Super Hero Guy
09-03-2005, 06:00 PM
From Snopes.com
Claim: Signing and circulating online petitions is an effective way of remedying important issues.
Status: False.
Origins: These
past few years have seen the birth of an Internet phenomenon: the e-petition. It offers instant comfort to those outraged by the latest ills of the world through its implicit assurance that affixing their names to a statement decrying a situation and demanding change will make a difference. That assurance is a severely flawed one for a multitude of reasons.
Often petitions contain no information about whom they are ultimately intended for and instead are no more than outpourings of outrage. Expressions of outrage are fine and good, but if they don't reach someone who can have impact on the core problem, they're wasted. Thus, a petition that doesn't clearly identify the intended recipient may have some small value as a way for its signers to work off angst, but as an instrument of social change it fails miserably.
It is for this reason that I have started this petition, in the hopes that all e-petitions are removed from the internet. Please sign it to help the cause.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/anti-peti
Claim: Signing and circulating online petitions is an effective way of remedying important issues.
Status: False.
Origins: These
past few years have seen the birth of an Internet phenomenon: the e-petition. It offers instant comfort to those outraged by the latest ills of the world through its implicit assurance that affixing their names to a statement decrying a situation and demanding change will make a difference. That assurance is a severely flawed one for a multitude of reasons.
Often petitions contain no information about whom they are ultimately intended for and instead are no more than outpourings of outrage. Expressions of outrage are fine and good, but if they don't reach someone who can have impact on the core problem, they're wasted. Thus, a petition that doesn't clearly identify the intended recipient may have some small value as a way for its signers to work off angst, but as an instrument of social change it fails miserably.
It is for this reason that I have started this petition, in the hopes that all e-petitions are removed from the internet. Please sign it to help the cause.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/anti-peti