Why do people still send me crap e-mail, or as I call it "feces-mail"? (yeah, it's not that creative of a term, but it kinda rhymes with e-mail) I just received one from a co-worker (I'm still at my old job, until the end of this week) about how all new laptops are being manufactured with a hardware keylogger installed, that keeps track of up to 500,000 keystrokes. This is purportedly so the Department of Homeland Security can keep tabs on us, without our even knowing. Sounds real scary, right?
Well it isn't. This is another case of somebody sending on feces-mail because they WANT it to be true. Snopes cleared up the situation for me in under 3 minutes.
The guy that sent this to me is a conspiracy theorist. He's not the extreme case like you sometimes meet, maybe just a 8.5 on a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being "hiding your head in the ground", 5 being a normal person, and 10 being the kind of guy that wears a tin-foil cap to keep the government from reading his thoughts). This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that he brings up from time to time as an indication that we are right on the cusp of a Orwellian style "1984" government. He likens it to the "how to boil a frog" metaphor, where you start with the frog in tepid water and slowly turn the heat up, rather than just dumping Kermit into boiling water. I think you can make the correlation to the topic of government and rights infringement.
Bear in mind that this isn't a dumb guy, he is well aware of Snopes, and he should know better than to forward a mass e-mail without fact checking it! Especially to me, I'm his #1 moderator.
Thankfully, the number of "forward this to 10 people and get a wish/have good luck for a year" crap has distinctly diminished over the last few years. I don't know if I could handle much more of that. Who really thinks that this works? What religion do they subscribe to that allows for such nonsense? And if such a religion exists, how do I get a membership list? Those are the kind of idiots that will buy ANYTHING! I could probably sell their e-mail address' to spammers for $5 per person. Honestly, how much common sense does it take to realize that there is really no higher power keeping track of how many people you forward an e-mail to? If they did, could they really be called a "higher power"?
Of particular interest are the ones that give multiple levels of payoff for how many people you forward to; 1-5 = wish granted in 2 months, 6-10 = wish granted in 2 weeks, 11-20 = wish granted in 2 hours!!! The superfluous exclamation marks are just more proof that the e-mail is TRUE!!! Do these people visualize some e-mail fairy, with their grand checklist firmly in hand, waiting for that 15th name to go into your To: field? "Hooray! Now Billy-Ray can have his wish for a 35¢ raise this week rather than in 2 months!"
On the other hand, if Billy-Ray just delete's the e-mail, this (or these?, I haven't been able to determine) vengeful entity is so pissed off that he/she inflicts poor Billy-Ray with bad luck for a year. Why is it that the circulation, or lack thereof, of some silly Irish friendship poem, barely a Limerick, can generate such a disparity in fortune?
These people also fall into that category of "hoping/wishing/fearing this is true". It's no different than the old-school paper-mail chain letters that we got in the 70's and 80's. The only difference is that back then, we didn't have Snopes.com. For the last few years I've taken the time to research every one of these "too shocking to be true" e-mails, and reply-to-all with the Snopes answer. I think that everyone should do the same. Maybe, in time, we can end this sad perpetual chain of letters that prey on the simple minded.
I used to reply-to-all to these e-mails, so everybody that got it along with me will see what I wished for. And I would always wish for the same thing: I wished to be god. That's right, if these e-mail wish givers are going to hand out wishes, then they are only handing out their own demise! I shall usurp them and remove their wish granting ability, thereby eliminating such a threat to my own sovereignty. Then comes the "fire and brimstone" stuff. You see, I'm a vengeful god, and I fully plan on subjugating you all to do my will. Have you seen the Lord Of The Rings movies? Remember Frodo's vision of Middle Earth if Sauron get's his ring back? Yeah, that's what I picture for my reign. So do yourself a favor and don't e-mail me anything that I can use to obtain easy wishes.
Thinking of these people makes me sad.
5 comments:
Thanks for saying what some of us are thinking. I thought that I had put a sufficient kibosh on feces-mail senders, but just recently, via facebook, I got an email from someone who I went to high school with and haven't seen in like 10 years. She is married and has a family and a job and sadly, an email address. She sends me all her crap-mail and being as how she seems to be really trying to turn her life around, I don't want to stomp on her feelings, but I don't really know how best to tell her that a) I'm really happy to hear she's doing well, and b) if she wants to chit-chat from time to time thats fine, but c) Por fa-freaking-vor don't send me your sappy-crappy emails.
Having some measure of computer-savyness, I always wondered how people could be suckered into thinking that somehow Bill Gates was able to monitor whether you forwarded the email on to others to send you your .20 per. But to think that God also cares about stuff like that...thats just silly. Even if I find the email interesting or heartwarming, I refuse to forward anything that threatens me for not forwarding it. Also, once the cascading >'s on the left column is more than 3 levels thick, I just have to stop that bug in its tracks.
Thank you both. I recently got the "I'm a lawyer and I know the law, and Bill Gates is sharing his fortune. Believe me, this was on the News!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" chain mail and to my utter confusion, it was from someone I more than semi-respect. They think that hey, if it's true all they had to do was click send and find out and if it is a big lie, then they lost nothing in trying. I disagree. They have plenty to lose by clicking "send"...they lost my respect. I'd rather fall on my face in a Miss America pageant than have someone view me the way I few people that stupid. I always wonder how someone I thought "got it" could have deceived me into thinking so. Who would risk looking that stupid?
BTW, the tinfoil cap...hilarious. And so true.
The saddest thing you've ever heard...I once had to check on a scam email for my boss. He thought it was real and sent a bunch of emails to his other employees asking them to tell him what to do. It was that one where someone had bequested money to him, but in order to claim the money he had to jump around 3 times and send his bank account number and password.
My personal favorites are the ones with cute animals in CARAZY pictures doing wacky things!!!! They bring me good luck when I send them to EVERY PERSON who EVER SMILED AT ME.
David Pogue is the head tech journalist for the New York Times, and I get his weekly e-mail.
One week, rather than review a new technical gadget or industry news, he explained how the most recent prospective buyer for his home had to back out. Their reason for backing out, they found out that the friendly Nigerian widow that promised them 30% of 20 million dollars was actually a scam.
And this was only about 6 months ago, so it's not like they were in the first of people getting duped by this.
I guess we will never be rid of people falling for this. Like I said, people will believe remarkable things just because they WANT it to be true.
I can't believe people ever fell for that Nigeria scam, much less that they are still falling for it. They must think that email is basically magical.
Quick update to my earlier post: My crap-mail friend either reads this blog, or just purely by coincidence has redoubled her efforts to fill my inbox with fecal material. I've got to come up with some way to break it to her softly, because obviously I've been added to her distribution list and will never be removed accidentally.
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