email forward mania

One of my pet peeves is email forwards. It drives me crazy that people will just forward on any and everything without even checking to see if it's legitimate or not. I don't mind the funnies as much - there are some pretty cute and hilarious forwards that give me a laugh or a smile. Those are alright. It's the other ones...

For example, here is one I got this morning. You've likely seen it, or a version of it. It's about a 3-year-old boy who was brutally murdered by two 10-year-olds in the UK and it's a petition against a ruling a judge made to give those two boys anonymity after they had served out their terms. I've seen this email before. You're supposed to put your name on it and send it on, and the 700th person is supposed to send it to this email address to get to the judge supposedly. Well, this morning I decided instead of just deleting it - which I usually do with forwards - why don't I check into it and see if I can find out more about this email forward? So I went to snopes.com and found it through a search. Sure enough, it's a true story, it actually happened. But guess what? The boys were released and granted anonymity in 2001 - there is NOTHING an email petition is going to do for that now! Not only that, but I wouldn't be so quick to say they shouldn't have anonymity either. Sure, their crime was heinous, but they were 10 years old, have served a sentence, and perhaps should be given another chance. I am sure there are those in authority who know who and where they are, in case they get into trouble again - why do we need to know? Would we feel any safer? Not likely. It would just put the lives of those boys in danger, as there would be plenty of people who would be only too glad to give them their "just desserts" - which would make us no better than them!

This is only the most recent example. There are others. What about the forwards that say hotmail will close your account if you do not forward this to 10 people immediately? I've never forwarded one of those on - and my hotmail account is still running strong! Then there are the ones that claim you'll get paid for forwarding an email, because some company is doing a test and is tracking who it goes to and so on. What makes me shake my head is that people just forward this stuff on without even questioning it.

This plague has infected places like myspace and facebook as well. I don't have a "funwall" or "superwall" on my facebook profile anymore. People forward everything. And sure, some of it's cute and funny, but even the cute and funny stuff takes up space, and that's all you ever get from people! I would rather have a personal note from you, thank you very much. Don't send me meaningless forwards. In fact, I'll go so far as to say, don't send me forwards at all unless you're keeping in touch with me personally as well. I don't need "forward friends".

Religion is not innocent either. Have you gotten the forwards trying to shame you into passing it on? They say something like, "If you love Jesus, pass this on! If you don't then you are ashamed of the one who gave His life for you." And good Christians everywhere hit the forward button! I'm not here to bash religion, but there is something wrong with this picture!

In the same category are those forwards you get about friendship - "Send this to 10 people who have been a friend to you, I hope to get it back!" And again, we hit the forward button and send it a whole bunch of people that we never talk to aside from impersonal email forwards or the occasional chat online.

We spend the majority of our lives wrapped up in insignificant details and entertainment. Take facebook again. How many times have I heard people say they are addicted to it and spend too much time on it? I have a facebook profile. I don't have a problem with facebook itself, but look at how it's used. Every time I log in, I have more than one invitation, request or some other notification that one of my friends wants me to add a new application. And what are these applications and games? Mindless, pointless, entertaining frivilities. Buy and sell your friends, pick a fight with a friend, be a virtual pirate or knight and fight battles and build armies, send hearts and hotness and hugs and flowers and chocolates. Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing this or picking on those who use these applications - I have used them myself! But I would like to ask you a question: Why aren't you going and doing those things yourself? I'm asking myself this too. Why am I not going and doing things? Why am I living so much of my life in a virtual reality? There are applications where you can choose to dance with someone - but all it does is send them a notice saying so-and-so danced with you. Why am I not actually going out and dancing? And what happened to real chocolates, flowers, hugs? I would rather have one real hug than 1,000 virtual hugs. I would rather have one wilted real flower than a huge boquet of beautiful virtual flowers! We are rapidly losing our real connections with people! At what point did we start going virtual instead of picking up the phone to say hello, or mailing a handwritten card or note? Are we so short on time that we cannot spend a few minutes for something real? Hell, even a personal email or wall post would be a good start!

Have we lost our minds?

I would have to say the answer is probably yes! In general, people in north american society no longer know how to think for themselves! We have lost that ability. Our minds have been numbed by entertainment, media, mis-information, and, dare I say it, even religion. We are so quick to take things at face value and look no deeper! We believe what we see on the television, hear on the radio, read in the newspaper and base our entire world view on that - never thinking that perhaps we are being fed that information and are missing something more. We spend all this time wrapped up a virtual reality that doesn't exist outside of the internet and isn't really tangible in any way, and we miss out on the real life adventure and relationships that we could be having.

Our lives have become watered down. We are bombarded with information and entertainment that is really insignificant and of no real value. We spend our time playing virtual games with our many "friends", with no real relationships and connecting. Frankly, it is all meaningless!

What happened to real relationships, where you connect with someone on a deeper level than whether you both liked the newest hot movie? Where did the real life adventures go, where you see and experience the real world around you? Technology is wonderful. The internet is a great tool. We should be utilizing it, but not depending on it, and not living in it.

I don't know about you, but I want my life to be real and meaningful. I want to see the world, have adventures, connect with people on a real and deep level. I want to retain the true meaning and value of flowers, chocolates and hugs. I want to develop real life friendships and experiences. I want the important things in my life to be physical and tangible. I want to be able to think for myself, not just believe everything told to me. I don't want to be part of a human race that is no longer truly human.

Will you join me in stepping away from the email forward mania?