Cyber-Lies

What Jim says:

People, please remember this rule of thumb. Everything, everything, you get in your e-mail is false. Every assertion about some anti-American thing that Hillary Clinton said while plotting her coup d'etat against the government, every warning about gang members who will flash their headlights at you as a precursor to killing you, every request for your eBay account information to track your purchases, every promise of a penis that will finally be large enough to satisfy your wife or girlfriend. They're all fake. If your spouse sends you an e-mail telling you they love you, they're lying. Any true information in an e-mail is automatically filtered out by Microsoft and replaced with an invitation to help a Nigerian spirit millions of dollars out of his country and cut you in on a share of the profits.

I get so sick of getting emails from friends, family and coworkers who feel the need to pass on some kooky conspiracy or dire warning. 98.2% of the time they contain bogus information which is easily debunked by going to Snopes.com.

These emails also seem to be a favorite propaganda tool of certain elements of the right. I'd say the proportion of false emails from the right out number those from the left about 10:1, and I think I'm being generous here. Yes, both sides of the political spectrum do it but, like talk radio, it's dominated by the right. In fact, I almost never get bogus lefty emails even though, as the trolls will tell you, I'm an America-hating commie. When I do get one, it pisses me off because I think it we can be better than that.

But even the non-political, consumer-oriented bogus emails are damaging. The example Jim gives in his post could be very harmful to Starbucks. Businesses are often the target of these smear campaigns. As long as we're throwing the "T" word around, I don't hesitate in calling this industrial terrorism. These things are often blatantly defamatory lies.

So if you get one of these things check it out on Snopes. If it turns out to be false, copy the link to Snopes and send it to everyone who got the email by using your Reply to All button. This will set the record straight and, hopefully, embarrass the person who sent it.