Snopes.Com is an invaluable resource in today's email forwarding world. Most people, as I'm sure you all know, will read a forwarded email and do one of the following:
1.) Laugh at it because it's funny and forward it to all your typical forward-buddies
2.) Cry because you can't believe what's happening to this poor little kid with whatever disease it is today, forward it to all your typical forward-buddies, and send money
3.) Get enraged because you can't believe what the government/the media/some famous person did and forward it to all your typical forward-buddies
However, only a select few of you do something very simple before you forward those emails or even read them - fact checking. Not for any real reason except that almost every forwarded email you receive will prove to be false, I tend to fact check them all. Folks, let me tell you how simple it is to decrease the annoyance of your co-workers, friends, and family and possibly speed up the Internet for everyone because of the decrease in forwarded crap.
Heed my advice, and you may save the very network itself from complete collapse due to emails about Saving Sesame Street, Pepsi's removal of 'Under God' from the Pledge, and that Bill Gates for some reason giving you free stuff and money if you forward this email to 10 friends!
As a quick example of how easy it is to fact check these emails, today I received "this one about NPR being worried about being shut down due to government budget cuts. I simply pointed my browser to Snopes.com, typed "NPR" into the search box, and VIOLA! Instant gratification. The claims in the email are not only untrue, but the freaking email has been around since 1995 when someone thought that Sesame Street was going to be canceled due to budget cuts. They quickly found out it wasn't going to happen, but it was too late, and the email continued to be passed around. However, these things apparently have minds of their own when they've been around for that long, because it's now EVOLVED into the claim that On NPR's Morning Edition, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress, it will, in effect, be the end of the National Public Radio (NPR), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) & the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). PBS, NPR and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding.
NONE of this is true, by the way, and Nina Totenberg has never said any such thing. In fact, the line about Nina wasn't even in the original 1995 email. It was inserted somewhere later in the future.
Another great point of reference is of course Google, which apparently lets you search the Internet for information. God, what a marvelous idea! But how do I use this "Google" thing to fact check my forwarded emails, you ask? It's simple. Simply copy and paste a selected group of words from the email into the Google search and press the enter key. For the NPR email, I searched for the line "Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress". The very first result I got was from TruthOrFiction.com debunking the myth.
See how easy that is? Now go and spread my words, children, and some day your inboxes may be rid of such a blight on our wonderful world wide network!
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