E-mail forwards are the bane of my existence. Urban legends, fearmongering about missing children and Democratic politicians who want to eat them, political rabble rousing, mushy stories about little kids in Sunday School or grandfathers and ice cream cones, jingoistic screeds masquerading as patriotism, etc etc etc.
I hatessss them, my preciousss. And I always feel all Gollumy when I ask a relative or friend to:
a) not include me in their send to file for such things
b) at the very least place me in the BCC section of their e-mail's "To" field so all the hundreds of people they know but I don't won't have my e-mail address, or
c) do some quick research and learn that the story they're forwarding is not true.
I can kinda-sorta understand the sentiment that provokes one to pass these things along.
But for the life of me I cannot put myself in the brainpattern of the person who falsifies details or begins the lie. What's the compulsion?
Check this out.
This ginormous mountain lion was struck by a car in Arizona. The good folks at Snopes document several variations of the email forward in which people change the details to say the mountain lion was found in Arkansas, Virginia, etc.
Why? What's the point?
What rational person takes an e-mail and purposefully changes the place names so as to mislead others for something so stupid?
I get white lies, I get fudging details on "big fish" stories, I get lying for profit . . . I don't get the person who changes "in Tempe between 1st and 3rd Avenue" to "in Jacksonville between 4th and 5th Street."
- D.A. Carson
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Good guesses, Raindream. The process of how this comes about is probably more complicated and fuzzy than I'm imagining. I am picturing someone who wants to pass the story along but wants to make it more shocking or relevant to his friends and family so he changes the locale to something closer. That better justifies his passing along to his address book a basically irrelevant story. But maybe it doesn't work that way.
My friends don’t send those things but I use to get the ones that say if you send it to 10 other amazing women then you and them will be blessed. I must have missed that in the Bible but I don’t forward them I delete before reading the junk. I rather have a Big Foot is running for president with Bat Boy as his running mate. I’d send that to 10 other people.
I hate those emails too. My boss is a big time forwarder and I always Snopes check him right back. You think he'd learn.
I assume this is a type of anarchy or satire. People want to distribute false statements for the sake of it (anarchy) or because they scorn the people they believe enjoy this stuff (mockery). The only other possible reason I can think of is laziness--people who make up some details because they only have some of them. They don't care if it's right, but for irrational reasons they believe the false details should still go out.