, in the name of truth, justice and the American Way, I'll usually reply with a link to the relevant debunking article (just to the sender -- I'm not trying to embarass anyone).
Now, lots of people say, "well, it could happen. I'll send it along just in case. It can't hurt anyone, right?"
Unfortunately, here's a real consequence of one e-mail rumor campaign: Because of an e-mail rumor started by a disgruntled ex-employee, the owner of a grocery store in a small Pennsylvania town says he was forced to close the store. [link via Obscurestore.com]:
"Store owner Sam Singh, 27, of Pine Grove, aSingh says he suffered a drop-off in business, forcing him to close the store last week.
native of India, said he fired Wolfgang Aug. 3 for poor job
performance. Shortly after, Wolfgang began perpetuating an e-mail rumor
that said Singh told a person wearing military clothes to leave the
store."
The ex-employee, Amber Wolfgang, copped to starting the e-mail rumor and was subsequently charged with disorderly conduct, making false statements and ethnic intimidation.
When it comes to e-mail chain letters, a lot of times, it seems that people's critical thinking skills go right out the window. Maybe it reinforces an existing belief, or maybe it touches a hot-button issue. (They call this confirmation bias -- when you give more weight to something that fits in with your existing beliefs. It also explains a lot about politics.)
Now, I don't imagine that doing this entry or responding to spreaders of fake e-mails is doing anything to stem the tide. But I'll keep doing it, and I hope the next time you get a chain letter that asks you to send it to everyone in your address book, you'll look it up before you go inadvertently spreading falsehoods.
Thanks -- Joe
15 comments:
A good reminder, Joe:)
When I first got a computer, it was my MOM who told me "always check out email forwards on Snopes.com first!" LOL. Even in today's high tech world, Mom's still always know what's going on, don't they?
Kathi
Kathi -- your mom sounds like a wise woman.
Thanks -- Joe
h
I'm not on a lot of mailing lists, thankfully. But, occasionally, something will show up, and I usually just delete it without reading, and I never pass them along. In fact, I don't think I've forwarded a single email all year. I should get a cookie, or a medal or something, shouldn't I?
-Dan
http://thewisdomofadistractedmind.blogspot.com/
P.S. If you read this comment five times, the Energizer Bunny will walk across your screen and Bill Gates will give you $5,000.
Lately I don't even open the things, 99% of the time. If I do, I glance at whether it makes factual claims or is just a joke or cute picture or annoying opinion or inspirational thing. If it's a claim, I go straight to Snopes. They perform an extremely valuable service - and are fun to read, too! Not so the endless forwards themselves.
Karen
I do not like forwards that is not worth a hill of beans. Just because someone ask you to forward it on or you will have either bad or good luck doesn't mean it's going to happen. I do not forward it but stop it right there. LOL. I look up a lot of things on snoops myself and then send the sender the page showing it's a hoax. You don't get an answer back but a few days later get another stupid forward along the same grounds. Why in the world don't people look these thngs up before sending the useless things on. Have I said I don't like forwards that are stupid? Helen
OOps, the word is snopes not snoops like I wrote. LOL. Helen
Heh. I posted a rant about email forwards just the other day.
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/AuroraWalkingVacation/
Joe,
Alerts aren't working.
Lisa
http://journals.aol.com/seraphoflove9001/Pleasedonttakelifeforgranted/
Joe,
Like Lisa said - no alerts over the past 4 - 5 hours.
Hello there,
I happened to see an entry you wrote two years ago on bgilmore725's journal about how to add photos to blogs. Then I see that you're an AOL employee. Well, I had been gone from the whole blog thing for a while, then I came back a few months ago and what do I see, but AOL finally trying to offer aid to those who see such lovely images on journals like Bea's and quite a few other people. You probably don't know this, but there are some people who don't have cameras!! (You're shocked!!) "You mean to tell me that not everyone on the planet wasn't born holding a $450 digital camera in their tiny hands." Sadly, its true. Taking pictures isn't on the top of everyone's list. And even if I did have a camera, I'm not one of these people who believes in splashing images of people I know or myself on the Internet. Some of us like to maintain a bit of privacy and safety, especially females. Then trying to find out just where some of the lovely images comes from (I'm not talking about personal pictures), there are some websites who actually want the public to send them their pictures. As a lure, they display loads of great images, which they make damn sure you can't get off their website, like Photobucket. They are very slick; their urls are about 35-40 characters long, which means they can't be taken off. For those who try to figure out how to get the images off, I used basic old "cut and paste". I got the pictures on, but Photobucket was again very slick. Putting photos on journals that way causes the screen to spread out so far, that if you have two bars on either side, you can only see one, and to read the journal, you have to scroll side to side. Some people just love keeping their precious little secrets. Don't worry, Bea will tell you that I'm not nuts.
Oh, sorry I forgot. I'm not using my screen name where my journal is (was). I decided to shut it down for a while. No help of course from AOL Tech support; a definite joke which will ultimately be on AOL. That's what happens when you "outsource." Most of that screen name I use is Jilla; you just mention that to Bea and she'll instantly know who I am. You'll have to wait until she gets back, though. She's on some school trip and she sounds very excited about it.
I read the comments sent to you, just on this entry and its true. Chain letter e-mails can be a pain in the rear. What's bad is that you don't always know it's a chain e-mail until you get to the end. I just hit delete; I very often don't feel like thinking of 10 people to forward the crap on to. In my core group here, there are e-mails that get sent around only for amusement sake. I must confess that most are a bit "risque", but one was so funny that I kept it. Has anyone heard "The Italian Man Who Went to Malta?" Believe me when I say it's a riot.
I'm sending it to you and you will see what I mean.
I work at a company with about 15K employees. Today we were spammed by someone who managed to copy everyone in the company e-mail system.
Ok, that's remarkable, but why would you even consider responding (much less to ALL) that you want to be "removed from the list"? Or that you think this is spam, or whatever. At first it was funny (to see such laughable ignorance), but at 2MB per reply, it became a system-crippling event very quickly.
I wonder if the e-mail guy lost his/her job today. ;)
To decostone -- we've had that happen at my office, also, my nationwide, large employer, office -- with people responding "please remove me, why am I getting these e-mails" to the distribution list e-mail, meaning their e-mail got to everyone else on that list. Oy!
And, to Joe? I just usually delete those, especially from one particular person as, IMHO, his are full of bigotry most of the time. If you can help stop the spread of one or two of these, then you've done well:)
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