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Edited on Fri Oct-15-04 06:06 PM by salvorhardin
when I first started my little hosting business (1997) and running my own server I knew most of my customers personally and was very protective of them. Most of them were far from internet savvy and quite a few were seniors who had not grown up with BBS's and Usenet. As a result they were vulnerable to every hoax and scam that came down the pike.
It seemed like not a day went by when one of them didn't e-mail me with the hoax or scam du jour -- often times something that had been making the rounds for years. At first I would meticulously research and document these hoaxes and scams, providing rebuttals full of links to source material and tutorials on netiquette and how to recognize urban myths, hoaxes and scams. I'd do this most gingerly for fear of offending these people (after all most of them had been professionals twice as long as I'd been alive) and every couple of weeks send out a newsletter with a compedium of what I'd seen that week with the links included.
It got to be too much. I couldn't keep up with the speed at which these things flew around the net, often mutating in the process. What's more, it was as if they weren't even listening. As often as I countered the latest offer from Bill Gates for $1 Million for testing his new e-mail tracking system or the free M&M's, there it would be the very next day in my inbox. Heck, I couldn't even keep them from forwarding me the joke messages that had been forwarded to them by their friends and forwarded by their friends and ad infinitum.
So I gave up. I didn't respond to their messages about the LSD on the phones or the ones saying their computers would burst into flames if a particular virus infected their systems or the pleas they had received from the little dying girls. If someone asked me pointedly about something or whether I'd read their e-mail, I'd just respond with "Did you google it or look on snopes?"
Some were offended, but most would just respond with their heads down and a sheepish "No..." to which I would simply say "You might wanna do that."
I used to be the same way with cable news. As before, I'd carefully research and document everything and then rebut the parotted Rovian arguements as best I could. I even pointed people to where they could learn more about rhetoric and logical fallacies and Republican dirty tricks. However, I found out here that it wasn't simply a question of my time getting eaten away but my sanity was suffering.
So I gave up here too. Now when someone comes up to me with some asinine meme he's heard Limbaugh or O'Reilly I simply say, "Did you google it?" As before, some are offended that I'd dare challenge Limpballs or O'Lie'ly's veracity but most just respond with a sheepish, "No."
Every now and then I'll be eating in the little diner on the first floor of my building (I live in what can only be described as an upstate NY hick town but I'm allowed to say that 'cause I grew up here) and someone will come out with one of these lies and if it's particularly aggregious ("No one could have predicted 9/11" or "Bush kept us safe from the deadly British flu vaccine" are two that qualify) I'll speak up and quietly say, "That's not quite true. Here's why..." but seriously, for my own mental health, that's the best I can do.
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