13 Things Every Net User Should Know

1. Bill Gates is not giving you $1000, and Dis­ney is not giving you a free vaca­tion, no one is giving away cases of free M & M’s, the GAP is not giving away clothing.

There is no baby food com­pany issuing class-action checks. MTV will not give you backs­tage pas­ses if you for­ward something to the most peo­ple. You can relax; there is no need to pass it on “just in case it’s true.” Further­more, just because someone said in the mes­sage, four gene­ra­tions back, that “we chec­ked it out and it’s legit,” does not actually make it true.

2. There is no kid­ney theft ring in New Orleans. No one is waking up in a bath­tub full of ice, even if a friend of a friend swears it hap­pe­ned to their cou­sin. If you are hell-bent on belie­ving the kidney-theft ring sto­ries, please see: http://urbanlegends.tqn.com/library/weekly/aa062997.htm

And I quote: “The Natio­nal Kid­ney Foun­da­tion has repea­tedly issued requests for actual vic­tims of organ thie­ves to come for­ward and tell their sto­ries. None have.“That’s “none ” as in “zero.” Not even your friend’s cousin.

3. Nei­man Mar­cus doesn’t really sell a $200 coo­kie recipe. And even if they do, we all have it. And even if you don’t, you can get a copy at:

http://www.bl.net/forwards/cookie.html

Then, if you make the recipe and decide the coo­kies are that awe­some, feel free to pass the for­mula on.

4. We all know all 500 ways to drive your room­ma­tes crazy, irri­tate co-workers, gross out bath­room stall neigh­bors and creep out peo­ple on an ele­va­tor. We also know exactly how many engi­neers, college stu­dents, Use­net pos­ters and peo­ple from each and every world eth­ni­city it takes to change a light bulb.

5. If the latest NASA roc­ket disaster(s) DID con­tain plu­to­nium that went to par­ti­cu­late over the eas­tern sea­board, do you REALLY think this infor­ma­tion would reach the public via an AOL chain-letter?

6. There is no “Good Times ” virus. In fact, you should never, ever, ever for­ward any email con­tai­ning any virus war­ning unless you first con­firm it at an actual site of an actual com­pany that actually deals with viruses.

Try: http://www.norton.com/ or http://www.kumite.com/

7. If your CC: list is regu­larly lon­ger than the actual con­tent of your mes­sage, you’ re pro­bably going to Hell.

8. If you’re using Out­look, I.E., or Nets­cape to write email, turn off the “HTML enco­ding.” Those of us on UNIX shells can’t read it, and don’t care enough to save the attach­ment and then view it with a web brow­ser, since you ‘re pro­bably for­war­ding us a copy of the Nei­man Mar­cus Coo­kie Recipe anyway.

9. If you still abso­lu­tely MUST for­ward that 10^th-generation mes­sage sho­wing ever­yone else who ‘s recei­ved it over the last 6 months. It sure wouldn’t hurt to get rid of all the “” (or the <) that begin each line. Besi­des, if it has gone around that many times — we’ ve pro­bably already seen it. But PLEASE LEARN HOW TO COPY AND PASTE!!!!!

10. Craig Sher­gold (or Sher­wood, or Sher­man, etc.) in England is not dying of can­cer or anything else at this time and would like ever­yone to stop­sen­ding him their busi­ness cards. He appa­rently is also no lon­ger a “little boy” either.

11. The “Make a Wish ” foun­da­tion is a real orga­ni­za­tion doing fine work, but they have had to esta­blish a spe­cial toll free hot­line in res­ponse to the large num­ber of Inter­net hoa­xes using their good name and repu­ta­tion. It is dis­trac­ting them from the impor­tant work they do.

12. If you are one of those insuf­fe­ra­ble idiots who for­wards anything that pro­mi­ses “something bad will hap­pen if you don’t,” then something bad will hap­pen to you if I ever meet you in a dark alley!

13. Women really are suf­fe­ring in Afgha­nis­tan, and PBS and NEA fun­ding are still vul­ne­ra­ble to attack (although not at the pre­sent time) but for­war­ding an email won ‘t help either cause in the least. If you want to help, con­tact your local legis­la­tive repre­sen­ta­tive, or get in touch with Amnesty Inter­na­tio­nal or the Red Cross. As a gene­ral rule, email “sig­na­tu­res” are easily faked and mean NOTHING to anyone with any power to do anything about wha­te­ver the peti­tion is com­plai­ning about NOTHING!!!

If you really care, and you’re not just trying to make your­self feel bet­ter when your ser­ver is down at work, then get the hell out­doors and start a REAL petition.

(PS — There is no bill pen­ding before Con­gress that will allow long dis­tance com­pa­nies to charge you for long dis­tance when using the Inter­net, nor for the Post Office to “tax ” e-mails.)

Bot­tom Line … com­po­sing e-mail or pos­ting something on the Net is as easy as wri­ting on the walls of a public res­troom. Don’t auto­ma­ti­cally believe it unless it’s pro­ven true… ASSUME it’s false, unless there is proof that it’s true. Get it? Got it? Good!