I tend to get a bit worked up about this...

I received an email recently with a photo of a grave without a headstone, claiming it was Casey Sheehan's grave the son of Cindy Sheehan.  This email went on to tell about how Sheehan hadn't even raised her son and that he had been raised by his father because she gave up custody and how she had given up custody of another son to her latest ex-husband. Essentially the email said, she's a bad mother and a bad example.

According to Snopes this email is false, and about the only things correct in it are her name, her sons name, that he died in Iraq and she is a war protestor. 

Whether you agree with her politics or not, is it right to attack people's character with lies?  I think most of us can agree that is not. Very few of us would not knowingly spread such rumors about people, and be very upset if lies were spread about us.

Yet most of us do it every day. We get an email and we forward it to everyone in our address book.  There are rarely if ever any sources to back up these claims.   We rarely bother to check them if there are. 

Recently I received another with some very interesting statistics about our troops in Iraq that claimed the media misrepresents the situation.  It even had a link to a US Military web page as a source, however the link didn't go to a page that was even related to the email, nor did a search of the website reveal  verify any statistics.  Unable to verify the facts, I deleted it, I refuse to pass  on possible lies.

It is not just people maligned of course, there are companies and products hurt by this form of attack as well.  It gets to the point that you don't know what to believe.  So when something actually valid comes along, the tendency to discount it is high, unless you feel like taking time to check the source.

Therein lies one of the problems with the internet, false information and half truths abound. The reason why I just am not sure I could ever trust Wikipedia about much of anything.

This isn't a diatribe against forwards but I would like to encourage caution, words are powerful and they can cut and hurt.  We all have a responsibility to not pass on lies, gossips or half truths repeated out of context.  Just like we do in real life.

 

By the way, if you heard from a little birdie that I am really an alien posing as a wise and good looking woman who shops at Target after using Purell hand gel to keep away germs and happens to herd nerfs, well it is only partly true.