I guess everyone who's of a certain age and has a wide enough array of friends who know how to email has this problem.  Crap emails that get forwarded to you.

You know the kind.  Emails that explain how the president isn't a citizen, or is a bad citizen (won't salute the flag), or his wife is mean.  Emails that complain loudly about immigrants not speaking English and stealing things.  Emails that say that our service men and women put their lives on the line for our freedom of speech so shut up.  Emails with weepy stories and pictures of miracles.

I had one guy at work send me an extremely unfunny, hostile joke about Arabs.  ONE OF OUR CO-WORKERS WAS AN ARAB, BORN IN SUDAN.  And the joke-sender didn't even dislike that co-worker, they got along fine.

I have to wonder what the thought process is, if that's what you can even call it.  Do they read it, get some kind of "fuck yeah" feeling, and then forward it on?

When I've responded, some people seem surprised.  I've sometimes done the "reply to all" with the results of a little Googling, and I've actually gotten people mad at me for "embarrassing" the sender that way, as if the sender wrote it.

The usual resonse is that investigating claims made in an email is "taking it too seriously."  At first that surprised me — why would the supposed investigation the original author did be okay, but someone else looking into it be wrong?

I think it's that they believe the written word is something that comes from some outside authority.  Such authority isn't given to mere mortals like you and I.  It's as if they pulled a page out of a textbook and are waving it around.

There are two consequences to this:

1. The person believes they've got authority now, conferred upon them by the email.  They are empowered, smart, and right.
2. The person has an out, because they didn't actually write the email.  So if it's wrong, it's not their fault.  "If you don't like it, delete it."

All the benefits of having written it, but none of the downside.