rachel arlington and other BS emails

[danny_galaga]

why on earth is it that people keep forwarding these on? heres an example from snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/medical/arlington.asp

i notice it is only ever teh wimmings that are gullible enough to forward them. is this some plot by ISP's to increase bandwidth from all the extra crap out there?

i always find the relevant story in SNOPES and send that back to the sender. but they never listen...

[Zero_Hour]

i always find the relevant story in SNOPES and send that back to the sender. but they never listen...

I used to just post the relevant link debunking the story, but the forwards continued.
So I decided in addition to linking, I'd mention all of the factual inaccuracies that I could spot in any given e-mail using common sense, point by point.
Then I started also mentioning how many times in x number of years I had gotten said forwarded message (I apparently know a lot of gullible people), to drive the point home. 
Finally I just started telling people to stop being stupid.

They may still forward dumb e-mails, but thankfully they don't forward them to me anymore. 

[billf]

i always find the relevant story in SNOPES and send that back to the sender. but they never listen...

Yep, this is what I do.  I rarely put anything else in the body of the email, just the link.  And I make sure to 'reply to all'.  These goofy emails have lessened over time; maybe I'm making a difference. 

[shardian]

No matter who it is, if I see "fwd" in an email subject line, it is going in the trash without reading it. I've told everyone I know not to send me those, but the occasional one still gets sent. My wife has an Aunt that sends a few EACH DAY to her. That's just crazy.

[J_K_M_A_N]

My wife's mom would send her crap ALL THE TIME! Then she would read it and start crying and say, "Look at this one". Within about 5 seconds I would call BS and go to snopes.com and show her it is all crap. Then I would MAKE her reply to all with the link and add at the bottom, "Don't believe everything you read!". She doesn't get near as many now.

J_K_M_A_N

[PCtech]

They may still forward dumb e-mails, but thankfully they don't forward them to me anymore. 

Yep, nobody in my family e-mails me anymore, after a couple angry rants from me about them forwarding junk, virusues, spam, etc....

Works pretty well I think..

[ahofle]

Maybe we could start a chain letter obituary of Rachael Arlington.

[RayB]

I can tell you why even seemingly smart people still forward it. In the words of my own mom "you never know". It's easy to just forward something even if you doubt the validity. Some people completely fall for it, others figure the choice is a simple forward or be callous about the subject matter ( you know, women and that whole "feelings" thing). 

What I find no excuse for is those idiotic ones like "forward this to 10 people and you will find your true love".

[Ed_McCarron]

i notice it is only ever teh wimmings that are gullible enough to forward them.

Would you rather them be cleaning the carpet that is being torn out next week?

[AtomSmasher]

I used to get a lot of emails like that, but after replying to so many of them explaining how they are BS I no longer get them.  Now I just get the "cute animal" emails, I just need to figure out how to stop getting these.  Heres a few pics from the one my grandma just sent me this morning so I don't have to suffer alone.

[billf]

I used to get a lot of emails like that, but after replying to so many of them explaining how they are BS I no longer get them.  Now I just get the "cute animal" emails, I just need to figure out how to stop getting these.  Heres a few pics from the one my grandma just sent me this morning so I don't have to suffer alone.

Hehehe, got those same ones about a year ago from my mom.

[SavannahLion]

At any one time, I have at least five different email accounts. Three are permanent and only select people know them. Select being those who don't forward me a lot of crap. Whenever a relative or questionable friend asks me for an email address, they get mey "public" emails.

KMail used to have this feature where you could do a fake bounce back on the email (they've since gotten rid of it). Whenever a relative would send me nonsense crap, I would configure the mail filter to bounce the emails back.

When they ask why the mails keep bouncing back, I simply explain that too many people are sending me the BS emails and it fills my box.

That usually suffices and they lighten up.

As for the cute animals. I like animals. Especially those involving Domo-kun

But I don't like getting emails about cute animals. So in the past, I compiled an email using animal images from places like rotten.com and bonsaikitten.com and emailed back to the sender. It's a good message to get them to stop.

[danny_galaga]

i notice it is only ever teh wimmings that are gullible enough to forward them.

Would you rather them be cleaning the carpet that is being torn out next week?

hmmm, would be a tough call except my housemate never forwards me anything. so i'd rather she send crap to her friends and not be cleaning carpet about to be thrown away...