fracas

Your Cheating Part

Last week’s Sunday Snopes feature dealt with a claim that drug dealers were flavoring crystal methampetamine with Strawberry Quik to both attract young customers as well as cover up the chemical taste of the drug. That claim was true.

Anyone who uses email is bound to, at some point or another, receive an email containing a ‘warning’ about some terrible crime or event that they should beware of. These emails always tell the recipient to pass it along to everyone they know in order to warn others and ’save’ someone else from the same terrible fate. Most often, these emails contain some sort of claim relating the event or crime in the warning, to a specific location or police department in order to convince the recipient of its authenticity.

In mostly every case, these email warnings are hoaxes, nothing more than malicious chain letters that scare the uninformed into becoming pawns in the spamming of hundreds of thousands of people.

Snopes.com is a credible place to verify such stories you might receive. As a regular Sunday feature, fracas will highlight a different story each week to do our part in stopping or lessening the impact of the distribution of such stories.

Sunday Snopes Snippets

Sunday, May 20, 2007:

Claim: Photographs show a Porsche with the words “Cheating Bastard” keyed into the side.

Status: True… Partly.

[Quote Snopes] The lyrics to the song “Before He Cheats” (popularized by Carrie Underwood) reference a familiar female revenge fantasy for striking back at an unfaithful partner — wreaking havoc on his most prized possession, his automobile:

I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped-up 4-wheel drive;
carved my name into his leather seats.
I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights;
slashed a hole in all four tires.
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats.

Accordingly, when one encounters a shiny new Porsche with the words “CHEATING BASTARD” apparently keyed in the side, the natural assumption is that the car’s owner was caught philandering, and his jealous girlfriend (or wife) took out her anger by simultaneously ruining the automobile’s appearance and broadcasting news of a scoundrel’s infidelity to the world at large.

The images shown above are real pictures; however, they’re not a genuine example of that form of revenge. Rather, the supposedly vandalized car is merely an attention-getting device that plays on expected assumptions to drum up business for a garage. [End Quote Snopes]

I chose this story because in the past week, my daughter and I (who both rather enjoy the Carrie Underwood song) actually had a discussion about these kinds of themes in songs. Kelly Clarkson also released a song called Since U Been Gone, where the theme of the video is how she trashes the apartment of her cheating boyfriend. While it seems this kind of theme makes for a good song and entertaining videos, it’s important for adults to make sure the younger set (yes, those 8-12 year olds are listening to popular music) understand these are not actions that should happen outside of a music video, it’s not real and never should be.

For other details regarding this story please click here to read the snopes.com write-up.

Going back to the car and the marketing scheme? Obviously a winner, since it ended up on Snopes and here at Fracas. Whether or not it ever prompted some individual (incapable of reasonable thought and critical thinking) to mimic the damage they might have thought was real, I don’t know. I hope the additional business gained was for the attention, not that of other keyed cars needing repair because in that case, someone also probably has a nice criminal record to go along with a judgement for reimbursement of the repairs. That’s hardly a way to “get even” with a cheater.

Please bookmark fracas. Your next Sunday Snopes feature will be posted on Sunday, May 27, 2007!