This might be a bit of a rant here, but I’m going to think of it as a public service announcement.

There is a wonderful resource out there called Snopes. Anyone who has ever thought about forwarding an email to ten friends, or to everyone they know, should use this site on a regular basis. Grab a couple key words, or copy of the subject line of what you are being asked to send out and run a search on it. Even easier, check out the top ten list on the home page of the site; odds are good whatever you are about to forward is listed there. Check it out. You will find that 99.9% of those things you get are false, urbal legends, old and outdated, or just someone trying to cause trouble.

If you don’t want to take the time to check it out, don’t take the time to forward it either!

Additionally, please don’t send this stuff to every group or mailing list you subscribe to either. They don’t want it and it’s probably against the posting guidelines.

On a similar note, people you haven’t communicated with in any way for a year or more really don’t want to get your chain forwards either. If you haven’t said boo to me since the summer of 2005, it really isn’t important for you to let me know your opinion on the latest offering from Hollywood or the really cool thing you heard the other day.

Do you want to tell all your friends how much you care about them and how important they are to you? Don’t use the latest tearjerker you found in your inbox. I’m going to bet that it’s going to be a lot more meaningful to write your own message and send that to everyone you know. But please don’t ask them to forward it to everyone they know. As a matter of fact, maybe you could specifically ask them not to forward your words to everyone they know.

Thanks for tuning in! We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.