You didn’t hear this from me, but…

So you want the scoop? Or are you the one with the juicy information and you just have to tell someone? No? You don’t gossip, you say? Spreading rumors is not nice.

Spreading rumors online isn’t any nicer. It just fills up our inboxes with more junk mail. I know so many people who emphatically state that they’d never gossip. These same people have lightning fast fingers when it comes to spreading lies with a computer and a mouse. They did not write the email. They are not trying to cause any trouble. They are thinking of me and they are trying to help me or someone else. These well-meaning, caring people assume the information is true. We all know what happens when we assume.

A well meaning friend, who has kids in the same school as my children, passed along an email recently which urged me to add my name to a list of concerned citizens so we could stop a horrible woman from getting a bill passed in Congress that would take religious programming off of the radio.
The woman who was blamed for this passed away a decade ago.

I get an email from someone at least once a week urging me to boycott either Pepsi or Coke because they omitted the words “under God” from the pledge of Allegiance on their cans.
This was originally the fault of Dr. Pepper and they did not print the whole pledge nor mean to omit any of it. In response to 9/11, they were trying to say that we were “One Nation…Indivisible.”

I am not receiving any monetary compensation to promote Snopes.com. I just think going to the site, typing in a search of the email you’re about to forward and checking on it takes much less time than it does to type all of your friends addresses into the inbox. There are many gifted writers out in cyberspace who spend their time writing hoaxes that they send out into the wwworld. Concerned citizens, worried about the dangers of drinking soda, freedoms being removed from the airwaves and a million political ideas send these things on and on and on.

A note to my loyal friends, relatives and other readers: this post was not directed at YOU. You did not send me the email that sent me here. To those of you who have gotten responses back from me with a snopes link, it is not personal. It’s just my own friendly advice or helpful hint.

Pass it on.