FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: ad nauseam

So after some difficulties this morning and over the preceding weekend, I finally got into my e-mail this afternoon and found that I'd actually received quite a bit of electronic correspondence over the last few days. Interestingly enough, I really don't get a lot of spam, and this time was no exception. Emails giving me information that I had actually asked for, notes from family and friends, and info from guys at my church who are involved with and/or leading groups with which I'm involved. And there was the one fly in the ointment.

There's this guy, see. He's a nice guy, a good Christian, and someone who I enjoy talking with face-to-face. However, over the weekend he had sent me an e-mail with a picture of and little blurb concerning Barack Hussein Obama (with a noted emphasis on the fact that yes, that's his middle name!). This isn't the first time that he's sent me an e-mail with a subject line starting "FW: fwd: fwd:" or whatever. No, there was some matter of signing a petition that would do something having to do with prayer in schools or some such thing that of course turned out to be completely meaningless on a quick check of Snopes.com.

This time was different, though, and to tell you the truth, I was simultaneously unhappy and glad that it was different. It turned out that the bare content (minus editorializing) of the e-mail was correct! This happens so rarely in these situations, it threw me for a bit of a loop. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't just fire back, "No; this is all wrong; please stop forwarding these to me; can't you see what this is doing to your personal credibility?!" You know, I'll admit that I actually get a bit of smug self-satisfaction from sending out such an e-mail, but you can't send out that e-mail when the person sending you info happens to be right.

So what was the part that made me glad? It was the dawning of a realization that came as much less of a surprise to me than the discovery that the e-mail was technically true: I DON'T CARE! It doesn't matter to me if you find out that Hillary Clinton's a lesbian, John Edwards has made a hobby of torturing puppies, Mitt Romney has seven wives, or Rudy Giuliani was really the mastermind behind 9/11! It doesn't matter whether you have a reputable source or not, whether there's a photo attached or not, or whether there is an action required of me or not. I don't care if you have twenty pictures of cute kittens playing with balls of string, or a heartwarming poem to remind me of what's so great about mothers, or even a coupon for free ice cream. If the subject already starts with even one "FW:", don't click a button and send me a "FW: FW:" because I DON'T WANT IT!

Obsessive forwarders of the world, I'm cutting you off. If you want to send me your own e-mail, please do. I'm not going to read anyone else's.