Forwarded

I am not a message forwarder.

I get maybe thirty e-mails a week with messages from recipe exchanges to good wishes to prayers, all from the same people. OK, to be fair, I WOULD have done the recipe exchange, but I didn't know ten people I could send it to who would participate.

Still, it used to take effort to pass something along to someone. One had to cut out an article or copy it, write a note to go with it, find a stamp, locate the current address and pop it in the mail. Now it's click and send. So while the internet makes it so much easier to share, people are sharing crap.

It isn't like someone picked me out specifically to receive one of these messages, or found just the right sentiment to suit me. I'm usually one in a list of fifty people so honored. And of course, it isn't just good thoughts. I can't count how many warnings a month I receive, whether on political issues, dangerous new ways of being attacked, scam alerts, ingredients to avoid, dangers of over the counter meds or killer toys. Oh, and missing children. Those abound. People are sure I'll buy the wrong thing, forget to be vigilant when out, eat crap that's bad for me, and buy my children things that will lead to their imminent demise. And while I'm out doing those things, could I please keep an eye out for this missing girl?

Thank God for snopes.com and truthorfiction.com. Without them, I'd still be wildly paranoid and boycotting Proctor and Gamble products. My usual response nowadays is to hit "Reply All" and post the link to the debunking and a mild lecture to the tune of "Please check these sites before you jam up my inbox with this excrement."

Still, it hasn't helped much, because messages are going around now with "Snopes says this is true!" or "Verified by truthorfiction.com." Besides the issue of these statements being lies, there are no corresponding links to the purported rumor's discussion.

I can't decide if I'm a curmudgeon about it or just ticked off at four seconds of my life being wasted. Logically it shouldn't affect me as much as, say, Darfur. But I get so much more worked up over it than genocide, so my priorities are way out of whack.