posted
He sees you when you're sleeping, He knows when you're awake, He knows if you read your Bible, Or if you masturbate...
-------------------- "There is a race between mankind and the universe. Mankind is trying to build bigger, better, faster, and more foolproof machines. The universe is trying to build bigger, better, and faster fools. So far the universe is winning." -Albert Einstein Posts: 1058 | From: Yakima, WA | Registered: Dec 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I hate glurge. I hate it all so much, for so many reasons. Glurge chain mail, heck, most all chain mail is always an attempt at psychological bullying and manipulation, and what's so frustrating is there is no shortage of fools willing to be emotionally battered by this dreck, and pass it on to their "friends" and spread the poisonous garbage. They'd rather send me stupid prayer chains and preachy friendship chain mail that tells me what friendship is and that I must send it back or I'm a heartless wench with no friends who's too lazy to press the forward button and pass on the ever so personal, sincere *cough* warm fuzzy feeling - than send me a personally written "Hey Capri, I've been thinking of you, how's things?" And so many people ignore my debunks to chain mail, preferring to keep sending more chain mail, if not to me, they continue to spread the contamination to other people - yes, I sometimes find out about it.
I hate glurges that claim some famous person said or wrote something they didn't, I hate so-called Christian glurges that were probably made up for the most part by people who wanted to see how gullible Christians could be, and I get so mad at people continually falling for this dumb crap. Sick of glurges that snivel and whine about how terribly persecuted and oppressed Christians are, because prayer isn't allowed in school or because there are more joke fwds being circulated than religious ones and that Jesus must be ashamed of you if you don't pass on a badly written piece of crap religious spam. I hate it so much when the majority of Christians prove to be such gullible idiots by passing this junk on, and I am a Christian. So I get insulted first at the idea that these people thought I would appreciate and believe this stuff, IOW they think I must be as clueless as they are. And then the next insult is the embarrassment I feel for them displaying their stupidity by spamming their address books with this fake religion, because they believe anything that has the word "Jesus" in it, even if it's phony as the day is long. I'm insulted because it reflects badly on Christians as a whole online.
About religious glurges, another one I really hate is "The Bridge" the story about a father who had to let a train run over his kid to save the passengers on a train or some such situation I'll never face and shouldn't even waste my time pondering about. The moral was that the father was like God and the kid was like Jesus, and the passengers were the rest of us sinners who didn't know or appreciate the great sacrifice he made. First heard that story at Christian camp when I was a teenager. Hated it. Got it in an email from a teenager later. Still hated it. Excuse me but - we don't need another sacrifice story. Isn't it already more than bad enough that Jesus was crucified? And not only Jesus, but tons of other people were during that time. And that just goes to show, things were never idillic in any era, no matter how far back in time. IMO, things were a heck of a lot worse in so many ways.
Glurges that go on about how much better it is to be American and how good it is to kill the Muslims. Or glurges that whine about how supposedly anti-USA and anti-Christian France or some other country that doesn't agree with the U.S. 100% on everything to do with the war is. Besides, some of us live north of the US boarder or in the UK and just don't care to get emails that yell "Thank God I Am An American!" As if those of us not born in or not currently living in America are somehow less blessed or short-changed.
So-called pro-life chain mail. Many people are already here, in need of help and homes, and these chain letters go on about fictional babies that aren't even born yet and never will be, because they are fictional fetuses made up in chain letters.
I hate glurges that preach at you, telling you how you should feel and how you should react to any given situation, or you get judged as somehow wrong or inferior if you don't. Somebody sent "The Fence" to one of my email lists the other night. I gave a trite reply, biting back a string of really nasty things I wanted to say, deleted the offending post, and apologized to the whole list for this member's careless posting of a chain letter. He knows I detest fwds, did he really think that by trimming out the "fwd" in the subject and the "Send this to everyone" in the footer could get it excepted as something other than chain mail? Or maybe someone did that and he, being rather new to the net, got took. It was a story about a father who got his little boy to stop losing his temper by banging nails into a fence. Really stupid little piece that basically tells you not to get angry because you scar people by your angry actions. I got angry. There are times when anger is perfectly justified, and the result of scarring rather than the cause of it. This little glurge might work for tiny tots who are still riding trikes and screaming when they can't have every candy bar on the store shelf. But the thing fails miserably to impress a jaded adult who's faced a lot of things where anger is definitely the right response.
Glurges that exploit tragedies, 9/11 has been mentioned, and others. I'm glad no one ever sent me that unspeakable "Angels in the Valley" I only read about that one here on this thread and find it to be tasteless, self-righteous, and sick beyond belief! In my opinion, if those so-called angels were worth their salt, they would've hung that rapist up by the....ahem you get the idea and then some - saving all humanity from the basilisk. But the "Christian" readers of the damnable thing are supposed to be glad the girl who prayed got spared while another girl still got raped!? WTBFH!? *violent hurl* Nobody ever better send me that one, or the response will melt their monitor!
The one about the boy who agreed to die to save his sister? YUCK! What is the purpose of people sending on this depressing crap other than to make their friends depressed? Because that's all these dying kid chain mails ever do. "Send this on to all your friends and show them how much you care!" Yeah right. I care so much that I'll ruin your morning coffee break with this unrealistic and depressing pile of schytte? Not!
I hate glurges designed to make you cry, whether it's out of sadness or because it tries to induce a feeling of profundity. It becomes anything but profound when you see it cropping up on mailing lists and web forums, from all manner of unrelated posters, and one story begins to look pretty much like another.
Glurges like "The Rose" or the one about Shay, the disabled boy who played baseball I think it was? Because they send a clear message that you have to be young and "beautiful" to be attractive or that you have to be pitied if you have a disability. Or in other cases, the message is that rich people are snobs and poor people are slobs.
Glurges about animals. Nuff said.
Glurges about gender, why it's so much better to be a girl or guy. One particularly tasteless "positive" to being a woman is "We got off the Titanic first". Argh!! Besides the fact that I wasn't yet so much as a molecule in 1912, so wasn't there to get off any ship before anyone else, I find this to be a horrible trivializing of a tragic event, all for the sake of a "Rah rah I am woman, hear me roar!" chain letter.
Glurges that make like little kids are angels even when they misbehave, and how they are always smarter and better than the stupid bumbling and uncaring adults all around them, who aren't happy. And how the kid's misbehaving isn't really misbehaving, it's just a lonely little angel who wasn't center of everybody's attention for, oh, maybe two seconds. You should see what I did to the Rachel Arlington glurge poem and chain letter. I started out really annoyed, but ended up making myself laugh while unglurging the sappy poem piece by piece.
Or the ones that go on about how much better it is to be a child than an adult, or how much better it was way back when. I really like the point someone made early on about these glurges. They don't take into account that there was segregation, honestly, that's the first thing that comes to mind whenever I see one of these things that mourns the passing of the 40s and 50s.
My "Sound Off" page is full of sounding off whenever I get chain mail. It keeps me from breaking things or sending people really angry emails every time they stupidly send forwards. It also has some rants and neat debunks from other people as well. http://soundoff.pbwiki.comPosts: 63 | From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
senshisteph
I'll Be Home for After Christmas Sales
On a general level, it makes no sense and the writer comes of as a sanctimonious coward (letting his kids take the rap for something he'd done and then 'philosophising' about it). On a personal level, cause I have some very ugly memories of that kind of 'we're going to stand here until someone owns up' lineups (in the case of TAFKAMS - the asshole formerly known as my stepdad - including variations such as 'I'm going to beat you all with a shoe in turn until someone owns up' and 'I'm going to threaten to rip out your baby sister's toenails with pliers until somebody owns up'). Sorry, just brought back too much crap for me.
-------------------- 七転び八起き nana korobi ya oki 'fall down seven times, get up eight.' Posts: 155 | From: Nagoya, Japan | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's appalling that some parents or guardians treat children this way. And then the parents in the one about the sofa compound the abuse by being the cause of the stain in the first place, and then they or tather, he, has the nerve to turn it into some kind of lame attempt at philosophy. If I wrote the thing, it would have a very different outcome and a very different message. Maybe I should try to take a crack at it and give these poor excuses for parents a lesson they won't forget.
Posts: 63 | From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Those recent relationship ones... I'm this girl/guy/whatever.
I suppose it really has mostly to do with them opening certain wounds I thought were closed. :\ Everytime I read one like that it makes me want to become a hermit more.
ETC there is no such thing as "onces."
-------------------- Okay, just to make it clear, there is a real world out there. No really, there is. I checked. Posts: 886 | From: Suffolk, VA | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes. The sofa one is probably the result of "Nice Guy" and "Nice Girl" marrying and having kids. With the girl wanting to be treated "like a princess" and being so cared about, and the "nice guy" not wanting to ever do anything to make her unhappy, he agreed to get the mauve sofa, and would rather she vent her anger out on one of the innocent poor hapless kids than get mad at him for staining her precious sofa. Anything to keep this "nice girl" from flipping out and calling him the same names she used on every last ex-boyfriend that dumped her before he came along.
Talk about a nightmare, huh? What started out as a match made in heaven for the two of them, turns out to be hex for him and especially their poor kids, not even the infant is spared. I ought to write about a natural disaster that hits, damaging everything but the sofa, maybe that would straighten those parents' priorities out.
Posts: 63 | From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
To me, the most offensive are the ones where some good Christian person escapes a terrible fate because he/she is just so good and prays so much, while some other poor sod is just SOL. Angels in the alley being the prime example. I. hate. those. things. I can't even imagine what kind of personality comes up with stories like that.
(edited typo)
Posts: 10 | From: North Carolina | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes. I screamed and hurled something when learning about that "Angels in the Valley" as well. It suggests that rape is acceptable if it's done to someone who didn't pray hard enough, and that is the sickest, most offensive thing I've seen in a glurge yet. Then to put God into it, and what ticks me off is so many Christians falling for and passing this kind of sh** around, makes me extremely incensed. I know I railed about this one further back in the thread.
The sofa glorifies at worst, or ignores at least, the child abuse that goes on, and the "Angels" one condones rape. Then there's the one about the little boy who dies to save his sister, and "The Bridge" I'm not exactly sure what order they would come into the top four sickest most hypocritical glurges, but they definitely belong somewhere in the top 10 worst examples of so-called Christian chain mail. I'd have to vote "Angels" being first for deplorable content. But many come in second and close third/fourth etc.
Posts: 63 | From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm going to update my entry. The Pepto-Bismol sofa wins out for me, simply because the father let his kids get blamed for something when he didn't have to.
The angels in the alley is a close second, only because you're not expected to sympathize with any of the rapists.
posted
The one I hate the most is Brave New Gay Marriage World. The woman in it is so outta the loop of reality it's unbelievable. I feel sorry for her kids being brought up with such a warped world view. Her husband needs shooting as well for his ridiculous 'They eat dinner late here' comment.
-------------------- Dactingyl is meant to sound a bit like Christingle.
It's not very good but I couldn't think of anything else.
Sorry. Posts: 257 | From: Hants, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Amigone201: The angels in the alley is a close second, only because you're not expected to sympathize with any of the rapists.
You mean rapists VICTIMS, right?
-------------------- This Space For Rent. Posts: 210 | From: Glasgow, Scotland | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
It sounds to me like Amigone is saying in the couch glurge, you're expected to sympathize for the only person who is clearly in the wrong - the husband - where you aren't expected to sympathize with the rapists in Angels in the Alley. That makes the couch one just a bit worse.
-------------------- Another lifetime I'd have fallen in love with you Swept away by my feelings, ashamed and confused But just now it's enough to be walking with you Let the mystery play as it will! -Lui Collins Posts: 2669 | From: Jouy en Josas, France | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Do songs count? I can't STAND the Christmas song about the little kids who want to buy gold shoes for their mom because she's sick and "we want her to look beautiful/ when Mommy meets Jesus tonight." First off: this song came out right after my own mother passed away, so it instilled an immediate hatred. If I knew my Mom was going to die, probably that very night, I would not leave her side, especially to go buy tacky gold shoes that she won't wear except to be buried in. And do you really think the mother would want her kids to go out and spend what little money they have on something that's going to never be used? If they're that poor (the impression I got), I'd assume she'd want them to have food, shelter, etc. before giving herself shoes. That's one of the problems I have with the 9/11 kids glurges, too... I agree, it's very sad for everyone who lost their life and their families and everything, but I've seen some glurges that talk about how those families have been ripped apart, never to be mended (or some such). That doesn't count for any other person who's lost somebody in a different way?
-------------------- It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters. -Stephen King Posts: 481 | From: North Brunswick, NJ | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
There is a commercial that is running here in Georgia. It has to be the worst kind of glurge and just irritates the crap out of me every time I see it (Can a commercial be a glurge? It's like someone wrote a glurge and decided to film it). A female firefighter has just rescued a woman and her baby. She then talks about how her life was in peril once, before she was even born. Her mother was (she looks down with melodramatic, pained smile at this point) poor, young, not ready. She could have had an abortion, but chose to keep her. Now, her mother must be proud to know that her choice "saved more than one life".
Posts: 64 | From: Atlanta, GA | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
That sounds like an adaptation of the "you just killed Beethoven" glurge.
-------------------- Another lifetime I'd have fallen in love with you Swept away by my feelings, ashamed and confused But just now it's enough to be walking with you Let the mystery play as it will! -Lui Collins Posts: 2669 | From: Jouy en Josas, France | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
And I thought the commercial glurge about dawn dish cleaner was bad. The one about the duck that starts out with "If this bird could talk, she would tell you how dawn saved her life." But the pro-life one is even worse.
- - disclaimer: assigned member title does not reflect anything about this poster.
Posts: 63 | From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
Joe Bentley
Ding Dong! Merrily on High Definition TV
posted
The one that bugs me the most is the glurge in which the Marine or other military person knocks out the atheist professor.
Example:
quote: An atheist professor was teaching a college class and he told the class that he was going to prove that there is no God.
He said, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you 15 minutes!"
Ten minutes went by.
The professor kept taunting God, saying, "Here I am, God. I'm still waiting."
He got down to the last couple of minutes and a Marine just released from active duty, and newly registered in the class, walked up to the professor, hit him full force in the face, and sent him flying from his platform.
The professor struggled up, obviously shaken and yelled, "What's the matter with you? Why did you do that?"
The Marine replied, "God was busy, so He sent me."
The idea that as someone in the military is either my duty to protect someone else's belief system, one which I don't believe in myself and for which one of the most basic and necessary Constitutional rights of which I and every other member of the Armed Forces is sworn to protect is that of the seperation of church and state or that because I'm in the military I just have to be a Christain, is incrediably assanine.
A close second is any glurge which promotes the unsupportable, unrealistic, and downright false myth of "The Good Old Days."
-------------------- "Existence has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long." - Rorschach, The Watchmen Posts: 8929 | From: Norfolk, Virginia | Registered: Jun 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Any and all MyGlurge get to me, but the ones that are written in script form are the worst offenders. Every time I see one, I feel like I'm reading the (hideously poorly written) teleplay for some horribly melodramatic, badly acted Lifetime movie.
I wonder if that's where the Lifetime movie people get some of their ideas from...
-------------------- Where's the challenge in wassailing at Christmas? The place is lousy with wassail! Posts: 232 | From: Raleigh, NC | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Glurge in general is antithetical to critical thinking. It includes no citations or references, no journalistic "who, what, where," etc. Give me a name, a date, a place, corroborating witnesses as to the account, if not to the event, or it's just a rumor.
Some are interesting or clever folklore, but indeed, some are offensive, such as the Marine/professor example that implies it's acceptable to use violence or coercion to express disapproval of someone else's beliefs - or lack thereof. Also, any that imply that the bad things that are part of life, may be averted because of prayer or righteousness, which also implies that the people who are killed, raped, etc, were not faithful enough. The evil harm the innocent all the time, and sometimes a few victims or would-be victims survive or escape, some of whom may be "righteous," and some who may not be. It is offensive to imply that people who escape a particular ill fate were more worthy in God's eyes than those who didn't; who are we to judge?
Having my degree in cultural anthopology, I understand what folklore is, and like religion, its purposes, but that does not excuse passing off rumors or outright fiction as truths, for the purpose of providing edification or inspiration, or to make some point or lesson that we should behave in such-and-such a way.
For the record, I am also a practicing Christian (and still practicing, until I get it right!), active in the LDS ("Mormon") Church, although theologically liberal. I am, therefore, a believer, but I believe that glurge is harmful to both religion and to the individual, as it emotionalizes - like a sappy country song - true spirituality, while undermining the truth (or, at least, traditional mythology, such as scriptures) with contemporary beliefs and agendas. Did not Jesus say, "the truth shall make you free?" Yet glurge, or "faith-promoting rumors," as we Mormons call such folklore, acts as poor substitutes for true, verifiable, inspirational stories (I grant that sometimes names are changed to protect the privacy of the subjects of the stories, but when that occurs, the story has effectively changed to folklore and rumor - glurge), and glurge is often contrary to accepted teachings of the Bible, or what-have-you.
Besides the potential harm to true religion by spreading untruths, and in discrediting religion in general with silly, trivial nonsense, what I find offensive are the typically right-wing messages that are mass-mailed and multiply-forwarded, always with the multi-colored and sized fonts, and mingled in with images of American flags (patriotism - the last refuge of scoundrels), crosses, and 1950s-looking white children praying - what a load of crap! Who makes up this stuff? Who believes it? A bunch of intellectual pygmies who substitute emotion for critical thinking. I always check these message at Snopes and they invariably are false. Often they have something to do with why the "Ten Commandments" should be allowed to be displayed in courtrooms or public schools, or are diatribes against the ACLU, accusing them of wanting to remove cross-shaped gravemarkers from federal military cemeteries. Clearly glurge is one of the propaganda tools of the demagogues of politics as well as religion, and not only truth, but liberty, is a potential victim of these rumors.
Half-truths do not a truth make. Whether in the realm of religion or politics, glurge invites us to abandon reason and logic, and to feed on a diet of spiritual, emotional, and intellectual junk food; it's nothing but fluff, like cotton candy. Just as the mingling of church and state is harmful to both (and certainly to liberty!), as mixing of science and religion degrades both, the use of glurge to instill good feelings or to promote religious agendas ultimately undermines positive religious beliefs and true spirituality.
Mixing such nonsense with the teachings of the Bible or other religious texts and principles leads to doubts, not faith, among the believers. Remember when the boys on South Park had an existential crisis, when after learning about the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus, they then doubted the existence of God, Moses, and Jesus, and even the reality of their own existence?
When we mix lies, half truths, stories of questionable veracity, and dubious morals or messages, with religious teachings, we risk alienating those who are searching for true faith, inspiration and comfort, when they eventually realize the contradictions and emotional manipulativeness of these rumors. In that sense, all glurge should be offensive to a sincere believer of any faith.
Glurge, when analyzed as folklore, is revealing of the values held by our Christian sub-cultures, or whatever group, but as a mode of religious teaching or inspiration it is highly questionable - and lazy. Why not just use the stories from sacred texts, or true historical accounts (such as personal experiences or family histories), instead of a bunch or unverified chain e-mails?
-------------------- Only when we remake ourselves can we remake the world. - Outer Limits (2001) Posts: 559 | From: Santa Cruz, CA | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I agree with what you said. My LDS seminary teacher used to call the book "Especially for Mormans"; a book of Morman glurge, "Especially For Morons". Because many people prefered to look these up and teach them instead of taking the time to look up teachings in the scriptures.
BTW, welcome.
-------------------- It's like they took a bunch of movies, put them in a blender and turned it on really fast!-Mystery Science Theater 3000 Posts: 2603 | From: Magna, Utah | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
