The internet told me so it must be true!

Editorial:

Please, please, PLEASE – for the love of Pete!  Check your sources before clicking that forward button.  I know that your heart is in the right place.  I know that you are just looking out for me.  I understand the thought process behind sending that interesting bit of information the internet just spat into your inbox.  You said to yourself “I am going to drop some knowledge on this person – this is something they should know!”

That is no excuse for ignoring the little warning light that goes off a split second before hitting send.  That little light said – “Hey, I wonder if I should check this out before sending it to every single person in my address book.  Common sense people.  Come on!  You’re smart, reasonable folks(well most of you anyway).

Did you really believe that the first time you saw anything about Swiffers killing pets it would be on the internet in an email with a string of forwards so long that it takes longer to scroll and find the content than it does to read it.  I would think that the news folks might be all over something like this.  They normally love to go after the big evil corporation.

Having a cold drink during a meal will cause cancer?  Really?  Didn’t hear about this one somewhere else yet either?  Nothing on the radio – the news – heck not even CNN online.

How about the mailserverreport/postcard/iloveyou/lifeisbeautiful/manamitiredofgettingthisjunkforwardedtome virus?  At least this one is partially true (the virus part – like 5 years ago).  As an IT professional, this one is very near and dear to my heart.  Any time any of my family, friends or coworkers gets one the variations of this they forward it to me for clarification and sometimes with the added tag of “I think I might be infected”.  Assuming you are running some sort of antivirus software – you’re not.  That doesn’t stop the back and forth of explaining this out for the umpteenth time.

“The internet told me so it must be true!”  Umm, yea.  You wouldn’t believe this stuff if someone told it to you at work or at the park, right?  If you even gave it a second thought you would most likely check it out for yourself later.  What has happened to everyone’s BS meter?  Perhaps a cooling off period is in order.  You cannot forward an email to more than 3 folks at a time unless you wait 1 hour.  That might help.

Here is my hypothesis.  I think it comes down to the monitor.  Folks are used to getting their info from the TV (sorry newspapers – your time was up a long time ago).  We are trained to trust news from the TV.  It’s Pavlovian.  The computer has a monitor so the same rules must apply, right?  Something that shows up on that screen must have some bit of truth to it.  Why would it be sent to me if it wasn’t true?  Surely, all websites and emailers adhere to the same rules as your average news report.  Right.  See what I am getting at here?

All I am advocating is a little common sense.  At least look it up first.  Try Google – You may have heard of it.  If you are the recipient of one (or several) of these mails and want to be snarky to the sender, use letmegooglethatforyou.com.  After a couple of those come back their way – they’ll get the picture.  Finally, take a look at snopes – This is the clearing house for many of the legend/hoax related internet memes.  Snopes can normally set you straight on just about all of the hoaxes out there.

If you are addicted to sending these things out might i suggest twitter?  This might just scratch that “I need to let everyone know what’s up” itch that you’ve got.  This way instead of pushing stuff into folks’ already overstuffed inboxes you’d be pushing stuff to your twitter buddies who are primed and already looking for it.

Just a thought.

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