gullible

gul·li·ble
(gŭl'ə-bəl)
adj. Easily deceived or duped.

Yup, that's exactly how I would describe around 99% of the worlds Internet population, so it seems anyway.

I've always subscribed to the idea that people are not stupid, they just know different things. However, it never ceases to amaze me how gullible people truly are until everyday, I read or hear incredible stories of people being totally duped in one way or another. From email forwards to mass manipulation of society, people fall for the most outrageous and foolish scams. People may indeed know different things, but mostly they're just inherently gullible.

One of the biggest problems with the Internet, is the simplicity with which one can pass messages. Now, you would believe that to be a technological breakthrough, as we no longer need to rely on a handwritten letter taking weeks to reach it’s destination. No, instead we can send everyone on our contact list the latest news that Bill Gates is giving away loads of money! Thereby, effectively reaching hundreds of people in an instant! Who then, send to all their friends and family, who also send on to their friends and family, ad-infinitum. Within days, a million people have heard that Microsoft is giving away free cash, and most of them believe it, well certainly the ones who forwarded the email do anyway. If they had to physically sit down, write a bunch of letters, take them to the post office, pay for all the stamps and send them all over the world, would they do it then? NO. Then why the hell do they send them by email?

People believe that sending emails is free. Well, it's not. Bandwidth costs money, which when adds up, is passed to us, the consumers. Spam constitutes for approximately 95% of all emails sent. That's a huge amount of junk floating around the Internet, and more often than not, the crap emails that people forward also contribute to this increasingly large amount of useless trash clogging up email servers, which again cost money (and denial of service in many cases).

The reason why the general population is often referred to as consumers is not only due to the fact that we acquire goods, it's also because we consume, food, water and of course information. We greedily gobble it down without a single care or thought as to where it came from. It's great, it doesn't make us fat or sick, it's just information so why the hell should we care!

Well, when the prices of your goods go up, due to increased advertising costs required to pay for excessive amount of bandwidth to cope with your junk email forwards, then yes it will affect everyone! So therefore the bottom line is, people's ignorance and stupidity is costing us all money!

Just for the record here; Bill Gates and AOL are NOT giving away money. Alan Smith will NOT close down your Friendster account (he doesn't even work there). Drinking cold water will NOT give you cancer. That poor little girl needing your money does NOT exist. Signing email petitions do NOT work. Cell phones will NOT cause explosions at petrol stations (watch Mythbusters if you don't believe me). There is NO such thing as baby foetus soup in China. Claims that criminals are attempting to incapacitate women in order to rob or rape them by handing them business cards laced with a powerful drug called Burundanga, is a totally unsubstantiated urban legend. There is absolutely NO evidence of gangs who flash their headlights at you for some initiation test, then crash or rob you ever occurring. Not putting your mobile phone closer to your ear until the recipient answers directly after dialling has NO effect at all. There are NO cases of police warnings about paper being placed on the rear window of your vehicle leading to carjackings and the apparent good Samaritan who changed a flat tire for a woman in a shopping mall car park but was actually a deranged killer intent on abduction, is totally FALSE! Ok.. get it now?

Etc.. etc.. etc..

In fact, 99% of these preposterously stupid scaremongering stories are hoaxes. Fakes. Chain letters. NOT REAL OK! So next time you get a ridiculous email asking you to 'forward to all your friends', no matter how true or fun you might think it sounds, please, please, PLEASE USE YOUR COMMON SENSE AND VALIDATE IT FIRST !!

If in doubt, please leave a message here and I'll try my best to help out before you decide to infest the Internet with yet more junk.

Sources:

http://www.hoax-slayer.com
http://urbanlegends.about.com
http://www.snopes.com
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com
http://www.truthorfiction.com