You've Been Glurged (Sinclair and Include the world)

[kelley <kwalker2 -at- gte -dot- net>]

This email shouldn't be passed along at all. This letter is asking people 
to stop their vehicle at 7 pm.  Right.

I have no doubt a lot of people are going to do the above, but really, this 
was probably initiated as a glurge, just like the "Gordon Sinclair" Glurge, 
a sub-variant of a hoax. It's warm, fuzzy nonsense that wastes our time and 
fills mailboxes.

I realize that people think they are doing good, but it's better to donate 
blood, get involved in political efforts that might make a meaningful 
transformation in the world. This reminds me of the hoax passed around 
directing people to engage in a one-day strike against the gas stations. 
fortunately, innocent people's email addresses weren't attached to this one.

btw, more info on the Sinclair Glurge

First, sinclair died in 1984. see cached google link below. I could find 
nothing in the search engines that crawl news stories. (daypop.com and 
moreover.com)  It's a hoax b/c of prefatory comments, to wit:

>This, from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing.

it's not in a Canadian newspaper, to my knowledge. Emails that don't source 
are _always_ suspect.

http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blamericans.htm

>America: The Good Neighbor.
>Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a
>remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair,

OOOOPS a contradiction! now it's been broadcast, not published in a 
newspaper . In Lacanian/Zizek-speak: slippage! :)

Information on Gordon Sinclair's pro-American editorial, including a 
RealAudio link -- http://www.snopes2.com/quotes/sinclair.htm

google archives  (I love google! )
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:k5i6_XkXgi8:www.snopes2.com/quotes/sinclair.htm+sinclair+%22questionable+quotes%22&hl=en

>Canadian television  commentator. What follows is the full text of his
>trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:


It's not in recent congressional record at www.thomas.loc.gov. It may be 
somewhere deeper in their archives, but again, what this thing is doing is 
referencing something official sounding in order to authorize what it says 
so that people will unthinkingly pass it along.

something i'm working on now:


You've Been Glurged!

Ingredients:
2 cups of chicken soup
1 cup of sugar

1. Pour two cups of chicken soup (homemade or canned) into a container.
2. Add 1 cup of sugar.
3. Stir.
4. PASS IT ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

Yuck!

That was the effect Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes.com hoped for when she 
described a glurge as the combination of chicken soup and a cup of sugar.

What's a glurge?  According to Mikkelson, it is the moniker bequeathed to a 
certain subset of "inspirational story" e-mails sent by generous, kindly 
denizens of the Internt.  The message they convey is warm and fuzzy, feel 
good all over.  Chicken soup for the soul, as they say: "It's supposed to 
be a method of delivering a remedy for what ails you by adding sweetening 
to make the cure more appealing, but the result is more often a 
sickly-sweet concoction that induces hyperglycemic fits. "

But glurges, for some people, have a bitter aftertaste. They typically 
encourage the reader to pass the message on in subtle and not-so-subtle 
ways. Some people want to be associated with the 'warm fuzzies' conveyed in 
the mail and feel others need the inspirational message. Still other 
glurges outright exhort the recipient to forward the message suggested that 
those who don't will suffer some undisclosed retaliation or bad luck, while 
those who do will be blessed by Lady Fortuna.

Identifying Glurges:

A glurge has at least three different parts:

--The Hook captures your attention with an appeal to your emotions or to fear.
--The Threat in which the hoax author outlines the unfortunate consequences 
that might befall the reader.
--The Request is the heart of the chain letter, without which it cannot 
survive. It tells you to pass copies of
  the letter along to other people in order to avoid the bad things that 
may happen. A chain letter cannot
  continue to exist without The Request to keep passing it on.

Separating fact from fiction isn't always easy to do.  It's especially 
difficult when you aren't familiar with the subject matter.  It's also 
difficult when you feel strongly about a topic.

<...>

Kelley Walker
Organizational Researcher/Technical Writer
Interpact, Inc.
www.interpactinc.com/



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