You would think that appearing on CNN for a large part of their feature on milblogs would have gathered a sharp increase in my readership, nope, a few extra hundred hits. What about when I did that online chat on the Washington Post, nope, just another couple hundred. When my blog was flogged by the San Diego Reader? Maybe a hundred total. I get probably get a quarter of my new visitors by people searching for Camel Spiders.
But do a post telling everyone that a popular email forward is totally false and just a new urban legend? You strike gold. My post about New Traffic Fines in 2007 has scored Doc in the Box an extra 450 visitors each day since the post, thanks for visiting guys! Take a look around, you might find something of interest.
It goes to show how a strong and viral email forward can take over the inboxes around the world. How do this things start? A prankster (someone who could be like me) types up a story that affects most of his target audience, it almost reads like fact, kind of close to the truth but a little bit of absurdity mixed in to get the monkey in us curious and our brain says, hmm, I should tell others about this. The hook is sunk. The Mark forwards the email to everyone that they know and those people do the same and in a couple hundred days, most of the world has seen it. A majority of folk are taking the subject as fact since it came from reputable sources. (I hope I don’t get pulled over by a “so called” email savvy California Highway Patrol Officer who thought the new laws were real, you can still get tickets for most of those items but the fines just aren’t as high as the email states)
Not many people take time to read blogs but the most stubborn of us can’t help but open up emails, sigh and I can expect to find them in my inbox along with all of the jokes and chain letters that promise me true love if I forward them. Sorry I'm not looking.
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