Thinking about sending a chain letter around? Maybe something about the latest news on cancer from the John Hopkins, or the newest information on Facebook’s privacy settings? Do us all a favor, and look up http://snopes.com/ first. Snopes has, over the past years, become the internet’s foremost fact-checking site, checking in on various claims that have made the rounds online in chain letters, facebook posts, and the like, and rating them on their validity with extensive citation. So please, before you repost that link about how the government bought 30,000 guillotines or how Raspberry Ultra Drops are a weight-loss wonder, just spend a moment, mosey on down to snopes, and check to make sure that you aren’t propagating an internet myth.
(This Public Service Announcement brought to you by People Who Dislike The Smell of Bullshit.)
…If anyone wants to send around a chain letter on facebook, make it this one. I am so sick of my friends posting the latest bullshit about ginseng or how posting on facebook will somehow make facebook unable to read their shit. It’s so dumb, and it gets on my nerves. Dumbest one yet: a post documenting how sugar, chocolate, meat, and dairy products are all addicted… by my mother, who did not know that Neal Barnard is a complete quack with about the reliability on medical issues of Dr. Nick. Please guys, cut that shit out.
I’ve learned that it usually won’t matter to those sending/posting those things if you do correct them or show them how to look up the truth-i-ness of things. I’ve had people tell me “Well, Snopes is just an internet site, too! Why should I believe THEM?” or similar thoughts. People will believe what they want.
I think the title of the thread says it even better than “Check Snopes” does.
About to send that long, mostly-all-caps-in-three-colors screed? Stop and think “Does everyone in my address book NEED to hear this?” The answer’s almost always “Nope”.
My mom (whose grave you’ll be able to spot by the inscription “Stalwart Forwarder of Rightie Email Glurge”) gave me some good insights into the mindset: “My friend Georgia looked it up on Snopes, and it’s all true.” (She didn’t and it wasn’t)
Or the intro to the glurge will say “This latest threat to our freedom is 100% true. Here’s the link to the article on snopes.com”, which of course debunks it in scathing terms.
And my favorite comment: “I didn’t check Snopes, because even if it isn’t true, it should be!”
I am relatively conservative, especially by the standards of this board, and no fan of the president but I sometimes am moved to correct some of the stupid anti-Obama things I see posted. I shouldn’t bother because it doesn’t work. Here is a reply I got a couple days ago:
Now I don’t think Snopes is the only cite that should be used but it is a good first source to check something out.
I will bet you one trillion dollars that if you asked this friend for some examples of this research demonstrating that Snopes is wrong “half the time,” you wouldn’t even get one.
But seriously now, yeah, I’ve learned to resist the urge to fact-check these cutesy little Facebook stories that shit up my newsfeed. Even if I had the time to investigate every BS story or argue every BS factoid and argument, that’s not how I’d prefer to spend my time. Maybe I should come up with a quick copy pasta message that says something like “Ten seconds of Googling would have debunked this” and respond to every made up story I see with it. Sounds like a terrific way to be obnoxious and find myself un-friended by everyone! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. :strokes imaginary beard:
I’ve beat my family with the Snopes bat so many times that now they send this crap to me first to let them know if it’s true. I’m not sure why they can’t enter “Snopes latest internet glurge” into their own search engine, but it’s at least a baby step.
A suggestion when you debunk one of those obnoxious chain letters: do a “reply all”. It lets everyone on the person’s email list know that he’s an idiot of the first order, which serves the purpose of discouraging him from sending more. It worked on my sister. Or maybe she just excludes me from her mailing list. Either way, I win.
My mother’s CPA, a cancer survivor (who is still having undisclosed issues), fell for the Johns Hopkins “cancer news” one. He talked about it – and what I can only guess is related quackery – for over half an hour when she went to drop off her tax stuff.
I have a ‘friend’ who used to send me crap all the time. I was on a wide distribution list. It was mostly stuff about how Obama was a Kenyan and Libruls were destroying America and the heathers were claiming children’s souls and what-not.
I started replying with links that easlily debunked what she was sending. (I do ‘reply all’)
Then just replied with a Snopes link and wrote ‘Snopes is your friend’.
I made that experience too. A friend of mine is a hardcore eco-hippie, and for a while I got his rather disjointed and hilariously unscientific rants about how Fukujima was going to kill us all. I responded once or twice… He stopped CCing me.
I got one from my parents that said Snopes said it was true, gave a small seemingly corroborating quote, and a link to the article. Which demonstrated that the quoting email was false, and the quote was taken out of context.
The email gave the reader a link that refuted the email, and people believed it. My parents believed it. When I pointed that out their response was ‘Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one’. And they wonder why I drink.
I’m actually surprised A) How few people have heard of Snopes (comparatively) and B) How much the Snopes website looks like it was last updated in August 2003 (and its previous iteration looked like it had just come straight from 1998).
But yes, I spend a lot of time directing people there and very, very rarely does anyone say “Wow, I had no idea, thanks for clearing that up!” (Although, to be fair, it does happen.)
