Recently, two well intentioned colleague forwarded an email claiming that designer Tommy Hilfiger made this world shocking comment on the Oprah Winfrey show: ‘If I knew that blacks and Asians were going to wear my clothes, I would have never designed them.’

The mail ended itself with a call for a boycott of all Hilfiger products.

Fortunately, Tommy Hilfiger never did make this racist remark. However, it is unfortunate that this hoax, in circulation since 1996, and which has been quelled in public by even Oprah Winfrey herself on her show in Jan 11, 1999 is making its rounds again a good six and a half years since then.

Poor Tommy Hilfiger.

I have said these so many times to so many people that I am sounding like a freaking broken record.

1. Verify if something is true, before you send them on their merry way. Believe nothing of such nature when it comes as an email, even if that email claims to have come from God Himself, complete with a million terrible curses and misfortune to befall you if you failed to forward it.
2. Google is your friend. If you can’t find it on Google, then it is not true. If you can find it on Google, then there will be enough literature on the topic which will tell you about the article’s truthfulness.
3. Snopes is your friend. Most hoaxes can be found on Snopes.
4. If you are too busy to verify, then make sure you are too busy to forward them too.
5. If you are not sure even after attempting to verify, then do not forward. Love your friends by not having contribute to a hoax.

You might wonder what’s the big fuss I am making about a little thing like this if it’s just another damned hoax? But can you imagine thousands upon thousands of people out there made to believe in a lie, and they believe in it because they trusted whatever their friends sent them?

Go on and deceive your friends if you think it is nothing. Go on and abuse their trust in you by continuing to forward such junk, which contribute to the traffic that increase the burden to thousands of routers and servers out there.

So, the next time when you complain about ‘the Internet very slow’, then please remember that the Internet is probably just trying its best to clear some of the shits your have sent on their merry way, and now sent out by friends of your friends.

By the way, please don’t forward curses to your friends. Garbage like ‘Forward this to 10 people and you will be blessed or else all the shits in this world will come crashing on you’ is not a blessing. It is a damn blasted curse for f@#$ sake. Should anyone be forced to bless their friends?

Also, cut the crap about those silly shits that asks for people to stare on a screen and then pops some ghastly and scary stuff complete with loud shrieks and scary noises. There are better ways to test your friends’ courage and their guts. Admittedly, I don’t have very strong nerves and I have a weak heart, so take these shit and have it auto pop-up on your screen a few hundred times if you love them so much. Preferably say, 3:30am in the wee hours of the morning, alright?

Have a nice day.