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| Internet rumors and hoaxes have found new life with the tragic events of September 11 2001. Some, like those involving bogus predictions of Nostradamus and symbols in Microsoft's Wingdings font, are recycled folklore. Others -- including doctored photos of the World Trade Center and rumors that CNN used 1991 footage to show Palestinians celebrating the terrorist attacks -- are originals. For those who investigate and debunk urban legends and Internet hoaxes, the last week has been as taxing to their Web servers as it has been on their time. Some, such as the Urban Legends Reference Pages (www.snopes2.com), are handling 500,000 Web visitors a day, forcing curtailment of graphics, advertising and message board features that add to the load. "We've been just getting hammered by the traffic," said Barbara Mikkelson, who runs the Urban Legends site with her Web designer husband, David. David Emery, a volunteer who has run About.com's Urban Legends and Folklore (urbanlegends.about.com) for four years, said his normal e-mail flow has ballooned from about 50 per day to more than 200. "The majority of them contain rumors and e-mail folklore directly related to the tragedy," Emery said. "I can't say the amount of material is increasing at this point, but it certainly hasn't tapered off." Emery and others at About.com were trying Friday to chase down the validity of an e-mail that describes an incident alleged to have occurred Sept. 11 in McFarland. The e-mail begins: "Thought you'd like to know what happened in a town north of Bakersfield California. After finish reading this, please forward this story on to others so that your nation and around the world will know about those who laughed when they found out about the tragic events in New York, PA and the Pentagon." The e-mail then describes a Budweiser delivery worker pulling his company's products from a McFarland convenience store Sept. 11 -- shortly after the terrorist attacks -- after seeing "two Arabs" in the store, "whooping and hollering and really cheering it up. It was obvious they were elated with what had happened earlier." The e-mail continued, "The employee walked in, proceeded to pull every single product his beverage company provided and left with an incredible grin on his face. He told them never to bother and call for a delivery again." One problem: The events described never happened, said Dennis Muleady, marketing director for Advance Beverage of Bakersfield, the Budweiser distributor for the McFarland area. The Nostradamus connection More evidence of the American preoccupation with war-related rumors was graphically demonstrated last week when "Nostradamus" replaced "sex" as the No. 1 search term on some top Internet search engines. "Nostradamus received more searches in one week than any other subject -- since we began tracking it -- two years ago," Aaron Shatz of the Lycos 50 Daily Report told The Associated Press. "Nostradamus was misspelled in more than 100 ways and received 12.5 times as many searches as former No. 1, Dragonball -- a Japanese animated cartoon -- which fell to No. 8." The Mikkelsons and other debunkers have gone to elaborate lengths to search out the sources of the Nostradamus predictions. Some of the quotations skittering through e-mail channels are traceable, they said, to a Web page erected to show how easily Nostradamus' prophecies can be massaged into compelling predictions of cataclysmic events. Other Sept. 11-related hoaxes are far more troubling. They include: * Photo manipulations, a new type of Internet contrivance. One photograph shows a tourist standing on the rooftop observation deck of the World Trade Center. The man is oblivious to a commercial jet that appears to be approaching impact just below. Skeptics say you can tell the photo is a fake because the camera wouldn't have survived the explosion and 110-story fall to the ground, the tower in question doesn't have an outdoor observation deck and the man's heavy coat seems out of place in summer. Photo manipulations represent a new way of blurring the lines between truth and reality, but they are equally damaging, debunkers said. * Fictitious requests from NASA that people step out on their lawns with lighted candles at a specified hour so that a satellite picture can be made to capture the nation's unity. * Bogus news accounts linking Osama bin Laden to the production of gum arabic, an emulsifier in soft drinks and other commercial products. * The CNN footage rumor, which sparked so many inquiries that the network, its stringers and those who filed the film report issued detailed accounts of the filming and how it was acquired. * E-mail reports that a deadly "Klingerman virus" is being dispersed via U.S. mail on blue sponges sent to random American homes. This hoax was first debunked in May 2000. The debunkers continually warn Internet users to be skeptical of frightening or unusual reports they pass around to friends and family. But no matter how many warnings are issued, rumors and hoaxes persist. "This is a very difficult time for everybody," said Mrs. Mikkelson. "It's a time of heightened emotion and, therefore, lowered common sense. Crisis brings people together and produces more rumors because we're talking more." The Internet, of course, has made communication faster and easier for millions. "On the one hand, it's a wonderful thing that we don't just have to rely on CNN and The New York Times to find out what's going on in the world," Emery said. "On the other, we're still learning -- and it's very important that we learn -- how unreliable the information that comes to us via e-mail and the Net can be." At various times in America's history, state and federal governments have actually set up rumor control centers to refute prevalent hoaxes. Generally, Emery said, such efforts have failed. "One reason rumor-mongering is rampant is that we don't always trust authorities to tell us the truth," Emery said. "Sometimes we don't even trust the media to tell us the truth, and so you see rumors functioning as a sort of shadow news whereby people share -- or think they're sharing -- the untold truth." A lot of people have an itchy forward finger, not even bothering to think twice before shooting off unverified rumors to everyone they know." Ironically, the Internet is also capable of quickly yielding the information needed to assess whether a rumor has any basis. "For almost every falsehood transmitted on the Net," Emery said, "the truth is also there to be found. The challenge, I think, is for people to accept the personal responsibility that implies." |
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