I’m doing a little cleaning up on my e-mail accounts. I’ve got several “deposit only” accounts that I haven’t checked in years and a couple abandoned accounts that I forget to check but every few months. In one of those accounts I’ve got 287 e-mails from one of my “nut” friends. A conspiracy theory-believing, highly-religious, gotta be true if it’s on the internet, political party koolaid-drinking nut. Going through that inbox has been an adventure. I won’t just “delete all” because I do like this person, I just think they are fucking CRAZY! And reading some of the propaganda is entertaining. I’ll share some of my thoughts with you here…
First off, I rarely follow blind links or open attachments.
You have to remember, I’m the guy who is too nice (or afraid of his wife) to say “no” and I always find myself setting up people’s computers, or fixing them, or coaxing them back to life after they killed it. Most problems are due to no Spam filters and factory installed and never-updated virus protection… Since I know this about your computers, why would I ever allow you to infect my machine? There is a very (VERY) short list of people I will trust with links/attachments and even then, it’s a crap shoot on how I feel that day. Most of the “gotta check out” e-mails I get are deleted unread. Sorry, I don’t want to be a dick about it but honestly, I saw them all three years ago anyway.
It made me think about how little we actually read.
How many times have you read a headline (KNOWING they intentionally mislead us with an opening line) and then skim the article? A few days later it will come up in conversation and you get the spark of, “Oh yeah, I read something on that” and then you quickly realize, “oh, no I don’t…” Yeah, I’m guilty of that but apparently, that’s all my friend did… ever! Dozens of alarmist e-mails that when you get past the surface of the actual article (not the e-mail but independently searching out details), it’s all just white noise. Of course, add in ALL CAPS, A PICTURE OF THE PRE-9/11 SKYLINE AND DOZENS OF !!!!!!!!!!!!!! and you get something to forward to “everyone you love!”
Are people critical readers anymore?
Just because it came in your inbox doesn’t make it true. In fact, I go over anything in my inbox with the bullshit detector three or four times before I even begin to thaw it out. And how about facts and figures posted on chat/forum groups? Forget it! Research shows that only one in every seventeen people on any given internet group is even remotely qualified in the topic of discussion. And 1:17 sounds like an official number right? That’s why I just made it up; which is what you’ll find on most of the internet, 83.6% of all people just making shit up. Like decimal points in percentages. Odd numbers and a single tenth digit lends credibility to many lies. If I had said 98%, you wouldn’t believe me; too round. But 83.6%… The 80 is high but I counter with a low tens digit. If I sent it out as an official fact, I may get someone to trip up over it. I would definitely get my friend who forwarded me the e-mail that tells me that 92% of all elementary school teachers are being forced to teach their class that their great grandparents were tree-dwelling monkeys. There is so much wrong with the way this e-mail is written, I just decided to focus on the numbers. Moving on…
Are we desperate to validate everything by false attributions?
There are so many cool things George Carlin actually said. But why is it that I keep getting the same lame speeches and rants forwarded to me with his name attached? Guys, I’m not his biographer, I’m just a huge fan of his work. I’ve heard most everything he’s recorded, I’ve read most of his books; I know his style. This drivel you keep sending me is not the kind of thing he’d write. I get equally suspicious when I see the same lines next week but this time it’s by Mark Twain or Bill Cosby. BTW, Weird-Al Yankovic has some degree of talent. Love him or hate him, he wouldn’t have written your filthy parody song full of profanities and with the sound quality of farting into a half-empty soup can. Look to your local morning radio DJ crew for authorship of these crappy “songs”.
If you identify a source as the granite baseline of all truths, you can’t discard the parts that are unattractive.
We just passed by the July 4th holiday. My friend is very flashy about waving the flag around and reciting the opening lines of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. If patriotism were a religion I think Jesus would come in second place. A very close second, or maybe just a tie. Every 4th of July I get a flood of e-mails with embedded waving flag gifs and links to sites with the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing while 72 font text displays the history of the the Declaration of Independence (with a special emphasis on “Creator”). I love the Declaration too, the right and duty to amend or abolish your own government is awesome! But I also like to stir the shit… My friend is also fond of celebrating their tenuously diluted Native American heritage. I tell them that in their beloved Declaration, one of the grievances against the King was that we were left all alone to fight off the (paraphrasing) “vicious savages who we all know fight dirty and kills everyone including women, children and wounded men.” I get no response to this. I’m pretty sure he just forwards those e-mail replies to the FBI hoping I’m put on some “unpatriotic” watch list.
And there are so many e-mails telling me about the fabulous 2nd amendment. Guns, guns and more guns! We have to watch out for the government taking our guns away. But then I get the same number of e-mails from the same people telling me that we need to gag these loudmouth liberals that run around trying to take God out of the government. 1st amendment be-damned, this is (or should be) a Christian nation. Piles of e-mails about how the TSA is abusing our 4th amendment rights but then another pile telling me we should ignore the 5th amendment and invoke vigilante justice on several high-profile trials where the news-watching public is convinced “they got away with it”. I guess the Constitution is like the Star Trek Franchise; we should pay attention to the even numbers, ignore the odds? That makes sense, I’m not sure these types are too terribly happy with the 13th or 19th amendments either.
But at least the Constitution is a living, changing and interpretable document…
Not like, the Bible. So many of the e-mails are quotes from the Christian Bible and how God wants me to live. But when I respond with equally damning lines from the same source, I am told to ignore the Old Testament. When I re-reply with several questions about the New Testament, I am “being a troublemaker” (and I’m quite sure, being reported to the FBI again for being unpatriotic and a Communist heathen). If you’re using the Bible as an incontrovertible lawbook, you have to decide if we allow for updates. If you insist we play by 4000 year-old laws, then we have to live by ALL the 4000 year-old laws. Picking and choosing from this part but not that, re-defining words in Greek here but Latin there and Hebrew over there and then having the stones to call it “unaltered” just makes you look foolish. Stop it. Either it counts or it doesn’t count and you don’t get to choose which parts.
Well, clearing out these few simple complaints have whittled the stack down to about ten actual e-mails. I still have several other Inboxes to clear out but Teresa needs help setting up a spreadsheet and Becca wants me to show her how to make more animated gifs, as if the internet needs more of either of those atrocities… Looks like the e-mail will get answered another day man, another day…
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