"Family Emails- Pt I" or "Ignorance is forgivable, but denial is just plain dangerous"

For ease of reading, I have separated this post into two parts.  One event has got me thinking about two issues: Technology (Part I) and Politics (Part II).  At least I separated this into two parts to avoid accusations of too-long-posts from the Wilson's and Dudley's of the internet. 

I received one of those emails today.  You know the kind that starts: "Forward this email and add you name on the bottom to prove to Washington that we care about topic X", "Forward this email finding your name and putting a tally next to it; it's for a kid's science project", "Forward this to everyone if you are not afraid to profess your love of Jesus".  

Not to stereotype, but I haven't gotten an email like this from anyone under 50 and over 13 in a long time.  What is it that keeps many of the Baby Boomers in my life filling my email box with fluff?  I am beginning to assume it has something to do with an email-er's level of comfort with technology.  Example: As my parents have begun to communicate more and more via email, as it becomes a daily part of their lives, their filter for what they want to attach to their name and send to others, gets more precise.  By now, they only send me exceptional and thoughtful forwards or funny pictures of animals.  I find it is the Boomers who still do not use email as a primary source of communication that keep throwing this nonsense out there.  Email is still a novelty to them, and it seems to me there is little self-awareness that what they email is attached to them in a very real, permanent way.  These people in my life clog my inbox, not because they were thinking of me, but because they were bored and I was the requisite number 13 to forward to for "good luck.  I swear, some guy in Tampa did it and then Publisher's Clearing House showed up 15 minutes later!"

Sometimes I wonder if there is a logic black hole when it comes to the internet.  Let's think through a "For instance".  The popular internet petition/poll.  I am not even going to waste my energy explaining this.  Here's someone elses words:
An email petition arrives with some information (often lengthy) about what the sender believes to be a worthy cause. It asks you to add your name (and sometimes other info) to a list and then pass the list on to all your friends and colleagues requesting that they continue the chain. It also asks you that should your name be (eg) the 100th on the list, to mail the list back to the organiser.

Let's suppose I start such a list, and pass it on to 5 friends, and ask that they continue the chain. To simplify, let's suppose a) that no one signs the list twice, b) that no two people supply identical information, c) that everyone who receives the list passes it on to between 1 and 9 people, d) that no one delays passing on the list, and e) that there is an infinite supply of people.

By the time there are 15 names on each list, up to 36,000,000,000 emails will have been sent, and each one one of them has my name on it. But how many times do the names appear of the 5 people I sent the original list to? And how is it possible to know the total number of people who have signed the petition?

The fact is unless you are using a third-party Poll/Petition site, there is not accurate way to track results, and results wouldn't stand-up under any level of scrutiny.

Part II...  What actually got me mad about it.