G'afternoon, Clownies. So I gets this email today from a relafriend. Attached to the email is a power point about the history of the song "Taps". The text of the power point is a powerful story that takes place during the U.S. Civil War. In the story a Union captain hears a severely wounded soldier on the battle field moaning and beefing his way to the great beyond. This crazy ass captain crawls halfway across the gut strewn battlefield, dodging bullets and rebel flags to drag this soldier to safety. When he gets back to his camp he discovers that the soldier is a confederate. There's more! As he gazes down upon the soldiers face in the pale moonlight he discovers that the young man is not only his son, the solder is also a werewolf! Ok. So I made that last part up. The guy being his son is plenty enough Jerry Springer without the stupid werewolf thing. To make a fake story short the captain asks for a burial with honors for his son which ain't gonna happen cause his kid is a Southie. Cappy asks for the Army band to play at the funeral and the army says, FU...ok, we'll give you one guy. But what to play when "Taps" hasn't been written yet. We'll guess what. It was! It just happened to be on a piece of paper in the dead kid's pocket. And the musician that the Army provided? He was a damned bugler.
It didn't take me too long to call bullshit on this story. I double checked on Snopes to be sure. So I replied back to the sender, "Great story. But totally untrue...sadly." Unfortunately I replied back to the whole send list. My relafriend replied back kindly and thoughtfully, but one of the persons who I accidentally cc'd on my reply sent me this:
Harmless; I never check validity of such stories. Sorry.
Well guess what? You should fucking be "sorry". First of all, when I get an email like this I check it. Why? Because if it is a good story and it's not a bunch of made up monkeyshit then I will forward it along. There are good stories that deserved to be shared. But I'm not going to forward tripe, because there's enough fucking trolling on the internet already without me aiding and abetting. And please have no illusions, these emails are created and propagated by the trolliest of trolls.
Harmless? Is it really? Here we are as a nation of nincompoops passing around a bunch of phoney fakey crap and getting our jollies by reading and sharing made up drivel when there is some seriously sick shit going on that needs our attention. Also, there is some seriously awesome shit that needs our attention. So we allow ourselves to be suckered in by the easy win and get choked up when we hear about how Mr. Rogers wore a sweater to hide his badass marine sniper tats or how the cockpit mic recorded an entire plane worth of prayers onto the black box as the plane went down. Can't we appreciate Mr. Rogers awesomeness without someone turning him into a blood thirsty sniper? Can't the plane have gone down with a bunch of solemn or horny atheists and agnostics?
Here's the harm, folks. These lying liars have an agenda. They take a story that is just fine and twist and pervert for one of two goals...furthering their cause or just plain fucking with us. It is too easy to read a story of fake history and be taken in by a glorious tale. Take a look at real history and learn your lessons there. Real history is gritty and unpleasant and frequently does not have a happy ending. Those who learn fake history are doomed to repeat the fuckups from real history. And don't just read a story in an email (even with pics!) about how a mother dog who had just lost her puppies ran into a house and saved a litter of kittens, because here's the thing:
You are doing absolutely nothing.
Passing along a made up email of fake heroics might brighten somebody's day for a second or even a minute. Ya know what's better? Read today's news and send someone a summary of an awesome story you find there. And include the link? You bet your sweet patooty! Even better than that? YOU go do something worthy of a viral email. Go do something great that helps people! Someone might write an email about it! If they don't then just create a fake gmail address like fakebillhawkins1967@gmail.com, import your email contacts, write a blurb about yourself (or better yet a power point) and have fakebillhawkins tell your family and friends what you did with a catchy title like Guess what your pal (your real name) did! He (your real awesome deed which you did and is really real)!
I don't bust fake emails because I'm a Debbie downer. I don't do it to feel superior in any way (it does make me feel superior, but that's not why I do it). I don't go to snopes to make my friends and family feel, look and possibly smell like idiots. I do it because there is enough foolish falseness out there without people I know and love adding to it. The trolls have taken over our very existence, but nobody is forcing us to feed them. Conversely, there is enough real good and there are enough real heroes and truly heartwarming stories to brighten up our lives...for realz. THOSE are the stories that need to be shared. We don't see it because we're cleaning the meaningless freaking garbage out of our crowded-ass freaking inboxes all the time!!! And if you cannot find the heartwarming heroic good that I write of (try stepping away from the fucking computer for a second) then go and make it happen yourself. THEN you can email me about it! (but I'm still agonna Snope it!)
Woot!
Caustic the Clown
Comments welcome...below me.
No comments:
Post a Comment