It’s the sort of thing that makes me want to reconsider giving out my email.
A few times a week, a message pops into my inbox – usually from certain retired relatives of mine – that claims reading it will save my life, or it’ll be the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard, and if I send it to 15 of my closest friends plus the person who sent it to me within the next hour something spectacular will happen to me in five days.
The dreaded hoax email.
I’ve received so many of them over the years that it’s come to be like the boy who cried wolf – eventually, I stop paying attention – so much so that these days I won’t even look past the subject line. If it starts with FWD and continues with a phrase like “YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS!!!!” it’s gone without a second glance. Should it have any amount of truth in it that’s worth my worrying, I have enough faith in the CBC that I’ll hear about it from them.
Which brings me to the last assignment of my Editing Print and Online Media course, where we’re looking at urban legends and the ways that editors can determine whether or not someone’s trying to pull our leg.
However, just because you’re not an editor, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. As soon as you type in a name in the addressee box, you’re directing your message to an audience, and, just like an editor, you have the responsibility of A) making sure what you’re sending out is newsworthy, not a waste of their time, and B) that it’s true.
You don’t have to become a human lie detector. There are quite a few great websites dedicated to debunking urban legends and Internet hoaxes which are kept rigorously up to date, Snopes being one of the best, about.com another.
Even a quick glance through the top 10 on these sites shows the range of these stories – from the moderately believable to the downright obscure (Lady Gaga amputates leg for fashion!)
Whether meant as a joke or intended to cause alarm, both me and my inbox agree, things are getting just a bit ridiculous.
So save your friends and relatives both time and frustration and do a little fact checking of your own. Together, maybe we can stop this madness.
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