Why do RWer's think we want their FWD FWD FWD email?

[Rosemary2205]

I have 12 people that I know are RWers on my email list. 10 of them think constantly sending me these "clever" FWD FWD FWD emails is socially acceptable. They can't even bother to cut and paste, strip the heading etc. They just forward to everyone in their address book. A few of these 10 people are well educated and they still don't get that no one wants their damn FWD FWD FWD, regardless of what subject it is.

On my work system I have 100's of contacts and fortunately most people are smart enough to stick to business, but I still have about 7 people - ALL RWer's who think their FWD FWD FWD is just so clever.

I have never once gotten a LWer send me a FWD FWD FWD. Not once. Maybe I'm just lucky. But I'm thinking there must be somethign about the RW brain that it just can't comprehend basic social graces.

What ARE we to do with them?


edit - forgive typos and spelling.

[ClassWarrior]

1. Email 'em Snopes' address.

NGU.

[mrcheerful]

23. Doesn't work, I had one rabid right winger that insisted that the Marine honor guard at the white

house refused to give Clinton salutes and turned their backs on him. I not only sent him snopes, I also sent him the Marine hand book on military conduct. He then replied he saw it with his own eyes on the news. You can't turn a sows ear into a silk purse and you can't convince a right wing nut with facts, they refuse to accept they are wrong.

[Sweet Freedom]

2. It's because

the FWD FWD FWD e-mails always tell them to FWD to everyone in their distribution list, and because they don't think for themselves, they follow those instructions.

[Bill McBlueState]

3. that's really annoying, isn't it?

I've got a gmail account, which lets you set up filters for incoming mail. Friend X sends me forwards all the time, most of which are really dumb, and a handful of which are right-wing. I made a filter so that if the message has "Fwd:" in the subject and Friend X as the author, it goes straight to the trash.

Been doing that for a few months and it keeps my inbox looking a lot nicer.

[meegbear]

4. Maybe they think the more FWDs in a email makes it more credible?

:shrug:

[Bluebear]

9. Like exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

[meegbear]

11. Exactly!!

And you can't stress enough about how HUGH it is!!1!

[KenHodson]

12. And exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111OneOne

[Bluebear]

14. doh!!!!!!!!11111

[Sweet Freedom]

5. Just in case you ever need it...

the link to the DU debunker:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=284

[youthere]

6. All you do is debunk the claims with Snopes and then..

copy and paste EVERY SINGLE ADDRESS in the "TO:" header. Reply ALL only gets the individuals that were listed in the latest mailing.

[Sweet Freedom]

7. That's excellent advice

I've always just done the "reply all"

[Rosemary2205]

10. I ignore/trash them

I have never once replied to one. I won't. Kool Aid patrol is no longer on my "to do" list. Let them rot for all I care.

[KenHodson]

13. Why do we trust Snopes so much?

Why is that the end all be all for the truth?

[Arkansas Granny]

17. Snopes will usually link to a reputable to prove or disprove the

claim being made so you can check their sources. If something can't be proven one way or another, they will tell you that, also.

[KenHodson]

21. Fair enough, but I think people view Snopes as THE truth

Absolutely no other source recieves nor warrants this blind faith. Besides a dictionary or thesaurus, we question everything. Think about it. We take everything with a grain of salt, television, radio, magazines, essays and even encyclopedia entries. Everything that is except SNOPES FRIGGIN DOT COM.
Why is that?
I'm moving this post over to the lounge.

[TlalocW]

16. My mom actually forwards a lot of right-wing stuff to me

But she's sending it to me so that I can debunk it. She gets all the right-wing crazy things from her brother, and he's the very definition of a right-wing religious nutjob, and he doesn't appreciate a young whippersnapper like me telling everyone that what he sent out was crap, and then more than once on some of the garbage that he sent out, it was one of those emails about how the vast majority of the American population believe in God, yada yada yada, so why don't the rest of you sit down and shut up. I responded back with how only 7% of the American population were right-wing evangelicals like him, and the rest of us for the most part were happy to live our faith privately and went into a long lecture on the American constitution works, and ended up with an, "America: Love It or Leave It," message that pissed him off. :)

Once though, my niece sent out a list of stupid quotes from famous people, and I replied back to all correcting the various quotes, which included assigning a lot of Dan Quayle quotes to Al Gore. Apparently one of her high school classmates took exception with that, and that started an email feud that I thought was pretty funny as he kept threatening to "stomp a mudhole in my chest," and kept demanding my address (yeah, right). I told him that I often come to his town to visit family and would gladly meet him at the local McDonalds and buy him a Happy Meal before he proceeded to "stomp" me. My niece told me that the guy was a moron, into drugs, and I was three times his size. Normally, I prefer to handle clods like this with intellect, but that kid was so stupid and obnoxious, he could have used a good stomping himself. :)

TlalocW

[hobbit709]

8. I usually respond

by hitting Reply All and linking to snopes.com-that's decreased the ones I get dramatically.

[nebenaube]

15. I suspect

there is tracking data in those messages that helps the RW map out social networks.

[babylonsister]

18. Honestly? I think it's because they don't know how to cut and paste.

I'm SERIES!!1!!

[treestar]

19. One of my aunts does this

And a lot of times, it is just cutesy stuff. It's practically spam, though.

[Uben]

20. It's their idea of activism

That's about as energetic as they want to get.......fwd an e-mail to their buddies.

"Yup, I did my thang today, I forwarded thrity-five e-mails to my democrat friends! Wonder if the prez will consider me for the Medal of Freedom?"

[Hav]

Amazing, isn't it. They are probably not able to make an intelligent point so they just use the "work" (cough) of other people.
Btw, another topic but all these chain mails end with sending it to other peeps. This reminds me of all the cretins at YouTube who repeat some stupid chain mails again and again because they are scared that at night, some red eyes from a killed girl from Africa might watch them or that some other murder victim will take revenge by killing them (that makes sense) if they don't reprint what happened sometime in the 19th century on Youtube 3 times.
How can anyone be so damn stupid?

[leftofthedial]

22. a) they don't think

b) they don't care what we (or anyone else) want

[RebelOne]

24. My sister sent me a FWD FWD FWD e-mail about Cindy Sheehan.

She's a right-winger. It was a whole lot of stuff that has been debunked. So, I sent her a couple of links from Snopes.com and told her to check her facts before she passes on that crap. I haven't heard back from her yet.

[CrispyQ]

25. They are also frequently in a huge font

so you have to scroll just to read just a few lines of text. Do they think that if they make the font big enough & bold enough the message will sink in?