Lens and Legends

I love urban legends. Who doesn't right? Well, I don't know why but it have always been an interest of mine to check and do a little research everytime I got messages or emails that smells rather urban legend-ish and needless to say, most of the time it turn out to be one.

Just now I got this message via Friendster, verbatim:

We are not geek.Pls pass this to all your friends To those who wear contact lenses, pls Remove them when you have or attend a BBQ party or whatsoever that got to do with flames...I heard a horrible true story about contact lenses...

It happened to a 21 year old guy at Malacca, he wore a pair of contact lenses during a barbecue party. While, he was barbecuing, he stared at the fire charcoals. After a few seconds, he started to scream for help and moved rapidly,jumping up and down.

No one in the party knew why. When he arrived at the Hospital, the doctor said he'll be blind permanently courtesy of the contact lenses that he worn. Contact lenses are made by plastics, and the heat from the charcoal melted his contact lenses.

Now, that sounds spooky innit? I'm not immediately jumping into conclusions here that it's a fake. I know that to someone who wears contact lens this is quite a news. Anyway, if there's anything I learn from media class, it's got to be this: don't believe everything in the media.

So then I went googling around the web and I stumble upon a few sites that talks about the very same thing as what was written in the message above. Here's one from Acuvue, a contact lens company I'm sure you're familiar with. Look at myth number 2:

Well, there you go. Straight from the horse's mouth as they say. I'm not blaming anyone here, it's nice to know that there's still people who cares about each other left in this world. It's just that I'm kindof bored getting this sort of message to pile up my inbox. The same goes to the Friendster is shutting down thing and of course, the chain emails that would curse you if you don't send it back to 20 other poor souls. Enough.

The thing I'm trying to stress here is sources.. In journalism, the source of your news is perhaps one of the most important things to remember. It's the thing that'll judge whether your news is credible or not. I'm a Muslim and Islam look highly upon the need of strong sources. Take Hadith for example. All Hadith Sahih are accompanied by the names of its source right? That itself tells me how important sources are because if just anyone can come up with a Hadith, it'll definitely be chaos.

Well, I know none of us is perfect. I know I'm not. It's just that thing about the media.. we cannot accept everything it feeds us. We need to see, think, digest and dissect it and see how true it is before we can take it as a fact. So next time something like this find its way to our mailbox again, let's go do some googling okay? Are you guys with me? Thanks!

Another site about the urban legend