Our receptionist has been handing out copies of the LIGHTS OUT warning, which starts out with "Polie officers working with the DARE program has issued this warning: If you are driving after dark and see an on-coming car with no headlights on, DO NOT FLASH YOUR LIGHTS AT THEM! This is a common Bloods gang member “initiation game” …
I checked it out on Snopes, and they debunked it. It’s an urban legend that’s been going around for at least 20 years.
Now on other hand, if I see a hook on the door handle, or a ghost passenger in the backseat, or somebody with a missing head, then I’ll know something’s true.
My wife and I both work for a big IT company. She got a mail from someone who sent it out in a fairly wide distribution that “Microsoft just patented 1’s and 0’s and that our company would have to start paying royalties for all of our future coding projects.”
I told her to let him know that that was hilarious the first time when I read it in The Onion.
A close relative of mine is a security supervisor at South Coast Plaza, an upscale shopping mall in Costa Mesa.
Earlier this week he told my wife that the local cops* came by and warned them about this (the cruise-with-no-lights-and-pop-the-guy-who-flashes thing) at work. :dubious: They were concerned specifically about this upcoming weekend, which (it was claimed) is a gang initiation period.
Both my wife and I wondered what the hell is going on, as we’d both heard of this and were fairly certain it had been debunked as an urban legend.
Costa Mesa PD? I’m not sure - I got the story secondhand…
Since it *is *an urban legend would it realy be all that hard to imagine that gangs would start using it, or something similar to it? That’s what scares me. Ok, it’s just an urban legend now. What if some gang actually started doing it?
I got the same email three times this week. I used to link these folks to Snopes but now I just delete. I don’t think anyone that sends them ever cares to check these things out.
I mean, I suppose there might be some internet saavy gang member who thought it might be good for a larf.
But generally gangs are in the businesss of…gang business. Like selling drugs. And committing violence but usually against other gang members. They don’t have much interest in murdering random strangers…where’s the profit margin in that?
My second grader came home yesterday and said that the teacher is encouraging all of them to bring inthe “little bits from when you open a pop can” to save someone’s kidney somewhere.
Urban legends are bad enough–but when a freakin’ teacher does it… :mad:
One of my students reported in class on Thursday that the police department in her small town had sent out letters to all the residents informing them to not flash their lights at anyone this weekend. :smack: :rolleyes: I gave all my students links to Snopes and told them this was their new best friend.
It wouldn’t be actual gangs I’d be worried about. But just a couple of kids that decided to do this.
On a side note, for a while there was something going around saying that if you email it to 7 people you’d get a $50 gift cert. for Applebees. I found out about it when my sister emailed it to me 5 times and I got another copy from my Mom. After my usual “This isn’t how email works…” rant, they both, individually, explained to me that a friend of theirs (someone that I know as well) already received hers! I told them to let her know that I’d giver her $100 for it, they never did get back to me about that.
Me too! I did it a few dozen times and finally folks at work started sending the emails to me first, asking me whether whatever it said was true. They never seem to save the link to Snopes, but at least now they ask first.
