From: matus [matus@snet.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 7:53 PM
To: matus@snet.net
Subject: MFD List - Even skeptics falling for rumors after attacks 

(With the Anthrax attacks as of late it is understandable that people are
getting antsy and a little worried.  Even some people, as this article
points out, who do not forward urban legends sounding emails, are feeling
the 'better safe than sorry' drive and forwarding many of these emails off.
Recently one has been going around about someone dating a person described
as 'Arab' 'Middle Eastern' or 'Afghan' (17 of the 23 people involved in the
9/11 attack were, in fact, from Pakistan) He disappeared, so the story goes,
the day of the attack, never to be heard from again.  He sent her a letter
begging her not to fly on the 11th (Odd that he wouldn't know if someone he
cared about was flying somewhere the next day) and to stay out of malls on
the 31st of October.  It turns out that there was never any letter forwarded
to the FBI and this letter was a hoax.  This and many others like it are
being promulgated to heighten fears, which is likely the agenda of the
persons responsible for sending the Anthrax infested letters out.  To combat
these wayward and unfounded rumors and urban legends, the Committee for
Scientific Investigations of Claims of the Paranormal have published a hoax
reference page located at http://www.csicop.org/hoaxwatch/ including Charity
Scams, Nostradamus 'prediction' Coincidence, demons in the smoke, among many
others.  Its worth a look. - Mike)

Even skeptics falling for rumors after attacks

By Amy Argetsinger
The Washington Post

The e-mail from an old roommate had the whiff of too many hoaxes, from its
dubious opening - "my friend's friend was dating this guy from Afghanistan
... " - to the overheated warning at the end: Everyone avoid the malls on
Halloween!

Mary Beth Goodman didn't believe it. But since Sept. 11, who knew what
to think?

"No one would have believed the towers would fall," the 28-year-old
Washington, D.C., resident said. "If that's the environment we live in, you
can never be too safe."

Goodman, a government lawyer, forwarded the e-mail to several friends.

The warning, it turns out, has no basis in reality, law-enforcement
officials said. Neither does the one about hundreds of trucks reported
stolen,
supposedly by terrorists planning another massive assault.

Nor, say other authorities, are many other rumors that have spread since the
terrorist attacks, such as the one about Osama bin Laden profiting from
worldwide soft-drink sales or Peter Jennings accusing President Bush of
cowardice on the air.

Stories like these, often called urban legends, have long thrived in U.S.
culture, astonishing but seemingly credible tales that are passed from
friend to friend, many picking up speed with the growth of the Internet.

But since Sept. 11, rumors like these have gained new currency. Where
once this genre of story had the power to amuse and astonish, now it also
can cause anxiety.

Even some of the most skeptical, hoax-savvy people - who never fell for
the one about the poodle in the microwave or the drunk who woke up to
find his kidneys stolen - are heeding the new crop of warnings and
nervously passing them on.

"You feel so stupid forwarding these," a free-lance journalist from
Baltimore e-mailed her friends, "but I still think I won't be at a mall on
10/31."

She was talking about the particularly compelling warning. It involves a
woman who was dating a Middle Eastern man - in some versions
described as Arab, in others as Afghan - who vanished in early
September, leaving a note in which he warns her not to board any airplanes
Sept. 11 or visit any shopping malls on Halloween.

Most versions go on to claim the woman gave the letter to FBI investigators.
But agency officials say it's not true, and there is no reason to believe
malls are a target Oct. 31 or any other day.

Where do these stories come from? The rumor seemed credible to many
because it circulated in an e-mail whose author, a California woman, had
left her name and phone number at the bottom. Apparently deluged with
inquiries, Laura Katsis' employer, Volt Information Sciences, has shut down
her old phone extension and e-mail service. Queries are met with a recorded
statement or automatic e-mail response denying direct knowledge of the
incident.

Experts on urban legends are less interested in where the stories come from
than why and how they spread. Barbara Mikkelson of Los Angeles spends
her spare time checking and debunking urban legends for the popular
www.snopes2.com Web site. She said they are "spontaneous and naturally
occurring expressions" of the fears that well up in times of crisis.

The shopping-mall rumor, she said, "is hugely comforting in the strangest
way. We're reducing terrorism - which can strike anywhere, anytime, to
anybody - to 'We know the place and time, so just avoid being there.'

"It puts a sense of control back in an out-of-control world."

But an urban legend also can threaten to stop a city in its tracks. In
Massachusetts, state and municipal officials braced for a terrorist strike
after an e-mail circulated stating that "a few drunk Arab men" had warned a
Boston bartender of bloodshed on Sept. 22.

Urban legends also can sustain false hope. For weeks after the collapse of
the World Trade Center, relatives of the missing clung to the story of a man
who had survived a plunge from the 81st floor - virtually unscathed! - by
"riding the wave" of the falling building. The story was based on brief and
early news reports about a man pulled from the wreckage Sept. 12.

In fact, authorities later amended their account to say the man had made it
to the ground floor by foot before the tower collapsed.

www.matus1976.com