Forwarded as Received

Way back in the year 2000, or Y2K as it was called back then, I attended a few sessions at NIIT in an attempt to learn something of programming and web design. I never completed that course, but I remember on the very first day they covered a topic called the information boom. For those of you who didn’t attend the course and who have never heard this not-so-popular phrase, it refers to the sudden availability of a lot of information at one’s fingertips.

 So during the class, we were discussing about whether this was a good thing or not, and I remember saying that one can never have too much information and hence an information boom is good. Boy was I was wrong!

With the advent of social media and mobile internet and the dangerous combination of the two (read as: WhatsApp), this has become a real problem. In a typical day, an average Indian Smartphone user receives at least 5(not counting repeats) different “facts” in the form of forwards. While some of these are informative and do have some validity, a majority of them are half-truths and full lies aimed at either pranking people, or swaying popular opinion. 

This has caused people to be divided into three major groups; The believers, The verifiers, and the “What-do-you-thinkers”.

The believers is a particularly gullible group who believe “if its on the internet, it must be true.” These people don’t bother to verify anything. They love the attention of being “in the know” and will do anything to be the first ones to break a story to their peers. The source doesn’t matter. As long as its sufficiently shocking or supporting to their views, they’ll forward the message.

The next group are the nay sayers, conspiracy theorists and general skeptics and cynics. These guys seldom believe anything they see on the internet and will verify and analyse every detail of the post/ forward and will give you a 1000 word essay about the truth of the matter. These guys can be pretty extreme and sometimes rude, but they mean well and want to keep things real.

The last group is the one I find the most lazy. These people mistrust the information they come across, but are too lazy to go about verifying it for themselves. At the same time, they want to spread the message that they have received because it most likely matches their beliefs. So they do this lazy thing that is becoming more and more popular on WhatsApp of late. They put a small one line rider at the end of the message that says “Forwarded as Received”. This is something I find very irritating and downright irresponsible on behalf of senders. I mean, if you are aware that the information you’re sending may not be true, take the trouble to verify it or don’t send it at all. This thing of forwarded as received is simply shirking the responsibility of what is being sent. This is even more infuriating given that verifying a source is so easy with internet access; literally available at the swipe of a finger. All one needs to know is which are credible sources and which aren’t.In my opinion, anything that is sent from your number/ profile should be our responsibility. Even if it is just a forward. So rather than passing the buck, please take the trouble to verify the source. In a country as religiously, politically and racially tense as ours, forwarding as received may be the cause of the next big riot. Lets take responsibility for our words and actions. Lets stop forwarding as received.