Run for your lives!!! It's a culture of fear.

What's the next ridiculous subject that Christina can waste her energy ranting about? I'll tell you what: stupid forwards; especially the kind designed to make people afraid. The main themes I want to impress upon you guys before going into it are the following: 1) I'm not posting this to make anyone feel bad about sending me forwards. We've all been had before. 2) Start showing a little skepticism, people! Snopes.com and Skepdic.com will tell you the truth about most urban legends that float around. 3) This mainly applies to girls: use some common sense before sending a forward. Remember, we've all seen just about every single one that floats around. Before sending a forward to me or anyone else, please check it for accuracy, or make sure that it's the most hilarious thing you've ever read. Then ask yourself if I would think it's funny. I don't hate getting forwards, but they had better be good and not be something I've seen before.

Before I go lambasting, I have another disclaimer to make. When I said "we've all been had," I meant it. I have been caught on the wrong side of not performing my due diligence by the lovely and intelligent Kirsten, who pointed me to my own favorite Snopes.com for the truth on a forward that I forwarded. I learned from it and so can you.

Here's the prime offender. I've probably gotten this forward about 5 times since I started receiving email. I won't post the forward in its entirety, because it's long. It opens and closes with an appeal to all women to please read it for their own safety and forward it to everyone they know because it's a big bad world out there and everyone's out to get you. It's a list of ways to get yourself out of hostage situations if you're a vulnerable woman. It also states that it is being sent out due to the recent spate of daylight abductions that have been going on. Here's the most interesting part to me:

9. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her "Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, "We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door." He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night. Please pass this on and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby ---- This e-mail should probably be taken seriously because the Crying Baby theory was mentioned on America 's Most Wanted this past Saturday when they profiled the serial killer in Louisiana. I'd like you to forward this to all the women you know.

I was going to send this to the ladies only, but guys, if you love your mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, etc., Everyone should take 5 minute to read this. It may save your life or love one's life.

After reading this forward, I carried my browser over to Snopes.com and did a search for "baby's cry serial killer" Instantly two articles come up. One of them details the phoney origins of the story and the second thoroughly details the benefits and drawbacks to all of the advice on evading abductors. It took me three steps to find the truth on this story and decide it wasn't something to forward to people. If I had been inclined to forward things to people in the first place, that process would have taken just as many steps.

One of the things that gets me is that the article states that this has been in circulation for 5 years. 5 years! People! Do you know how many people need to neglect their googling duties for this kind of thing to go on for five years? Lots, that's how many. It kills me that in an age when we have all the answers at our fingertips, people still don't know where to go to find them. I know why people were so susceptible to this stuff before the internet invaded every home, but in today's age, it's ridiculous for people to not know how to find the answers for themselves. The other thing that really bugs me is that someone had to make up that story. They had to invent it from scratch and broadcast it with the intent of deceiving people. The thought of that really gets my goad. Every woman that gets this email gets a little pang of fear and remembers the advice for at least a little bit. She internalizes that the world is a dangerous place where she's at peril all the time, something we know is simply not true, yet is somehow broadcasted as though it is gospel all the time.

Back to the reference to skyrocketing numbers of abductions. According to this fearmongering website, there were 28,765 abductions of adults and children in 2000. Dividing by the population at the time, we find that that means that there was an abduction rate of .0001%, or put another way, you have a 1 in 10,000 chance of being abducted. And most of the time, it'll be someone you know anyway. Remember a few posts ago when I gave statistics showing that the rate of all crime except drug arrests has decreased dramatically?

Due diligence, people.