Grassroots and Progressive views on local, national and world news
COLUMNS
OCEAN BEACH
SAN DIEGO
How to respond to right-wing email forwards
by SOURCE on APRIL 26, 2012 · 5 COMMENTS
in ARE YOU KIDDING?, COLUMNS, CULTURE, MEDIA
💩Shane: Several months ago, I began receiving forwarded emails from a person I’ll call “Conservative Person.” I had never met or heard of this person, but there was my email address in the CC line of his message, along with dozens of other people’s addresses.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which is no different from animal activists sending forwarded emails and Ccing a bunch of people.
💩 I assumed Conservative Person had seen my email address on some liberal-themed message and decided to add me to a conservative mailing list as a joke.
🧝♀️ Which is exactly what an animal rights activist did to people they didn't like. See Pretty Little Nightmare...
💩 At first, I ignored the emails, many of which were of the “aren’t liberals stupid” variety.
🧝♀️ Same as your average "Aren't conservatives racist/sexist/backward/stupid?" liberal screed.
💩 At a later point, I felt like responding with venom.
🧝♀️ Typical. It would actually be a lot better if a conservative responded to political memes aimed at them with venom., and a lot more leftwing memes being debunked and laughed at. They're out there. Everyone else is too blind or indifferent to care and do anything about it.
💩 But I want the world to be a better place.
🧝♀️ Hah, that's a pathetic joke, since you just perpetuated the whole "Conservatives spread email forwards" thing and you're naturally just another liberal ranting back at it... That sure as heck isn't making the world a better place.
💩 And like Gandhi said, we have to “be the change you wish to see in the world.”
🧝♀️ Oh, please, drop the pseudo-Gandhi thing already, and your type of change is not what the world needs.
💩 (Actually, Gandhi never said that, which is the subject of a curious article on another news website approaching the quality of The OB Rag.)
🧝♀️ Good to know. Your site sucks.
💩 So I decided that humor might be the key to resonating in the hearts and minds of the people writing, forwarding, and reading emails like these:
🧝♀️ When all else fails, just make bad jokes, of course...
Prepare to have them soundly rejected or turned back on you.
The forwarded email has been nixed out, and the only real problem with it was that it was an email forward - a meme. For a political meme, it was much more reasonable than most.
🆔from: 💢🔅💩Shane
subject: re: This is what I want
💩 really good stuff.
🧝♀️ Yeah right, since this is your bad joke, you really don't mean it. But you're now going to whinge on over something about English or the border thing...
💩 i particularly like the English-only idea.
🧝♀️ Oh, yes, gotta make sure to snivel about that since you think promoting English as the official language is not multicultural and is probably even racist to you. *Rolling eyes* But you don't go crusading to other countries and demanding they stop having their own official languages. You're just racist against people who speak English and cannot speak other languages.
💩 clearly some people’s occasional use of other languages has led to the plunge in American housing prices and has exacerbated the recession.
🧝♀️ Clearly some people's occasional internet politics has lead to the plunge in your mood and has exacerbated your coherency when attempting to make jokes., That email only mentioned the English language, and you jumped all the way to housing prices and the recession.
💩 but I am a big fan of Mexican food so I have a couple questions:
🧝♀️ Oh, brother, it's going to get very stupid, very fast.
Okay, I'll try to explain this in as simple terms as possible so you might manage to understand.
An official language does not ban words meaning ethnic/foreign food. It incorporates them, dingbat!
💩 -when I order a burrito will i have to use its English meaning “little donkey”?
🧝♀️ Since you *are* one, you're already covered either way.
💩 that doesn’t seem like it will taste as good
🧝♀️ How would you know? Then again, I wouldn't recommend cannibalism, not even for you.
💩 -i’m not sure that there even IS an English term for “chimichanga”… ???
🧝♀️ Who cares? See above. You're being so stupid that I keep forgetting to laugh. It's the same way overboard schtick as that Drawing The Line badfic where TV show characters are made mockeries of themselves to promote sick fan fiction.
💩 -can Taco Bell get an exemption? because I like the commercials where the dog says “yo quiero Taco Bell”
🧝♀️ See above, stinkface, and go stuff yourself with tacos for all I care.
💩 After I dashed off that response, another person replied, saying 😏“that was funny!”
🧝♀️ That isn't the first or last time stupidity got praised.
💩 Inspired, I decided I might reply-all again some time. Before long, Conservative Person forwarded this:
🧝♀️ And you just gloated and came up with more stupidity.
🆔from: 💢🔅Random1
subject: 😡Response to liberals
🧝♀️ Bull...
you actually are one.
😡Meme: I am sick of standing in line at a grocery store to see a young person, buying all kinds of junk food along with steaks;
🧝♀️ And that's why you're a liberal. You're a food-cop and that's why you suck.
Rest of stupid whining meme deleted. It was just more typical political cry-baby crap.
Eat what you want, let others eat what they want, stay well away from me when I'm enjoying my eats, whether it's steak, shrimp, or what you call "junk food", or get your head and extremities bitten off.
🆔from: 💢🔅💩Shane
subject: re: Response to liberals
🧝♀️ Still bull.
💩 Tell it like it is Random1! As you so eloquently rant,
🧝♀️ You both come on top for whining drollery.
💩 the problem with America today is that the people at the bottom of the economic ladder have their feet on the heads of those of us above them*. (*physically impossible)
🧝♀️ You're making stupid assumptions again, exactly like the meme. You assume everybody is legitimate and the meme assumes everybody is illegitimate when it comes to any kind of economic assistance, and you're both wrong.
💩 Hungry kids should eat each other or better yet Get A Job.
🧝♀️ Wrong again, stinkface, your very own Michelle Obama crusaded against "junk food" and dictated everybody eat vegetables for lunch in school. Stupid as the whinging meme is, it said nothing about kids let alone that they should cannibalize one another and get jobs. Everybody knows child labor is illegal and it's going to stay that way.
💩 And its a shame, all that stuff you saw at grocery store… Steak by itself is too good for food stamps and if shrimp is allowed we might as well be handing out caviar on the taxpayer dime.
🧝♀️ Like I said, mind what goes into your own mouth and leave everyone else well enough alone, and that goes for both you and that meme... I'm so sick of the freaking fuss over the food stamps thing...
💩 We should be drug testing not just welfarefaces but all who get govt benefits, like air travelers (FAA) or kidnap victims
🧝♀️ That's already being done, stupid... In the case of kidnap victims, they have to get tests done in hospital to see what the perp drugged them with if at all. Air travel, well yeah, you don't want somebody going into withdrawal in mid-flight, and if that person has a history of using, they're going to be tested before going anywhere.
And like it or not, there are people who abuse the system. The trouble with you and the meme is you see nothing and the meme thinks everybody's guilty. You both suck.
💩 (FBI) or recent buyers of GM cars
🧝♀️ Pretty sure if you're going to apply for FBI you're going to have to pass some tests.
💩 (bailout).
🧝♀️ Yes, I wish you would.
💩 If forward-thinkers like us were in charge it would be a lot different around here!
🧝♀️ You had your fun for 8 long years under Obama. Your snowflake empire went totally nuts out of control when that empire finally fell, showing why it should not rise again to cause further harm.
💩 I didn’t hear back from anyone that time, but soon enough another forward arrived, and I felt compelled to reply again:
🧝♀️ *Sighs and rolling eyes* Will this ever end? Retarded attempt at a joke which was just a trolling meme, nixed out. That crap fails just as hard at making me laugh as Shane's blather. It was basically 'Once upon a time there was a great fire that burned out a building complex, and people from this group and that group and this and that group all died, but those from that group lived because they were at work." Yeah, stupid.
🆔from: 💢🔅💩Shane subject: re: The Fire Chief Said….?
💩 The Fire Chief said, “They were at work. Getting paid to forward racist emails.
🧝♀️ No, moron, people get fired from work for spreading this kind of stupidity...
💩 White power!”
🧝♀️ Down with that crap. Down with white power, down with black power. That is all racist...
💩 Now, one of the beautiful things about email forwards
🧝♀️ See? Shane thinks there's actually something beautiful about memes.
It's like I always say, Crappy political memes targeting the non-left, sometimes started by the left, often spread by the far-right and others, are a liberal's very best friend. The Shanes really don't want anyone on the non-left to stop spreading political memes, and they sure as heck don't want anyone from the non-left speaking out against and debunking/mangling those memes. That would shrink their "lulz" supply.
💩 is you might get a racist one today and a religious one tomorrow.
🧝♀️ And a friendship one today and a dying kid hoax the next, and a creepy pasta the next day and a crummy stale joke 5 times over within a week... If that's your idea of beautiful, I soundly reject it.
💩 Sure enough, as Easter approached, my inbox was graced by something from the “God is Great” department — begging another response:
🧝♀️ Typical anti-theist... This manipulative piece of dreck has been soundly thrashed, and your odious reaction is going in with Neal Fletcher's...
💩 And then things took another turn — I found out why I was receiving these emails to begin with:
🆔from: someone with name similar to Shane’s
subject: To clear up the confusion
It has come to my attention that “I” have been sending out some confrontational/disturbing/ignorant emails as of late which I have now been approached about on multiple occasions. Each time, I was confused as to why people were asking me about my radical views and had no clue as to where this was even coming from. Well, people have been sending “me” emails to shane.[redacted1]@gmail, which is not my address. shane.[redacted2]@gmail IS correct, and bears the correct spelling of my name.
Apparently, I was getting these emails because someone had mistakenly entered my email address instead of the address of another Shane whose last name is almost identical to mine.
I felt bad enough to send an apology to my doppelganger Shane, explaining that I didn’t realize I was being mistaken for him.
It helped that I had seen, in my inbox, this reply-all from another random person on the email thread:
🆔from: 💢🔅Random Person
subject: re: To clear up the confusion
Well, I would like you to know, I along with many others, find this wildly entertaining! As a matter of fact, I would LOVE to find the person who has been responding to these emails and give him a high five, maybe even a twenty dollar bill for the quality entertainment! Seriously, this is some good shit, I will tell people about this for a very long time, and they too will find it wildly entertaining! We need to send this mysterious person an award or something!
You too will end up finding this entertaining Shane! In the mean time, relax and enjoy the responses to your email!
This is just my two cents, its not political nor religious and I am using my own email address!
🧝♀️ His emails are crap, and the only award he gets from here are for snark and stupid...
💻{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
🧝♀️ Gah! I wanna be done with this one by the end of today!
😏Ernie McCray April 26, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Wow, with ONE Flag, ONE Language, ONE Nation Under God and Obama Gone and the border closed and English the only language spoken and everyone living the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights lifestyle, drug free with welfare recipients drug screened and no freebies to Non-Citizens – everyday would be like April Fools Day or Halloween with everybody wearing the same costume, a Border Patrol outfit. Great piece, Shane.
🧝♀️ No, actually, your dystopia would be more like a Halloween with everyone wearing the same costume - snowflakes!
The piece utterly sucks.
🙃Old Hermit Dave April 26, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Great read Shane—
🧝♀️ Great example of passive-aggressive moronic whinging sludge.
🤡JMW April 26, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Very funny! Belly laughs.
🧝♀️ Some people amuse way too easily.
👧🏻Anna Daniels April 26, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Shane- My most dreaded forwarded emails came from a family member. I said do not send me anything that you have not run through factcheck.org or snopes. Turns out my relative was actually interested in the site (but not for long) but was ultimately considerate enough to remove me from her send list. Maybe you have some satire tips for family members- the ones who share Thanksgiving dinner, decide beforehand they won’t discuss politics, and damn if they don’t end up fighting…
🧝♀️ There are sites better than *cough* "Fact"check and Snopes.
👹Andy Cohen April 26, 2012 at 2:43 pm
I have the very same problem, except this particular family member named mom refuses to remove me from her mailing list, despite the uncountable number of times I have politely and sometimes not so politely asked her to do so. 90% of the time I simply delete her emails without even opening them. But occasionally I feel compelled for some unknown reason to open them, and proceed to respond with snark and derision. And sometimes with the occasional “it took me 10 seconds to use the Google machine to find this little tidbit that shows how dumb this is. You should try it sometime.” She gets insulted. I say ‘stop sending me your bullcr@p emails, then.’ She continues to send me her bullshit emails.
Maybe I’ll try Shane’s approach. Unfortunately I’m not as good with the comedy routine as he is. I’ll work on it……
🧝♀️ Just give up. His "comedy" sucks and it sounds like you and your mom have other issues anyway.
OVER - AND - OUT!
Breaking Chain Letters Is Not Enough. Mangle The Memes