Hey folks! I just got back from a mini-vacation, and I had a very nice time visiting with some family and friends. So I've been walking around with a peaceful aura of well being that I suspect my co-workers find very irritating. I better get rid of it before someone takes a swing at me. It's time for an irritable rant.
Here's a pet peeve of mine: People who automatically believe and forward chain e-mails.
Yeah, the chain e-mails featuring dubious stories about some inspiring, sick little kid, or the obviously Photoshopped face of Jesus in a bank of snow are annoying enough. But the political ones in particular really get on my nerves.
I'm talking about the e-mails advising you to be aware that one candidate or another was once a card-carrying member of Child Molesting Atheists for Overthrowing America, or whatever other asinine claim the anonymous author came up with.
I know some people who pump my in box full of that crap on a regular basis. The funny thing is, they tend to be the types of people who will gladly bang your ear about the fact that they're far too savvy to believe anything they read in the clearly biased and thoroughly inaccurate mainstream press.
But they're apparently willing to immediately embrace any bit of numbskulled apocrypha that winds up in their inbox, as long as it reinforces whatever political beliefs they already hold. Not only that, but they're willing to forward it to everyone they know, hastening it's bullflop-greased journey across the Internet.
This despite the fact that it's more often than not unattributed (although the ostensibly attributed ones are often made up as well) and could have literally originated anywhere on the globe.
In the months before a presidential election, unsurprisingly, these bits of netlore seem to proliferate like bacteria in an unflushed urinal.
As I've stated before, this is supposed to be a nonpartisan blog. Four years ago, however, the Bush supporters seemed particularly enterprising in both their crafting and dissemination of these stories.
But this year, some Democrats are apparently determined to prove themselves equally duplicitous when it comes to spreading political lies over the Internet.
So now we have both a Democratic presidential candidate who's secretly a radical Muslim saboteur, and a Republican vice-presidential candidate who was photographed brandishing a machine gun while wearing an American flag bikini.
What a wonderful time for the institution of free speech!
(Do I even have to point out that both of the aforementioned stories are a load of crapola? If you've seen the picture for the latter one, by the way, it was Photoshopped.)
So does the mainstream press ever get stuff wrong? Absolutely. The difference is that some guy sitting around his parents' basement, manufacturing fictional political scandals and then anonymously launching them onto the worldwide Web isn't going to face any damage to his professional reputation, let alone a lawsuit.
All I ask is that you consider the possibility that not every chain e-mail is gospel truth. At least check out one of the urban legends Websites to see if that particular story has already been flagged.
Here are a couple of my favorites:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/
http://www.snopes.com/
I swear the election of the next president and vice-president is going to be determined by the internet's distortions, innuendos, half-truths and just plain falsehoods that voters are sucking up as if they are real facts on which to base their decision on who to vote for. This whole campaign has taken on a face that no one claims to like yet most people seem to embrace. The candidates themselves are not helping any by ignoring the important issues they should be discussing and debating like health care, the ever-worsening economy, the wars, failing schools, and the crumbling infrastructures. Instead, they're spending millions and millions of campaign dollars to make jabs at each other, like a bunch of immature, school-boy bullies on the playground. At this point in time, with only several weeks left until election day, I'm ready to throw in the towel. None of these candidates belong in a national election, and especially one for the president and vice-president of the United States!
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Paranormal Knowledge
http://www.paranormalknowledge.com
Sincerely,
Jason
President, Paranormalknowledge.com