Urban Legends, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Can The Spam
Posted: Sunday, February 12, 2006
by Danny Davids
You get them every day from people you’ve never met and don’t know. Offers for free iPods, cheap Rolexes, pharmaceuticals of all kinds. You know the claims aren’t valid and there’s a cloud behind that silver lining. So you grit your teeth and turn on your spam filter and watch the unwanted junk email go down the electronic drain. You sigh in relief, confident that you’ve protected yourself from another onslaught of unwanted (and probably untrue) ads and services.
Well, all I can say is: SHAME ON YOU! YOU’RE PROMOTING A LIE! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!
Seriously, almost all of the “Urban Legend" emails you receive come from people you know. How can you tell what’s true and what’s not? More importantly, how can you stop from getting them without alienating everyone you know?
A Legend Is Born
Urban legends come in many sizes and flavors. However, most can be categorized as one of three general varieties. The first starts as a story, generally unverifiable, that has a moral. Most of us have heard this one: Boy meets girl boy takes girl on a date boy runs out of gas on the way to Lover’s Lane boy leaves girl in car while he goes to get gas girl turns on radio and hears news story about serial killer with a hook for a hand girl hears scratching noises on the side of the car which become increasingly louder and more intense boy returns with gas, gasses up the car, and they go home girl opens her car door and finds a hook hanging from the outside of the car door handle. Moral: Don’t go parking with your boyfriend because “good girls don’t" and you could be punished for your wanton actions. The morals of more contemporary stories may be different, but they are there.
The second variety of urban legend is the one that promises a freebie if you’ll forward the email to all your friends. A company is taking a survey, or testing a new email tracking service, and if you’ll do what they ask you’ll make all kinds of money. Or someone has discovered the “secret recipe" for a world-famous department store’s food item, and wants your help in passing it on to help shaft the company for poor customer treatment. Again, the stories can be of many types, but the end result is that you get something for nothing more than passing on the information.
The third category for urban legends is the “human interest" story. These can be about anything or anyone, and are more informative than anything else. They can be about the best in humanity, or the worst. The bottom line is they’re something you might see in “People" Magazine, or perhaps “The National Enquirer".
In any case, it’s not so much the type of urban legend as it is about who sent it to you in the first place. If your spouse, or parents, or kids, sent this to you, well, then, it must be something serious that needs to get around. Especially in cases where new viruses have been discovered, or a child has been abducted and needs to be found immediately, isn’t it best to pass the message on? The prevailing idea seems to be “I’d rather be safe than sorry." In fact, you’ll see that statement on a number of email messages of this type that come across your desktop.
Separating Truth From Fiction
So do you pass it on? That depends. If the information you’ve received is accurate, and somebody’s life is at stake, or somebody could get hurt, then yes. The bigger question is this: Is the information accurate? If it’s not
There are several things you can do when you receive an email of this type to determine if it’s a legitimate story or just another urban legend.
Consider the sources. Check to see who the sources are for this information. If a source such as Microsoft, the US Government, CNN, MSNBC, “USA Today", or any other business conglomerate or media giant is mentioned, think hard. Would ANY of these organizations use word-of-mouth (word-of-hand?) email messages to get out something as serious as what is mentioned in the message? Absolutely not. They’d use the news media to disperse information that could affect the general public. Think of it another way: When was the last time you saw a major story on the news and THEN got an email asking you to forward the information on? My guess is never. These types of messages are immediately suspect.
Search the buzzwords. Look for phrases, either in the original story or from previous recipients that tell you this didn’t come straight from the original source. “My brother’s cousin’s sister’s best friend’s uncle’s grocery boy heard about this from his friend’s teacher’s grandson’s brother’s next-door neighbor, who is a big shot in the military and has access to all kinds of high-security information" is practically screaming this is not something to take very seriously.
Identify the urgency. Another red flag is something in the story that tells you to take action immediately or dire consequences will result. “Already people are sick in hospitals because they didn’t take this threat seriously. ACT NOW to save your life and the lives of your loved ones!" Hmmm…that “ACT NOW" phrase…sounds like those infomercials where if you don’t call in the next 30 minutes, you won’t get all the junky bonus merchandise to accompany the 50-piece scrunchy set you don’t really need, doesn’t it?
Check the Internet. There are several reputable sources on the Internet you can use to check the authenticity of these types of stories. Truthorfiction.com is one such site two other excellent ones are Snopes.com and Urban Legends and Folklore. You can look by category, or search by keywords to find out if the email you got about the government conducting nerve gas experiments on the citizens in your community is true or not. And if you have a story that they don’t have listed, you can forward the story to the company, they’ll research it, and add it to their database.
Stop the Insanity!
So now you know the story you just received is a fake. Where do you go next? It’s not like you can add your boss or your spouse to your spam filter! (Well, you can, but there’ll be repercussions for months. I don’t think you want to go there.)
What I recommend is a simple reply to the sender. Inform him that you’ve done your homework and the story he sent you is not true. I usually include the link to the confirmation/denial from one of the sites listed above, so the sender can see for himself why the story is not true.
What does this accomplish? It notifies the sender that what they sent was inaccurate. It’s also a subtle way of saying, “I know about this stuff, and it’s all junk. Please don’t send me any more." Some will take the hint and stop forwarding these messages to you. Others will continue to assume that everything coming down the Internet pipe is true and continue sending them on. In those cases, I reply again, except that this time I do a “Reply to all" so that everybody that received the message when I did sees my reply. It’s amazing what peer pressure can do in those cases.
Of course, there’s the possibility that your efforts will backfire. I have several people now who forward everything they get in email to me, asking, “Is this legitimate?" So I take a few minutes to check it out and reply back. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with your boss thinking you’re the urban legend guru!
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Hear, Hear, and Amen. Well said, well written. I laughed out loud! Hopefully everyone will take your advice and stop sending me so much junk!
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