I received an email forward yesterday that apparently had been circling cyberspace (in one form or another) for at least eight years. I knew when I glanced at it that it was nothing more than a propaganda piece but what I found amazing was the number of addresses attached to it. I'm thinking -nobody is still reading this drivel, are they? After about a nanosecond of naivete I set out to work.
As so many of my email buddies have learned, if I'm in your address book, there should be a caution icon beside my name - I'm exactly the last person you want to send certain types of forwards to. If it is something that really interests me (current events and politics usually meet the requirement) I will attempt to verify whether or not the information is accurate. Once I determine the straight story, I try to compose a thoughtful response and hit "reply all." Call it a crazy sense of patriotic duty.
It's a given and most of us know that the majority of politically themed emails in circulation are nothing more than crafted propaganda, strictly intended to rile and solidify a loyal audience. It's the same old rabble-rousing that's been going on since the beginning of civilization but its now being delivered by boundless messenger, AKA the net. The messages retain the same characteristics of old - they're deceptive, manipulative and designed to deepen the divide between ideologies. They dumb us all down. The sad fact is - the dumbing has become a whole lot easier and much more pervasive with the advent of cyber communication.
The forwarded email messages around 9/11 were some of the worst. Many left me outraged and saddened to my soul. Later, my sister sent me too many from Iraq. Yes, for her service to our country she deserved my gratitude and my respect - but I was not willing to offer up my brain. And then of course, there was the 2004 and the 2008 election. The later produced some of the saddest drivel yet - its one thing to encourage division along political lines, but some of the things I read had no real purpose but to promote racial and religious hatred. I find it extremely embarrassing that these things made it into my in-box at all; even if it was only by remote association.
If you're preaching to the choir, there's at least a tacit standard that you owe them accuracy. They're your choir. Yet I can't help but wonder if many of these posts are created by those who know their readership well. They know what gets our hearts pounding and they know we skim and delete. We'll retain the gist of the message not only without a thorough reading but also without ever bothering to find out how factual any of it really is. Thus on a mere glance we learn to make decisions based on false assumptions; we learn to despise on fabrications and we learn to disregard real knowledge to passionately align ourselves with our chosen faction. Blind loyalty has no place in a free, democratic society.
