I appreciate that you want me to know about little Jessica Mydek. Or Bill 602P. Or Temple University and their 8-cent land plot. Or [insert hoax that took all of five seconds to find on snopes].
I’ve been emailing (using reply-all) links to snopes on each and every one of your hoax emails. And sometimes I’ll toss in an urbanlegends.com link or a few google-gotten links.
That doesn’t seem to be working. So I started summarizing arguments, showing where facts are in fact NOT facts. I start showing where leaps of logic (or illogic) are present. Where syllogisms don’t compute.
Then I get emails back from some of your nimwit friends, claiming that A) I was wrong in my utter refutation or B) “it’s good advice even if it’s wrong” or C) some other bullshit.
I have outright shown several of you snopes’ site, urbanlegends.com, and “Edward”, I HAVE USED GOOGLE WITH YOU. You know the damn sites exist. You get the stories from the same goddamn people. Know how I know? BECAUSE THE FUCKING EMAIL HEADERS ARE THERE DATING BACK TO THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION! You send me an email that’s 50K and I’m convinced that at least half of that is those little carrots (>) from fwding devices and such. The other half is THOSE DAMN HEADERS!!! Is the concept of “delete” lost on your addled brains?
Get a clue. Please. As Duck Duck Goose and countless others have said, GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND! Snopes gets orgasmic at the thought of someone using its search engine for the eradication of SHIT YOU GET FROM YOUR IDIOTIC FRIENDS WHO WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW ABOUT MACY’S’ COOKIE RECIPE!!!
I guess I never realized how lucky I am that people who Email me have a strong bullshit detector. I have received all of one email about a hoax virus, and when I sent back a link saying it was a hoax, I received thanks and apologies.
Who sends you these? Friends? Family?
I don’t think I could be friends with someone who has no bullshit radar.
As far as my family is concerned, they are the ones who have taught to me to check the facts.
I don’t know that I could relate with people who believe everything they’re told.
Jesus man, get your UL’s straight, it was Neiman-Marcus not Macy’s.
BTW, I caused some serious grief when I responded to an email with a link to snopes. It was a situation where I almost gave up the fight against ignorance.
Friends of mine who aren’t very good at questioning what they receive from other friends in a general circle I don’t dip into very often. They aren’t the more enlightened of my friends. They aren’t very good at questioning what’s put toward them.
And Adam, it wasn’t me who got the hoax wrong. Evidently among this person’s talents isn’t keeping one store straight.
Yeah, I get all that crap too, from family members, friends and coworkers. I have a standard answer I send out reply-to-all, debunking it as nicely as can be.
A few of them take heed, but most of them just gradually stop including me in their distribution list.
It seems with every chain mail, 40% of the people who send it seem to think they have to cut and paste the actual message and put it in the body of the fowarding mail. So you get the same stupid piece of shit message repeated umpteenbillion times, and of course, you get those stupid little >s.
I try the snopes route with people aswell. If they just keep on doing it I tell them to STOP SENDING ME THIS SHITE OR I’LL HAVE TO BLOCK/SET UP A RULE TO BIN ALL YOUR MAILS.
My forward said Mrs. Field’s. Why are all these cookie places such money grubbing bastards anyway? Why can’t they be like Bill Gates or Walt Disney and just share the love?
That’s the one I get. How the hell can it be good advice even if it’s wrong?!? What is wrong with that statement?!?
Mine started when my mom got on-line and all her gullible friends started sending this shit, which she of course FWD: FWD: FWD: 'd to me.
She now Snopes them back, saying, “My daughter said this isn’t true…” My existence has been validated!
i had a friend who’s wife would send out shit emails to everyone on her list. crap like “light a candle…” or similar tripe like you mentioned. i asked her a couple of times to not send me crap chain letters and this stuff, but she kept doing it.
what did i do? well, i sent a reply back to her and to everyone on her list also thanking her for the offer of the beastiality pornography, but told her i wasnt interested. i was into the fecalphilia sites and provided some web addresses i made up (www.eatmyshizer.com, http://www.cablelayin.com).
It can be good advice even if it’s not true. Eg “PEOPLE!!! Don’t drive with your eyes shut or you’re genitals will fall off! This is IMPORTANT!!” It’s bad ‘good advice’ because it makes people think like morons but it would pay to do what it says…
I have one friend who forwards stuff to me. I think that’s about right - most of its vaguely relevant, I get almost no really stupid stuff, and I don’t want to be left out of the intersting forwards.
My existence has been validated!