Hoaxes
Okay, I'm throwing this childish rant out there to whoever is listening because a fire was lit under my arse today.
I hate web hoaxes. I rank them right up there with viruses and reality tv as some of the worst crap we have to deal with right now.
At least a virus had to be programmed by some (usually teenaged) programmer who was smart enough to take advantage of a security flaw in our computers. That takes a level of skill and free time I can respect. But any bunghole can make up some story about Neiman-Marcus cookies or some new worm that will reformat your hard drive, corrupt all your picture files, and call your mother to tell her about the porn you downloaded last week. And what's even worse is that millions of people will believe it.
I blame the fact that it's in writing. We believe what we read. If something has been put down into words, we have an inherent trust that it is true and verified. I assume this comes from the old days when the only written word claiming facts was put out by books that had to be fact-checked. All you had to know was that if it wasn't in a magazine within fifty feet of an issue of the Enquirer, you were fairly sure it was fact. Now any idiot can put out a "fact" in some email (or weblog) and people will believe it because it's in writing.
Sorry guys, Microsoft will not send you $5 per person you send their email to, nor will little Jenny will not get a new prostate because some company is donating to her for every person you forward this on to. Underarm deodorant will not cause cancer because it's blocking sweat glands from doing their job. Most of those celebrity articles for or against the war in Iraq? Didn't happen (come on...they HAVE publicists). Viruses will rarely actually format your hard drive (how the hell would they send themselves out if they did?), and there will never ever be a tax on email by the USPS.
My main point in this is that the only way to stop this rash of crap coming into all our inboxes is by EDUCATION. If someone sends you an email that sounds suspicious, take a moment and Google a line in it to see if it comes up. If the first place you see come up is on an anti-hoax site, chances are someone is (probably unintentionally) hoaxing you.
I don't blame anyone who sends me a hoax. I DO, however, send every one of them a nice email back with a link to where I found the hoax explained and paste the text in the page explaining why it's false. Then I pray to God that they send it back to whoever sent THEM the hoax. Think of it as my own personal version of Pay It Forward.
Often the negative press surrounding some of these emails is bad enough that companies or health officials have to make public statements about it (Neiman-Marcus has actually posted their cookie recipe to their website to stop the angry calls), or some of the anti-hoax site people simply write a company or a doctor and get the scoop themselves in order to get it out to the world. Education is a powerful thing, and looking a suspected hoax up might prevent a wife who looks under the toilet seat for a butt-spider every time she goes, or (God forbid!!!) a coworker who boycotts deodorant for fear of health effects.
See? I'm just trying to do a service here for all of us. So in the name of non-smelly coworkers everywhere, I have included a link to one of the better anti-hoax sites out there. I have more on my Links page as well.
Okay, I'll stop bugging anyone who bothered to read this far down now. It's off my chest, and I sincerely hope the next time you get a dodgy email you find the time to check and see if it's a hoax. Then you can be all smug like me and send them a morally superior email back saying they were wrong and you were right...
...and you know this because you read it on the internet!
