Where is the line?
I just did something I NEVER thought I would do. I reply-alled to an email from my grandma, disputing something she had forwarded on and chastising people for believing it and forwarding it. It was a hateful email – one deliberately made to look like you are “doing God’s work” by educating others about the evil of a certain group by spreading misinformation about them. And it was easily disproven.
I was raised to ALWAYS respect my elders, but especially my grandparents. I LOVE my grandparents. I think they are terrific people who would never hurt anyone intentionally. And I have never talked back to them. Even over an erroneous email. I usually just reply directly to my grandma and let her know that Snopes says whatever it is is false. But that’s when it’s something fairly harmless, like some weird story about…I don’t even know, but I’m sure you all know the type of emails I mean. I figure that I don’t really care whether or not she sends that kind of stuff on – people can just as easily delete it, and if they believe it without looking into it, oh well. But this was…different. For me, at least. So I replied to all. And now I’m sitting at my desk crying over it because I hate that I might have embarrassed her. Or that she might be mad at me.
And yet, I don’t regret doing it. I couldn’t let that email sit out there, possibly getting forwarded on by all those other people who probably wouldn’t go do the 5 seconds of work it took to research it and confirm what I thought – that it was a fear-mongering exaggeration of a real event. And that it took a situation that could have happened to anyone and turned it into something “evil” about this other group.
Ugh. I don’t want to reprint the email here because that’s not really what this is about, and I don’t want an argument about it. I guess I just wanted to put out there that sometimes, doing what you think is right totally sucks. And I’m sure all of you know that, and it totally sounds like a cliche (because it is). But yah. Where is the line with family? When do you say something, and when do you keep quiet? And is it different with different family members?
| Print article | This entry was posted by Becky on October 27, 2009 at 3:38 pm, and is filed under Learnin', Rants. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 2 years ago
If there is one thing i know about you becky – you said it in the most factual kind way that you could. I am sure your grandmother will understand that everybody has points of view. Maybe she’ll even respect you for standing up and sharing it!
about 2 years ago
Don’t cry! Call your grandmother. Tell her what you wrote here. She’s a smart lady. She gets it.
about 2 years ago
As long as you just said that you wanted people to know that it’s not true it doesn’t seem disrespectful. Like Aunt Lois said, you could just talk to or email your grandma to explain why you did it, not because you have to, but because you care about her and her feelings.
about 2 years ago
I don’t know about your grandma, but I have older relatives who believe every email, pop-up ad and story they read on the Internet. And they’ll forward everything onto everyone in their address book. So maybe this will be a wake-up call for her that not everything she gets in her inbox is true.
Maybe you can educate everyone about snopes.com. That’s a great site for refuting those “This really happened – pass it on within three days or suffer the consequences!!!” emails.