With
the advent of Facebook and WhatsApp, we all seem to have become instantly more
knowledgeable as we receive a high dosage of information on our mobile phones,
from a variety of sources, which includes so many text messages and multimedia
messages. Call it forwarding, tagging or sharing, there is such an overload of
information that we hardly find the time to go through all these forwards.
However, this is the trend and we need to learn to cope with it.
As
I was trying to figure out why people are so keen on sharing, I realised that
all of us have innate need to keep in touch with our friends and most of us
find these Medias helpful to serve the purpose. Every time we send out a
message to a group, a list or an individual person, our name appears on their
mobile screen and we find it as a way of reassuring our friends that we
remember them.
No
doubt many of the forwards we receive are interesting. Some are humorous, some
are serious, some are informative, some are brain teasers, some are pranks, and
some are sentimental stories and so many other genres of messages.
All
these are perfectly OK. What worries me is the number of hoax messages that
gets mindlessly forwarded. Every technology could be used for a good purpose or
a bad purpose. So naturally we find that there are people who use these technologies
for wrong purpose. They use it to propagate false information, pet ideologies
and sometimes to manipulate the receiver to believe in some information which
may not be true.
Sometimes,
we receive some alarming message, such as a bomb threat, a virus outbreak or a
disaster warning. When we receive such
messages, we instantly tend to forward it to our friends or groups, as a way of
saying we care. But most often these messages are hoax and it just triggers a
panic button, causing more harm than good.
Sometimes
we receive some messages, which seem to be beneficial to the society and we
tend to forward these messages with a good intention that the information will
be of use to our friends and relatives, but again the fact is most of these are
misleading.
Few
months back, I received a forward stating that, “If you have left over food,
after any marriage functions or party, you can dial a particular number and
inform them about the excess food. They will come and collect the food and pass
it on to the poor people who are hungry for food”. I felt that it was a good
cause and I wanted to forward it to my circle of friends. But before that, I
thought let me call the number and check out more details about this. So, I
called this number. To my shock the phone call was attend by one police
personnel. It was a police hotline number. When I asked the person him about
this, he was not aware and he became suspicious about my call and started
pondering me for more details. After, I explained everything clearly he
understood the context and warned me not to believe in such hoax messages and
not to mindlessly forward such messages. It was a good learning for me.
So
irrespective of either it is a good message or a bad message, please take
caution before forwarding. People can easily manipulate the truth, by creating
false evidence. Half-baked knowledge is more dangerous than lies. Don’t believe
any messages, on the face of it. Do some research on the internet and find the
truth.
Let
us make sure we do not engage in mindless forwarding.
Happy Reading,
D. Senthil Kannan
Article Dated Sep 2014
