YouthNet blog
An insight into youth issues, volunteering trends, charity life and more from the UK charity YouthNet
All | Events | Youth | Technology | Volunteering | YouthNet | Charity World
Friday Mar 02, 2007
Tiger Tax Trauma
Seems like it's been a while since our last content update - so here's the new content that's gone live in the last few weeks:
Dealing with someone else's drug problem
Recognising disablism
Emergency first aid
Weird whiskey
Council tax chase
Hang on or move on
Tourette's trauma
Fingered at work
The big 'O'
Horror hair
Mum's making me homeless
GHB equals GBH?
Taxing house sale
Finding out you're adopted
When coming out goes wrong
Gambling addiction
Compulsive Eating
Grr, Tiger
Please forward this post to 10 of your friends
One of the mildly irritating trends of the early internet is making a return: the chain letter petition. And it's all the fault of Tony Blair.
Chain letters were a big thing in the mid to late nineties. Basically a gentle form of spam, chain letters arrived in your email inbox with one consistent trait: they always urged you to forward the email on to five, 10 or 20 of your best friends.
Some of these chain letters were nauseating but limited in their ambition – "we want everyone to smile at a stranger today" – while others were more serious in tone, like the ones containing elaborate stories of abduction, mass food poisonings or health scares. A basic Google search would prove them to be bunkum, and thankfully most people I know are savvy enough now not to be fooled by these.
But it's another type of chain email which is making a return – the email petition. These ones were traditionally focused on something terrible going on such as torture in Afghanistan or deforestation in Brazil and invited recipients to put their name to a petition calling for change. "Add your name and town to the list below and forward to 10 of your friends. If you are the 200th person, send the full list to xxxxx at the department of xxxx and then start a new email." Did anyone ever think that this would make one spot of difference? Obviously some people did, as the emails kept coming and the lists of signatories kept growing.
At some point the penny must have dropped for most people; these petitions were often bogus in their intentions and totally hopeless in their potential to enact change. I haven't been asked to add my name to any lists for a few years now – until last week when three requests came in.
The common link? No10 Downing Street's new petition site (which Jim has posted about before).
Does someone really think that I'm a rabid rights-of-car-owner supporter? Or that I care about photographers' need to take pics at live concerts? Or that I think cars are the devil's tool and that I might like to support a public transport cause?
No, I don't think so; it's not personal enough for that. The recipients aren't carefully selected - I even wonder if the sender has fully read the contents of the email themselves.
All three emails followed the traditional format of chain letter petitions: civilisation is on the edge of meltdown and can only be saved if we all sign this petition NOW! (and please forward this to everyone you know so they can sign too).
And this is why you get 2 million people saying road pricing is a bad idea without really understanding the policy. And it's also why half of them seem to be emailing me asking me to put my name to the list.
From YouthNet's point of view, it raises another question. When we receive these emails, we often also get asked to publish the requests on TheSite.org's discussion boards. But why (and how) could we make a judgment on whether repealing the Hunting Act is more or less important than building cycling lanes? The real fascination of this new petition site is how it shows the spectrum of viewpoint and for us to pre-filter is missing the point and setting us up for a fall.
All those that agree, please add your name and town in the comment box below. Just don't email me. Ever.
Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 11:38 AM ) Link to this post Comments[6]