I love a good scare-tactic email, really I do. But they’re only effective if your audience is somewhat dumber than you are. For example, I received an email last week pontificating on the healthcare debate – the email expressed grave concern because “Congress and the Prez” are exempt from what’s written in the 28th Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United
States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives,
and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or
Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the
United States.”
Frightening, right? Only… there is no 28th Amendment. We stopped amending at 27. Go on. Check. You’ll see.
With the proliferation of false statements, bad reporting, and general falsehoods on the Internet, writers should not take anything on fact unless it comes from a credible source. Not that we do (and frankly if we do, we’re not very good writers) When in doubt, check it out. Snopes.com is my favorite for locating the source and the status of rumors (True or False labels are clearly posted, along with a lot of research showing the genesis and variations on the themes).
It doesn’t take a lot to identify advertorials or smell something fishy when someone’s beating the “Aren’t they special?” drum too loudly. There are a few blogs I read that I’m sure are products of paid endorsements. How do I feel about that? How would you feel about that?
Have you ever encountered an email, a Web article, or a blog post that made you say “Hey, wait a minute”? How did you resolve it?
Most of the time, I don't return to the site. If it's an email posing as something it's not, I forward it to the appropriate consumer protection agency or other authority.
Yes, I've un-linked from sites that are clearly posting the praises of their latest benefactors.
The emails usually get sent right back to the ENTIRE group that was included on the original, along with a detailed explanation of why it's false. I'll send along Snopes.com links if I need to. I don't worry about embarrassing anyone – it would be more embarrassing to have friends forward the same drivel to their friends or worse, colleagues/bosses/clients. And frankly, people who don't check their stories before passing them along don't get much sympathy from me.
Lori, I am well-known (and probably well-hated) for checking the validity of any email forward I get — and then hitting "Reply to All" with the Snopes.com link. Ninety-nine percent of them are hoaxes, so I think I'm justified. :o)
Do you know how many forwarded emails I get from people I know that have information on "Breakthrough treatments for MS!" or XYZ products "that could change my life"? Pretty much everyone of them is just horrendous or completely stupid.
Do you honestly believe that I could be pain-free or have my symptoms miraculously disappear simply by submersing myself in ice cold water? Yea, and that's like one of the mildest I've seen.
I've passed on the Snopes site to them, but they still see these things and think I have to check it out.
Some people send things on with a note telling me that I'll get a laugh out of it, so those don't bother me. But, it's the ones that are trying to be helpful without bothering to check on the validity of the information before sending it to me that gets under my skin.
With false (and usually malicious) e-mail, I do the same thing you do, Lori. I check it out at snopes.com, hit Reply All, and provide a link.
I started doing this when so many blatant lies were being forwarded on as "facts" during the 2008 presidential race.
A few weeks ago, someone replied back to me about how unreliable snopes is, She said is was run by left-wing pro-socialist anti-life couple who never check anything and only post results supporting their own beliefs, so you can't believe anything on it. Wonder where they heard that one….Fox news, perhaps? I was kind of surprised the person telling me this claptrap didn't also suggest the couple was living in sin – in a drug house, no less.
I just love it when people can't handle being proven wrong and decide to attack the source. My dad did that once when I told him he'd misspelled a word. He said the dictionary was wrong. (Thankfully he was joking.)
I had heard that snopes was founded by a married couple, but it's grown so much I can't think just two people could do the amount of research necessary to keep the site going.
My husband and I have to check Snopes for almost every forwarded email from my Father in Law. He's old school enough to believe that if it's on the internet, it must have been passed by someone with responsibility. I'm fairly certain that he doesn't understand the word "blog" or what it means. The worst was when he sent on an article about Honda buying the Oldsmobile name and trademark… Hubs bought into it, but I was the one that read the WHOLE article and then pointed out the "April Fools" at the bottom. Yeesh. They were both so mad I thought I'd be driving two people into the hospital. 😀
Wendy, that's the worst kind – "It may help you!" Oh yea? Should I start sending you Viagra ads for the same reason? Sheesh.
Katharine, you get no argument from me! I'm all for setting the record straight, even if it's family.
Paula, I wondered how long it would take before someone hung a "conspiracy" theory on Snopes. 🙂 Amazing that anyone sees it as anything other than helpful.
Wordvixen, I'm laughing like crazy! I bet they were steamed. :))