After looking over the sites recommended by this elective activity, I now realize how much time people spend trying to screw with your head. Really do people not have more important things to do?

I couldn’t believe the number of different rumors and hoaxes, and urban legends that are out there. Sure I’ve have gotten my share of chain letters, reports of making money or getting something for sending e-mail, and those letters telling you to forward the message to everyone you know because its for a good cause, but in my little bubble I usually just chose to ignore it. I now realize that this was good thinking on my part, even though it didn’t realize it at the time.

While most people know to ignore chain letters, except those incredibly superstitious people, what is scary to me is the hoaxes that claim to have factual information about health risks and concerns. It only takes one person to deeply believe in the hoax to spread it to all their friends, and then the information is seen as true. The hoax that I have most heard about is the needle hoax. The scary thing is that it could happen, so people get incredibly paranoid about it happening to them, while all along it was one or two rare incidences. Worse yet, this hoax gives malicious people the idea to do such a thing.

I guess you would say I’m guilty of sending chain letters, but they are only those that seem to have a personal message or message that I believe to be a good one. And when I do sent the message I only send it to a few people, and try to erase the part about sending it to others or getting bad luck.

All the linked sites from this activities web page are very interesting and helpful for those people that get confused about if to believe what they received. I have booked mark them as a reference for myself and plan to send it to anyone that sends me “junk” mail such as chain letters and urban legends. Oh, and the soap box guy is great! Kind of puts things into perspective.