Why does this country feel the need to take emails at face value?

Every day, my inbox is bombarded with "outrage" emails - designed to make me pissed off and angry about our nation's leaders passing ammunition tax bills, or the leader of some country that is publicly anti-American but still taking our money, or senators who don't pay into Social Security but still have a multi-trillion dollar pension, or some such crap.

Yes. CRAP.

Almost all of it is pure fiction. And the little that isn't fiction is twisted, misread, or taken so far out of context as to be completely misinterpreted - often intentionally by the email's author.

For example - I get an email two or three times a year in my inbox that tells me I should be outraged that the 2010 tax filing season will require that I register all of my firearms on my tax forms. I'm not outraged about that. I'm outraged because whoever forwarded that email didn't actually read anything on the topic. SB-2099 is the alleged law. Guess what? The mentioned SB-2099 (there have been several bills by this number, not all of them dealing with firearms on any level) was from 2000, not 2009, as the most recent email would have us believe. It was never put to a vote, even. Which means it never even came close to being truly considered, except by the original writer.

Also, it had nothing to do with tax forms. This information is found here: snopes.com: Handgun Safety and Registration Act

Then I get stuff like “Target does not support veterans”, and is French-owned. Both being very wrong, and found here: snopes.com: Rumors About Target

I’m told that birth certificates are too easily faked, and that the email “proving” our president is from Kenya cannot possibly be false. Until that person has to eat crow when the creator of that emailed birth certificate admitted it was a photo-shopped image, using a birth certificate of South Australian David Jeffrey Bomford….Not even from the same continent! Don’t tell me you believe the email over other documented proof. I can email somebody that I’ve got $60 million in the bank – that don’t mean I can now go out and spend it.

The guy whose birth certificate she used (David Jeffrey Bomford) as a template didn’t even know about it. He was quick to say “It’s definitely a copy of my certificate. It’s so laughable it’s ridiculous”.

Health care passages taken out of the bill – so you only see what the instigator wants you to see. Reading the surrounding passages show that the “interpretation” is so completely false as to be not funny. Now I’m not saying the health care bill was a good thing – I just don’t know. I haven’t been able to get a copy of the bill to read. I’m apparently supposed to take some English Lord’s word that “this is the way it is”….because he said he read it. He must be named “Lord of Bull****”, as he seems rather wont to avoid providing anything resembling evidence to support his conclusions. But he’s the only one who could be right….right? Supposedly, this bill allows President Obama to cede U.S. sovereignty.

A Google search revealed a TON of reasons to question his credibility on almost any issue he discusses. He’s been shown to provide bar graphs for comparison – that limit scope and have significantly dissimilar scales. He’s repeatedly ignored basic concepts about geothermal properties to “prove” his point. Go home, Lord of the Jackasses. Come back when you can show me what the hell you’re talking about.

Note: I’m not saying he’s wrong. I’m saying that he’s not necessarily RIGHT, either. I just refuse to take his word for it, and nothing else.

I’m meant to believe that by forwarding an email or text message from some random person will somehow net me $2,000 or a laptop, or a very nice mobile phone, or equity shares in a company. Riiiiight. Do you really believe that if I spend five seconds to forward a message, Bill Gates will pay me several thousand dollars? No. And neither do you. So why did you forward it to me? Because you say to yourself “can’t hurt”. YES IT CAN! The very act of forwarding is what does the damage. Guys, I’m a hardware and security technician for computers - I know very well what kind of damage that thousands of emails can cause, EVEN IF there’s no virus/worm/Trojan horse attached to the email. For those in the know, it’s called a “denial of service attack”. These emails have been known to shut down entire companies’ computer systems for hours at a time. You know…the company whose website won’t pull up when you really need to order that cool gadget overnight. This happened to my company, before.

Stop it. Work for your paycheck like real people do. Then read this: snopes.com: Thousand Dollar Bill

Also, apparently some child is missing; an Amber Alert has been issued, and there’s a nation-wide manhunt for her kidnapper…..on Facebook and MySpace. Of course, what they don’t tell you is that the child was found 48 hours later, the kidnapping occurred so long ago the bastard is already serving a life sentence in prison, and the child has now graduated high school. A far cry from the six-year-old that was missing since last Thursday, huh?

What’s the point of this rant? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be sure what you are passing off to others isn’t some outdated and false drivel that somebody wrote as a satire or wrote with the sole intent of badmouthing somebody. You would be surprised at how much of these “true” issues actually just satirical comedic pieces, taken out of their original context, and forwarded as truth.

Guys, if you want to get me outraged, show me the passages. Point to where you found it. Show me proof in the original context. Give me references. Explain how you came to your conclusions. You know why in high school they teach you to cite your references in a bibliography? This is why. Because writing something to prove your point with only your word on the subject means there are going to be credibility issues.

Now, for those who like to forward emails, and are outraged at the state of our economy/political situation/military treatment/materials in kids’ toys/want to find out if the $100 gift certificate from Chile’s or Black Eyed Pea is legit*, please use the following websites to check an email prior to forwarding:

snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages
Urban Legends
Latest Email Hoaxes - Current Internet Scams - Hoax-Slayer
Hoaxes - Email and virus hoax information

*(It’s not – the resulting fiasco would be a thousand times worse than the KFC debacle, whose gift certificate was legit – for only one piece of chicken).

Now if it’s a JOKE…..SEND AWAY! I like jokes. Just don’t try to pass them off as truth (yes, a few have done that).

This email has been entirely and solely created by me, Ryan “JackRock” Cash. If you see this message forwarded with any parts missing, slap them silly (and I mean REALLY HARD), and then point them to this post.


Disclaimer: The insults to various groups of email forwarders are designed to resemble actual persons, places and emails. Any resemblance to living entities and active emails is entirely intentional, and should not be construed otherwise. Suck it up.