ABout 3-4 times a month, I’ll get an email that, to me, is an obvious urban legend. The past few have been “don’tbuygas”-types, but I did get one about the horrible legacyof BillClinton.
I would have reported this abuse of email to my supervisor, but she sent me the latest carjacking legend with the message line “Police alert”.
So, I printed the address to Snopes and posted it on the two bulletin boards.
I had an employee who occasionally would forward bs urban legend and other “OMG LOOK AT THIS” emails to all the people in the home office. I asked her to stop, and she did, but after six months or so she sent another one, this time a “gas buyout” email that talked about collusion between the oil companies, yadda, yadda, yadda.
So I responded. Point by point, using links, charts of data, anecdotal historical analogies (bet she had never even heard of the Turkish Petroleum Company before), book cites, a response that took me well over an hour to compose. At the end of it I asked
And I sent it to everybody she sent the original email to. She never responded, but a day later told me that I had absolutely humiliated her.
One of my friends would not quit including me on his glurge/UL/tinfoil hat emails (What I hated most was the pages of headers of all the old email addresses). I "Reply to All"ed with the above subject. It worked.
On the plus side, my cousin used to send those things around. I responded to each one, sending her to Snopes or the Straight Dope Archives or whatever. Four or five times, I responded. Now, when she gets one from a friend, she sends it to me FIRST, she doesn’t further distribute them.
Oh Gawd UL emails and glurge at work! The bane of my existence. I stopped my direct staff from doing it. It’s amazing what an internal memo on acceptable and unacceptable use of email will do. However, our Exec is one of the worst! I’ve told her and told her and told her about how 99.9999999999999+% of this stuff is pure bullshit but still it happens. The latest was the oooooooooold UL of women being knocked out and robbed from sniffing perfume samples in parking lots. :rolleyes:
AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!
Looks like swampy needs to get busy revising policy on email use at work. (Yep I am the rules and regs/policy and procedures sob at work.)
A cow orker sent me the Bonsai Kittens one. I had heard about it before and read about it on Snopes, but considered it more or less a joke. I mean, who on Earth could take that seriously? Who could possibly believe that New Yorkers were proudly displaying bonsai kittens as the latest in interior decor?
My cow orker, apparently. I sent back a tentative email (cc’d to everyone who got the first one) starting “I’m not sure if this is a joke or not, but if it is serious…”, containing a link to Snopes and a summary of the strikes against the entire concept. Her reply was “I don’t know what to believe now, but if it is a joke it’s VERY TASTELESS and must be stopped anyway!”
I reply to these urban legend/glurge/amazing facts! email all the time, pointing out why and where they’re wrong. All I get is a reputation for being a pedantic spoiler of a good story.
It’s a heavy burden all true dopers must bear.
Please pass this on to all your friends so that everyone knows and Bill Gates will send you a cookie.
I am the office “is this true?” person. Just yesterday one of the women I work with forwarded me the UPS uniform one asking how to tell if it was true.
I am so proud of her.
Hey, Futile Gesture, I thought Bill Gates was going to send me a recipe for a cookie - for like $200 or something. Or was that a trip to Walt Disney World? I get so confused…
I have the same problem with three of the women I work with - if I get one more “send this to all the women you love” emails containing dire warnings regarding mall parking lots, flat tires, and all manner of impending dangers from “someone who cares”, I’m going to show them what a hostile work environment REALLY looks like.
Folk usually send me a maximum of three ULs or glurgey type emails (and get three appropriate Snopes-reference type replies from me) before they stop sending me stuff like that altogether. Like a few others here, though, I have a contact who now checks stuff with me (“Is this true or hoax??”). The fight goes on, but in some corners, we’re winning.
People never cease to amaze me. I was surprised when I first saw it on Snopes, thinking no one could possibly be dumb enough to think it was real in the first place, but then the outraged emails began arriving… and they don’t care to be told they’re wrong. They insist that it must be true. “How do you know that site’s not just covering up for them?” :rolleyes: Why do people choose to believe random unsigned emails over ANYTHING else? “If this email that’s come through 400 other inboxes says they’re bonsaiing kittens then it must be true, but if there’s a website saying it’s not, then it’s probably a cover up, and the hundreds of other unrelated stories on that site were just put there to make it more convincing”.
Like Dex, I have a few minor victories in the war against ignorance too. A couple friends who used to send out reams of this glurge, now often check with me first.
At work, as JohnT says, sometimes it’s nice being the boss. Late last year an Urban Legend email went out to all employees. I responded to all employees debunking the email, provided web sites to research these Legends, and reminded them that company email was to be used for company purposes.
Not more than two days later, a different employee forwarded a different Urban Legend (that Microsoft will pay you $200+ if you forward this email. :rolleyes:). I was less tolerant this time. I debunked this one too, reminded employees again about the policy, and told everyone that if anyone ever again forwarded any of this crap that they’d be subject to disciplinary action. Haven’t had a single occurance since.
To be fair, I gave them an out. If they truly received something that they thought was legitimate and needed to be shared with the employee base, they could run it past me first. Funny though, no one has taken me up with the offer. Maybe people are actually becoming less gullible regarding this stuff.
Me, too, but it’s with my 72-year-old mom and her 78-year-old sister. They forward all that crap to me asking, “Is this true? Let’s ask BiblioCat - she’s so smart, she knows if this is true or not!” They’ve even figured out (finally!) how to navigate through Snopes and find out on their own if something is an urban legend or whatever.
The one I have trouble with is my sister’s SIL (her husband’s sister). She keeps forwarding all the glurgy crap ("Send this to 10 women you love!!!) and the missing children and “free gift certificate from Old Navy!” stuff. If I send a Snopes link then, like Futile Gesture, I’m just a spoilsport. :rolleyes:
How true. And it’s not just by e-mail. Consider a conversation I once had with a formar friend (Who was a somewhat of a fundie, FWIW):
Me: So, I’m like totally into this website called snopes. They debunk urban legends.
Dumbass friend: What are urban legends?
M: Fake stories passed off as true.
DAF: Like what?
M: Like the one about the president of Proctor and Gamble appearing on Oprah and saying that he was a Satanist. And that we should therefore boycott all P&G products.
DAF: He is?
M: No, that’s the whole point! The whole thing is just a falsehood.
DAF: Oh, my. I never knew that he was a Satanist.
M: He isn’t! He never even appeared on Oprah!
DAF: Oh yeah? Well, just because he never appeared on Oprah doesn’t mean he’s not a Satanist!
M: But it’s all made up! There’s never been a shred of evidence otherwise!
DAF: Yeah, but he’s lying. Satanists do that! I’m going to stop buying P&G products. Praise the Lord!
I have a friend here at work, a good and intelligent man, who collects soda pop can tabs for his friend’s daughter. Apparently their school is collecting them to buy an iron lung or something for a sick and dying child. I have sent him to snopes, but he doesn’t care (he says the girl is hot, a reason I can get behind.) Last month he came to me and excitedly explained that he say a collection box at the hospital and so it must not be an urban legend…
A local bar had an urban legend as the answer to a trivia question on trivia night. Luckily I wasn’t there for trivia night or everyone in the bar would have hated me for insisting that it wasn’t the right answer. Instead I just annoyed the bar owner who wrote the question, who never believed I knew what I was talking about, despite my detailed explanation.
I’ve never gotten these from coworkers, but from my parents and other older relatives (who were new to computers etc., and it was my fault, sortof, as I set them all up with their “newfangled” computer systems :D) They’d get all these silly things and then send them to me. I always “replly all” with just one word in the message. www.snopes2.com
My UL emails have all but stopped. Except for the feel good ones. But who can blame a parent or older relative for trying to bring sunshine to their young pups??
