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I’m sure every one of you good folk reading this have had the ‘AOL and Microsoft are tracking this email and will give you $1 for every copy of this forwarded’. I think it was one of the first examples of how someone can cobble together a bunch of utter bullshit into a few paragraphs and then witness the gullible clogging the inbox of every one they’ve ever met. It’s disturbing enough that there are still people that actually believe this shit and forward it on to their entire address book, but there is also now an even more disturbing trend.....

THE FACEBOOK FORWARDER......

Apparently if you copy and paste a certain message into your own status you will save Facebook from becoming a user pay site, save the whales, help find a missing child, contribute a dollar to the Haiti relief fund, stop the next South Pacific tsunami, find Hitler so he can go to trial and end world hunger. It’s fucking amazing what can be achieved via Facebook these days.

Don’t get me wrong. All the good causes mentioned above that aren’t me taking the piss, need help and I agree that social networks can play a part in that. But that part has to be genuine. What I don’t like about this new phenomenon is the kind of bullshit that accomplishes nothing, like the following one which has surfaced recently:

‘TO ALL MEMBERS, if you believe in helping people lets do this: PLEASE NOTE that this status is being tracked, the owners of FACEBOOK have confirmed they WILL SEND A $1 TO the rescue fund for the HAITIi earthquake disaster for EVERYTIME THIS IS CUT AND PASTED as a status. You only have to leave it for a minimum of 1 hour. Lets all do our bit to HELP....Thanks!

Just like AOL and Microsoft, Facebook don’t and won’t track status changes, there are countless million Facebook users and they simply don’t have the resources to do so, yet your friends would have you believe the opposite. I have too many friends who actually believe this shit! Would I like to help people in need? Would I like to find that missing child? The answer is a resounding YES. Do I think Facebook can help out when the majority of users are morons? NO!

The thing that really bugs me the most about this kind of thing is the fact it is preying on the gullible.

Usually I wouldn’t have an issue with that. God created gullible people for exactly that.....to be preyed upon. The difference here though is the gullible people think they are contributing to a world in need and become self-righteous and self-important and other types of self-stuff.

One friend I have who posted the Haiti relief fund bollocks above got indignant when I pointed out it was rubbish. His argument was that he was simply spreading the word about the terrible disaster which has befallen that poor nation. Unfortunately he is accomplishing nothing because anyone who has access to a computer, the internet and Facebook should be damn well informed about the earthquake that rocked Haiti and the devastation it caused.

What I find counter-productive is the feeling of goodwill that the gullible will experience by the simple act of copying and pasting the status update, the sense of contribution, when, in fact they have done absolutely nothing to help. If you want to promote a humanitarian cause via Facebook post a link to an actual relief effort and don’t forward on those designed to trick the stupid!

 

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