To Send, or NOT to Send...

If someone mailed you a letter with some information in it, and told you to repackage it and send it to 50 or 60 of your closest friends, and have them do the same, would you run right down to the post office, buy 60 stamps and envelopes, make 60 copies of the letter and send it to your friends? No ? Then how come if someone sends you an email... with the same information in it, you just plop that sucker down and send it to everybody you know, and don't even take the time to see if the information is POSSIBLE -- let known true -- before you send it on ?

Well, without going into all the OTHER stuff I could say about this, I want to point out that I believe we have a responsibility to forward information is true and accurate and for the public good, but I FEEL we also have a greater responsibility NOT to pass on information that is untrue, or that propagates hatred, distrust, paranoia and negativism.

This is just my thing ! If you receive it in an email, and it's NEGATIVE and/or it's ALARMIST and it has a huge EMOTIONAL APPEAL... and it's UNSUBSTANTIATED definitively within the message... there's about 99% chance... its' a hoax, and many hoaxes have been going around for YEARS, just rewritten and modified and resent.

How do you know??? Yeah, good point. So let's pass it on JUST IN CASE! Right? Ugh...

Here's one tip. To check on possible hoaxes and unfounded rumors, I use a source called SNOPES (http://www.snopes.com ) who's mission is basically to debunk rumors, hoaxes and urban legends, and there is a high possibility that the critical email you just received telling you that the world is ending, is a hoax and if you go to SNOPES, chances are you'll get an education AND save yourself some embarrassment if you check it out at least there first. Just go to SNOPES, type the "hoax" in their search box and see what comes up. Everything from missing children, to the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe, to Bill Gates paying pennies per email sent, to... "Oh they stole my kidney and put me in a tub of ice..." You'll find it here. CHECK IT OUT before you forward these emails.

Email makes it too easy to spread rumors, proganda and hatred, and ignorance. Like my friend Dr. Charles Jarvis said, "People don't think; they think they think !" If an email "gets you going"... the first thing to do is see if it's true, and if nothing comes up on SNOPES and nothing comes up on a general Google search, then it's probably false. Dump it! and refuse to contribute to the world's escalating high blood pressure problem.

Eh? And if it's true, but passing it on is not going to positively benefit the people you're passing it on to... DUMP IT! and find something positive to pass on to your world. Okay? Okay...

Now... Did you hear the one about the new Fountain of Youth Drug that's been discovered ? The manufacturer is sending a free life-time supply to anyone under the age of 60 who checks SNOPES within 20 minutes of reading this blog posting? You don't even have to contact them; they'll just glean your mailing address from your browser when you go to the site! AND they'll send you a Neiman Marcus cookie recipe !!! I heard it. My next door neighbor's cousin, works with a guy who shared the inside scoop... confidentially of course, and he's already 10 years younger. It's even been on Oprah, they say. Didn't you see it?

Have an awesome day.