The misuse of technology…pass it on!

Technology is wonderful. It allows new and creative ways of communicating—take this blog for example—and opens up whole new audiences for writers such as myself.
So it is frustratingly annoying when this great technological era is scuppered by illogical and irresponsible use by people who should, but unfortunately don’t, know andy better!

I am referring to the inane email that come to my box and, I’m sure yours, with some tale of woe or else some demand that I return the email and send it on to five more friends if I really care about the sender. It used to be called a chain letter. Most sane people simply laughed them off as they dropped the letter in the garbage.

So what happens to those same sane people today? It came via email from a friend, so we must pass it on! And the chain email goes viral.

The worst examples come out of the political realm and are larded with conspiracy theories. There is rarely any proof of the allegations made in the emails. There is certainly no discernment showed by those who pass them on. A couple of months ago I got one of these e-chains that called on me to write a stern letter of admonition to my MP because “they” were removing God from the national psyche. Sounds terrible. Then I read on a bit more. The proof that was cited was that “they” had removed the phrase “In God We Trust” from our currency! Good grief. Those sending this nonsense around to all their friends obviously know nothing about Canada! Obviously some conspiracy theorist had taken an American e-chain and revised it for Canadian eyes by removing “write to your congressman” and replacing it with “write to your MP.” Too bad they were so stupid that they didn’t realize that no such saying has ever existed on Canadian currency. That’s only one example of hundreds of similarly ridiculous e-chains floating out there.

Shame on the perpetrator who came up with that lame email in the first place.

But may a thousand bedbugs bedevil those whose lack of intelligence, knowledge, thought, research and just plain common sense, led them to send that email on to their contacts—and thus to me. Sad to say I got the same email from at least six of my “friends”. I thought they had more discernment than that.

You can pass this one on.