Here’s how. At least it works for me. When old friends e-mail you with the latest scare, tell them — no, prove to them — they’re full of baloney.
E-mail panics and their close cousins e-chain letters usually come from folks who live out of town. Why e-mail in town? Actually, a lot of my group e-mails, even when we’re across the street or with work folks, adjacent desks. It makes sense when it happens. But with the Rumors, it’s invariably from those who moved away, or you moved away from their town. Don’t know, can’t explain.
I would like to say that when I get an e-mail about the newest computer virus, or a boycott campaign against a U.S. corporation for mocking treasured American symbols, that I want to help. I’ll send the report to everyone on my e-mail address book, and to convince the skeptical among them, I’ll fact-check a little. I am a journalist after all, and with evidence, my recipients will be thoroughly convinced.
Then I check, using snopes.com or the hoax page from Symantec.com. To my surprise, the sender has sent me a false rumor. It then is my obligation to not only tell them, but to hit “reply all” so everyone they told realize this one, at least, is bogus.
Or, maybe, I have gotten so many such e-mails from friends that I routinely run the key words of the report in the above sites, and 100 percent of the time — going back the dozen-plus years that a computer has been in my home — none of these has been true. None.
Maybe I am tired of the gullibility of people I thought knew better. And chain mail in any form does not bring luck of any sort; it’s medieval and pathetic. I certainly don’t want to embarrass them, but as I write time and time again to them, in exploding these things, this world has real problems, terrors and fears. Why not work on those and recognize garbage for what it is?
Most of my long-distance friends have quit e-mailing me these. I would like to think that they now understand from me, and others who also tell them they’ve been had, the e-mail scares they send on always are bogus and that they have quit sending them on. I have a feeling though that I’ve simply been deleted off their list of friends they want to help with “facts” the media have been intimidated from publishing but that they have, and on good authority. -30-
