Sunday, April 06, 2008

A New Trend

We all get them. A friend receives an email that tells them about some disaster and then forwards the email to everyone in their address book, including you. At first, the story appeals to you, but, is it real? For most of us, we fall back to various sites on the internet to validate the story. Snopes has become to urban myths what Google is to search engines. When you first started receiving these emails, and then finding out that they were urban myths, you would type up a nice reply saying as much, and then pointing them to Snopes. Then, you stopped with the nice letter and sent them to Snopes. Finally, you just stopped reading most of the email that came in from those people.

Well, they have heard us, loud and clear. They are now scouring Snopes to find the ones that are true and then they send those out. At the bottom is a convenient link to Snopes, saving you the trouble of validating.

This morning I received the "Don't Ever Dial Area Code 809" email, including a link to Snopes. I received this today, and this has been around since 2000? Thanks for the timeliness. And, none of the origins was shared.

I am beginning to think that the odds of being hit with one of these scams are about as low as getting hit by lightning. But, what are the odds that I will receive this email two more times this week?

5 comments:

George said...

I have some interesting information about this. Call me at (809)809-8099 and I'll fill you in...

James said...

I remember the "809" email from years ago. I wonder what it would be like to actually author an urban legend? That is the heights to which I may strive!

Chuck said...

We need to put our collective creativity together with a six pack of beer and create a new UL (or several) and release them. See what sticks.

Chuck said...

We need to put our collective creativity together with a six pack of beer and create a new UL (or several) and release them. See what sticks.

Steve said...

I've heard that if you forward an urban legend email Snopes will pay you $5.