Urge to Glurge February 5, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Communication, Entertainment, Beliefs, Vision , 2 comments
The term glurge was coined in 1998 by contributor Pat Chapin at Snopes.com and has divided people’s opinions towards both sides of the love/hate spectrum. Here are a couple of definitions:
Glurge: n. & v.
- The sending of inspirational (often supposedly ‘true’) tales that conceal much darker meanings than the uplifting moral lessons they purport to offer, and that undermine their messages by fabricating and distorting historical fact in the guise of offering a ‘true story’.
- A neologism describing a certain kind of melodramatic, saccharine story. The defining characteristic of glurge is that, while its purpose is to make the reader happy (and possibly teach a moral lesson), the feel-good aspect is so overdone that some readers are likely to be nauseated rather than inspired. It often has a religious theme and is most commonly circulated via e-mail in the form of a chain letter.
Here are a few sources if you’re interested in the genre:
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/
http://glurge.com/
http://www.wolaver.org/Humor/glurge.htm
And these links lead to anti-glurge sites and opinions:
http://www.antwon.com/other/glurge-scam1.html
http://www.gregvail.com/sys-tmpl/glurgehoax/
Glurge may be found in e-mails or SMS messages sometimes telling you that bad things will happen to you if you don’t forward the story to a given amount of your contacts. Then again, snopes has done a good job in referencing the most common glurge stories and it goes to show that some tales do stand at a sufficient level of veracity. The question is then how sugar-coated the writing ought to be to make the best impact.
While I do believe in tales serving a good purpose as well, I got saturated by glurge after a day and haven’t thought much of it until I decided to write this entry. I would therefore classify my thoughts on the matter as quite indifferent. To each his own. But attempting to evoke guilt for not passing it forward is just annoying. So what are your opinions about the issue? Does glurge inspire you and keep you hungry or is it a disgusting phenomenon that is rooted in deluded and wishful thinking? How about 9/11 glurge?
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Snopes December 4, 2006
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Links], Creativity, Entertainment, Society, Weird, History , 3 comments
To keep you updated on more outstanding internet sources I’d like to recommend snopes.com. It’s a place for any (un)thinkable urban legend stories, which Barbara and David P. Mikkelson have taken the effort to classify as true, false or undetermined since 1995. As usual though, I’ll let everyone decide for themselves what can be determined as true or untrue. 
As the front page reveals, it’s most practical to browse the database by category of interest. They even have their own categories for Coca Cola, Disney, hurricane Katrina and the Titanic. Whatever catches your attention, the color-coded blobs in front of the titles tell you the current state of veracity for each story. But if you want to keep up-to-date with new entries, there’s one added just about every day in the ‘what’s new’ section.
If you want to participate further, join the message boards. They don’t seem very organized so you won’t find me over there writing anything, but just in case you’re a forum junkie you could take a peek. What I do recommend is the FAQ/Site info section and the glossary page if you’re more inclined to find answers to why, how, who and what snopes.com is about. As they state it, it’s a reference page, so it’s not an ultimate source of knowledge. Additionally, they share links on a daily basis to external news sources that depict weird reports around the globe.
So even though I’m somewhat against following daily TV news out of the fear-driven content they spill out to the masses, I do recommend other sources that leave more food for thought - and are entertaining as well. It’s not like I’m all for personal growth that takes time, frustration and willpower. We all need some fun and recreation as well to keep going. It just so happens that learning something new all the time can be a fun part of life, no matter what the subject is. You just have to switch between the two sides of your brain every once in a while to help it grow more easily as well.
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