Hoax emails and the auto-forward culture
12/15/2005 03:53 a.m.
Lately friends, family, and friends of family have decided that I need to be included in their flurry of forward emails. You know the kind, emails that are cute, funny, or scary. Perhaps they're a call to action or friendly warning. Generally these emails fall into two categories: happy emails and sad emails. Happy emails have funny or patriotic pictures. Cute and fuzzy bunnies and American flags with a crying bald eagle with "9-11 Never Forget" stamped over them. Funny emails of hot girls and ugly girls side by side. You know what I mean. These emails are a waste of bandwidth. Yes jokes are funny. But when I have to weed through every one of your friends email addresses, and their friends email address, and their friends email address to get to the joke, well I'm just tired and ready to move on. If you're going to forward cute and fuzzy emails, at least clean out the email headers from when you click forward. Better yet, don't forward it. Or if you want to be really cool, ask your friends if they want to be on your SPAM list of noxious cuteness prior to sending them said spam. Why is it spam? Spam's generally considered "Unsolicited Email." If I didn't solicit you to send me monkeys flinging poop at people watching at the zoo, then I'm not terribly concerned if my email program carefully files your email in the Spam folder.

Scary emails are where the hoaxes come in. It's unlikely the FCC is about to rule that Christianity can't be talked about on the radio or TV if you've not heard about it on the radio or TV, even if that email said Dr. James Dobson said it was so. It's very likely he didn't. And why not go to Dr. Dobsons website and see what he has to say about it? If he feels so strongly that he wants an email forwarded to all of your friends, he would probably ask for it on his website. In this case, his website dispells the myth. How did I find that magic article? Google. Simply typing "Dobson FCC petition" yielded several pages in the top spots pointing out it was a hoax. Amazing thing, it took less time to do that then it would take to include every friend, relative, and co-worker from my address book on my soon to be forwarded email.

Ok that's one scary type, the call to action... The other is the doomsday, sky-is-falling, internet is going to explode and President Bush has personally tapped your computer riding a patriot act cruise missle in a blaze of Dr. Strangelove glory. The worst virus ever is out! There is some benfit to computer related emails like this, it will possibly scare the person who is inclined to read it and forward it to me and all the world, out of opening attachments that say "Brittany Spears Nude Screen Saver" or "I make greeting card for happy you.zip." YES email viruses are real. They're real because people open attachements and run the viruses. But if you get an email that says "OMG CNN SAYS WORSE VIRUS EVER" why not check CNN and see if it's true? If not you're just wasting time and scaring people. If it is true, it's likely that when people check the news, watch tv, etc, they will find out about it. Unless they live on a small island in the south pacific and only enter the numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42 into their computer.

One more thought on these emails. Usually people send these emails to all of their friends displaying all of their friends email addresses for all to see. This is like sending phone numbers out all over the internet. When I see a list of emails like that, it makes me want to email photos of you out to every email address I can find. You know the ones, you were at my party, drunk, dancing naked on the table. I don't think your Aunt Jean would want to have to endure THOSE photos. Think of Aunt Jean.
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