I was just on another blog and he was talking about penny stocks arriving in his e-mail as spam and who would ever take these offers. This made me think of all the stupid, waste of time e-mails I get in a day. I'm glad most of them get filtered into my Junk Mail folder.
I cannot stand these people who forward e-mails about the war, pictures that are "too good to be true," poems that need to be forwarded, and god knows what other crap I choose not to read.
Most of these e-mails can be proven to be false just by going to one website, www.snopes.com. Just do a quick search on the subject of the e-mail or a phrase in the e-mail and you will most likely find it to be completely false.
A recent e-mail I got showed a soldier with a black patch on his shoulder which says, "Doing the work for" and the flags of Germany, France, and Russia below it. A quick search on "black patch" proved the picture of be false and gave an explanation of where the original, unaltered photo came from.
My other favorite is when I get a poem or feel-good story that needs to be forwarded to 13 people in the next 15 minutes or you will have 7 years of bad luck. I'm sorry, I have never forwarded a damn thing and I have a never had a bit of bad luck. I have a beautiful wife, 2 healthy, handsome sons, an awesome job that I love to go to, and a house in a wonderful town. Where is the bad luck in that life?
My frustration come from thinking about these things too much. What kind of person creates this kind of fictitious information and puts it out in the Internet? I guess more importantly, why do people believe this and forward the e-mails along to others? Do people actually read these fucking e-mails before they forward them along? Do they actually believe in this shit? Again, what are people thinking? And then there is my favorite situation -- when you hear someone talking about these e-mail topics in public as if they heard it on CNN or some other national news program the night before. This actually was a conversation I heard where they were talking about a flight formation at an Air Force Base. I had seen the e-mail a few months before and knew that the photo was altered by Photoshop. Idiots!
Working in the IT field, I guess you can say I have the inside edge. This crap is polluting our Internet. It is preying on the naive. And most of all IT IS REALLY PISSING ME OFF!
On a better note, our weather finally has changed for the better. We will be getting into the 60's the next few days and hopefully stay this way for the remainder of the season. Anybody have any exciting plans for this summer?
4 comments:
Wow! Thanks for the shout out. I hear "Spam" has been added to the classic inevitables, like death & taxes. It seems to be the accepted price of being online, like having anti-virus software to keep out all those adwares that the anti-virus software companies put out on the internet to make you think you have to buy anti-virus software... it's a never ending vicious spiral.
Thanks for this. I got that Black Patch email too. Sometimes there's such guilt-inducing stuff included in these emails, I have to really steel myself to hit 'delete' but I can't be part of spreading these things, either.
One of my company's VPs passed along some damned thing about people hiding under cars in mall parking lots waiting to slash the ankles of women and then raping/robbing them. I sent the snopes link in a reply to her. I must admit I get a kick out of urban legend spam because it's fun debunking them. Snopes is an awesome resource.
Penny stock emails, however, bore me to tears. Like I'm dumb enough to believe some kind stranger has sent me a life changing opportunity out of the goodness of his heart? Bah. And they are all the same. Poorly worded and ultimately stupid.
And the "discounted" software emails. Hello! War on pirates! Follow that crap up.
Then there are the fake rolex, Canadian pharmacy, viagra, sperm volume, etc. Tony right. The only way to not get email spam is to not have email.
Hey, Tony! No problem. I always enjoy your thoughts. Maybe because they resemble mine many times.
Greenishlady, It only takes on person to cut down on the spam that pollutes our world.
Collin, it is so much fun when you can debunk it. I also like when snopes gives you the history. I'm weird and like Internet history, so this tickles that fancy nicely.
Thanks to all of you for stopping by and commenting.
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