People are really on the hoax perpetuation bandwagon this morning. I keep getting emails forwarded to me about things such as KFC's chicken being genetically modified and Swiffer Wetjet's causing death in household pets. Good grief people! Have you no ability to seperate truth from fiction, or at least to use the resources available on the internet to verify whether or not something is just an outright hoax? It takes a total of five seconds to go to snopes.com, punch in a key word, and find out immediately if an email you have received has any validity. You will find more often than not that these "scare tactic" emails you receive on a daily basis are complete bullshit. Why would you want to actively participate in the dissemination of lies (undoubtedly crafted by some poor loser with nothing better to do) by sending this crap to every person in your address book? Why not spare everyone the aggravation by just doing as I have suggested here. Do a tiny bit of research rather than succumbing to your knee-jerk reaction to hit forward in your taskbar, sending it on to the next victim. (By YOU I mean Them, you know...anyway...)
I am starting to think that some people are just so naive and don't realize that everything you read on the internet is not necessarily true. In fact, the internet is a sesspool of hoaxes and misinformation and one must wade carefully through, tossing aside the garbage in their path.
The reality is that the world IS full of horrors and sinister plots, but it's not necessary to get hysterical the moment you hear or read something that inspires an irrational fear in you. It reminds me of that book "The Culture of Fear." It's almost like if people in America don't have something to be afraid of, they don't know what to do with themselves. It's becoming an ingrained aspect of our culture. People don't know how to keep their fear in check. I find myself some nights, awake, spiraling through a catalogue of personal fears. Thinking of all the horrible things that could become a reality. Someone will break into my house and kill me (Pttth). My boyfriend will get in a fatal car accident on the way home (Ptthh - get that off the tongue quick). Something terrible will happen to one of my siblings (Pttthh). Terrorists are going to blow up my train or my office building or my neighborhood (Ptthh). These are all self centered fears that are really worthless and unproductive in any run, long or short. (But even still, I fear that if I do not superstitiously spit each of those imaginary scenarios off the tongue, the laws of irony will cause them to occur).
I am just like everyone else. I absorb crap news without realizing it, just because it's on in the other room while I cook dinner, I absorb headlines - flashes of fear inducing dreck - sometimes totally subconsciously. I read true crime and biographies of mass murderers and serial killers, I watch horror films. My mind is clogged to death with images and scenarios that instill fear, when the truth is that almost everyone faces tragedy & heartbreak at some point in their lives. Cultivating any amount of worry about the litany of theoretical scenarios that each person can come up with to fit their own set of personal fears is totally pointless. I witnessed the worst horror of my lifetime when my beloved grandmother drowned before my eyes at the age of four. I have had numerous friends die. I lived in NYC through 9/11. The world is a sad place. And we must accept it. Fear should only be (quickly) turned into motivation to try and prevent tragedies from repeating themselves (for example, I will make sure that my children know how to swim), never as a tool to incite irrational hysteria.
I'd like to avoid ever becoming completely paranoid, but I do suffer a subtle experience of fearfulness that is the common condition of the average American, whether conscious or not. (9/11 didn't help). So let's all do eachother a favor, and try to keep the scare tactics to a minimum. I already feel like that "Worried Lady" on Craig Kilborn. ("I'm just worried...just really really worried.")
So I don't want to get a single nother email that says that Evian is filtered with cow's blood or that drinking from an unwashed soda can could result in death by poisonous rat urine, that I should watch out for men in parking lots trying to offer me drug laced perfume samples so as to knock me out and abduct me -- or my favorite by far because it actually scared me for a moment a couple years back -- be careful at gas stations of mad rapists who will crawl into your backseat while you are inside paying. The real world is bad enough without all this "fear filler." (For those times when you are actually relaxing for a moment, feel free to open your inbox to be confronted with some ridiculous hoax that will send you into a panicked forwarding frenzy).
Posted by Maria at June 3, 2004 11:31 AM | TrackBack