Obviously the email sounded so frightening, it had to be forwarded because hey, with all that shit out there, you never know what might kill you tomorrow.
Now, I normally hate people who send such stuff because they spread misinformation, but it's my dad and he did it out of concern. But it really raised a few questions in my mind.
1) How is it that something you have never seen or heard happening to anyone could even be misconstrued as truth just because of an email?
Have you ever seen or heard of anyone killed by an exploding handphone plugged into the charger? I did some research and apparently there was one isolated case in India back in 2004, but that could have very well been because his phone was a crap job anyway. It's India. With the statistic of one death in what is probably a few billion cellphone uses, I would say the fatality rate is even worse than being killed by a random lightning bolt out of the sky. So since we don't even think of that happening to ourselves, why should this even be a problem? And while we're at it, why not talk about how current flowing into your computer might kill you while you're using it, or maybe your hair dryer as well. Do you even realise its the same voltage, and you never use a hair dryer unless its plugged in?
One of these will kill you tomorrow. Cue Final Destination music.
2) Why are people so ready to spread fear and misinformation?
Why is it that people are so quick to press forward to spread fear and panic through their mailboxes without bothering to check if what is being sent is true in the first place. And I really find that so many people do this nowadays. People fear what they don't understand, and because they can't be bothered to take a few extra steps to read up and understand it, they choose to be fearful and spread that fear. I guess I'm lucky in a sense because I'm so skeptical I don't buy anything unless I do my own research first, but the amount of panic that is caused by lazy people sometimes is really unnecessary.
Spot the weapon of mass destruction. Clue: It isn't the one on the left.
3) Who the hell is still forwarding those stupid emails about how if you don't forward this to 10 people you will die tomorrow?
I have never forwarded a single one of those. I'm still alive. However, the people who forward those have been placed in my block list and are dead to me. So you know what, maybe it is actually forwarding those emails to people that gets you killed in social circles.