Hmm... Support Our Troops (#2)... viral emails...

I got sent (yet) another email today, in the continuing Support Our Troops campaign. Only problem is that it was a rather poorly forwarded and ill-thought-out viral, tailored not to the UK population, but the American one. And I've found copious examples of it, in its' original wording, by a simple Google search... I also found what I suspect is the original idea for the viral email... an advertisement by Budweiser in the USA thanking the US Military. Here's the video.



Here're some examples of the resulting viral on Message Boards (Forums)...

• http://www.snopes.com/glurge/daughter.asp
  
• http://www.calcustom.com/red_shirt_fridays.htm
  
• http://www.speakout.com/forum_view.asp?Forum=Gun_Control&MID=139052&mMID=139052
  

And here's the Icing On The Cake: It's definitely a viral... from an Obama Presidential election support website forum, no less...

• http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4r2tk
  

Now remember: I'm Ex Territorial Army (Royal Military Police), and while the above doesn't take away the importance of supporting our troops - Hells bells, I have mates from my time in the RMP(v) that served, and others that continue to serve, over in both the sandbox and the arridbox (Iraq & Afghanistan), it should be very firmly borne in mind that heart string pullers like that tend to get some folks noses out of joint (mine included) over here in the UK.

Most especially, noses will be disjointed when someone has had the gall to use a situation that most certainly has not happened in a UK Civilian Airport (not yet, anyhow), such as in the above examples, when the forwarded email replaces an American City name with, say Birmingham, Manchester, or even London. It's simple laziness and bandwagoning, at the end of the day, and should not be tolerated.

I'm all for supporting our troops. I'm all for reminding the citizenry that our troops require our constant thoughts and well wishes, along with the financial, logistical, technological, and material support from our government that sent them there in the first place, which in some cases is sadly lacking (can you say lack of kit and equipment failures?).

However.

Be warned.

With very few exceptions (the example in the previous post is a good exception!), it's highly likely that the next person to send me a copied and ill-thought-out email on the topic may well be sent a rocket by return for having a total lack of imagination and wit on the topic.

So. Support our Troops.

Do it with flair and imagination.

Do it with pride for the effort they make on our behalf and the risk they take every day they don the uniform and put their lives on the line.

But most of all...

• Do not do it because someone suggested you do it.
  
• Do not do it because it looks "cool".
  
• Do NOT copy someone else's idea. BE ORIGINAL.
  
• Do it because you MEAN it.
  

More importantly, go visit the Help For Heroes website, and spend a little money there! It all helps and supports the troops!