e-robots

Ok, this is not going to be an entertaining post, but I wanted to take this opportunity to plug two websites that I use quite often. In today's time, we rely so much on e-mail, blogging, myspace, etc...whatever mode of electronic conversation you prefer. Because we place so much confidence in e-mail, we tend to believe anything we receive via e-mail. I would like to take this time to introduce, or re-introduce, you to a couple of websites that I strongly urge you to use before mindlessly forwarding an e-mail.

If you go to either www.snopes.com or www.truthorfiction.com, you will see a search field on both of those pages. Type a few words from the body of the e-mail you are verifying and click search. In most cases, either of these sites will have a version of the e-mail and will explain whether or not the e-mail is true. They describe their answers and give links to references concerning whatever the topic of the e-mail is.

So, before you send me an e-mail about how to lower gas prices (I've received that one 4 times in the past 2 days), how to help a kid with epilepsy by simply forwarding an e-mail, receiving free coupons for Applebee's or Starbucks, signing a petition to keep religion on TV, or whatever other life-changing information your e-mail might contain, PLEASE consider checking the validity of it on one or both of these websites. I have made it my personal goal to spread the word about these two resources, and I hope you will do the same. Maybe one day there will be more people who actually check what they blindly forward than there are people who resemble e-mail robots by clicking forward every time they receive an e-mail.