I have a friend whom I love dearly, but who has the most annoying habit. Almost every day I receive at least one urgent email from her forwarding some kind of information she considers vital to my wellbeing. Over the years it has been everything from avoiding rape by men using horse tranquilisers which sterilise women to … hyperdermics in kids’ball pits to … kidney stealing gangs to … deodorants causing cancer.

Several times I have been tempted to politely prove to her that her email was a known myth that actually did the rounds in early 2002.  However, making that point would be on a popularity par with telling someone that they have chronic bad breath. So, I remain silent and she persists in sending them, always marked with that urgent red exclamation mark, to everyone in her address book.

So many of these emails do seem genuine at first glance. Who wouldn’t pass on an email to help a sick child when someone is donating 1c per email sent?  However, thinking about it, how do they actually know how many emails are sent?  They don’t.

People make up these stories for fun, for a warped kind of fame, for who knows what other reasons.  Why?  Because no matter what, other people will pass them on, and on, and on.

The next time you receive an email begging you to pass on this kind of sensational information, you can save a lot of people a whole lot of time by spending just two minutes in Google.  Just by googling “myth” and the email subject is normally enough to check if the subject matter has been debunked as a scam.  The best course of action is to simply check before hitting the forward button. 

For those who still want to mindlessly forward it, here is my email to them:

“WARNING.  MUST READ.  THIS IS REAL!!!!!

There is an email going around which contains incredibly stupid information and is a complete hoax.  DO NOT FORWARD THAT EMAIL.  If you forward it, your friends will know for sure that you are an idiot.  One woman received it and forwarded it, and her husband’s friend’s cousin broke his leg, so the email MUST BE CURSED.  From now on, READ ALL EMAILS BEFORE FORWARDING THEM.  If you follow the next instruction, it will show undeniably that you are an imbecile. PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK.”

by Penny Robbins