How can a popup get your email address? Does it deceive the user into entering it manually?
What’s that whooshing sound I hear?
My most recent entry, incidentally, the one I’ve gotten three times since Katrina, is Pat Robertson Blames Katrina on Ellen Degeneres. Yes, Robertson’s an ass who’s made some psycho comments in the very recent past, but this is a snopes check away people…
I snoped the “soda can tabs for dialysis” for one of my coworkers. Just so she’d quit bringing up the campaign at every unit meeting and she could quietly let the effort go away without drawing further attention to the fact that she’s been getting her leg pulled.
She thanked me for the article and snottily said she was collecting them for (I forget the exact childhood ailment) and that the people she took them to were always very grateful.
Silly of me to miss that one detail. I was very ashamed.
A coworker recently asked me “what’s that website that tells you whether an emailed story is true or not?”
It was a proud moment.
I had pretty much cured all my co-workers of sending me this crap.
Then over the summer we lost half our department and had to hire a bunch of new people.
So here we go again. Budweiser frogs wallpaper virus, don’t buy any gas on such-and-such day, little Susy needs get-well cards or Islamic terrorists will invade her house and remove her kidney with rusty soda tabs and sell it to Bill Gates so he can pay AOL 1 million dollars for the use of their logo with the Virgin Mary’s face imbedded in it…
Oooo! I just came looking for this thread, because here is the e-mail conversation that goes on between my friend and me just now. Copied exactly, no mistakes fixed.
Her: (Sends me those supposed pictures of Katrina, only they’re actually pics of tornadoes.)
Me: These are not Katrina pics - see Snopes.com.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/storm.asp
Her: They were on the email I received I thought I could just forward the email and you would get the pictures Sorry
Me: 
I’m not mad, they’re just not pics of Katrina. They’re pics of tornadoes and stuff. Do you want me to reply all so everyone else knows?
Her: They are pictures form the Katrina, the storm as it came onto land
Me: :dubious: :rolleyes: No, they’re not! Check the Snopes link. (copy and paste stuff from snopes)
Her: Oh I see now. We just got on our citrix system so I was checking out how it worked
Me: Whatever. At least she knows they are fake.
So she just refused to acknowledge it, and even made up her own little story for it. Grrr…She is a good friend but dear Og I hope she is a Doper and sees this. This is the same woman who sent me GIANT honkin’ pictures of Jesus back when we had only 5 MB of space in our e-mail - Pray to Jesus! But I need my e-mail space for important work things! Gah!
And I tend to be the evil asshole who DOES do the mass reply. While the original senders response is “Well, I didn’t know…” or “I felt it wouldn’t hurt to send, just in case,” I make sure THEY understand I’m trying to inoculate all the people they sent it to against spreading the manure any further, and educating a little about Snopes along the way.
Heh. Actually, it just feels good to call them out sometimes. 
O.K., I read the Snopes link (on The Practice protest) and I’m still confused.
Where in the Bible does it say to avoid relations with cocker spaniels?
Not that that would be a bad thing. Nasty little breed, they are.
I find the correct order is:
- They send stupid email glurge.
- You email them back directly with a link to snopes and a suggestion they let everyone else know (so they can save face).
- They get pissy.
- You email everyone else on the list the same link to snopes.
- They get pissy.
- You email them all a copy of “The allegory of the cave”.
Usually I would myself, but as I said, I like this girl and usually she has more sense! Next time I will no matter what.
Oh my Jesus God. I belong to a Yahoo group for cat lovers. There’s one yahoo one there (thanks for letting me say that) that spews this crap out non-stop. Each and every time I reply with the inevitable snopes link. And each time he replies with "yeah, I usually check it out but this time I (forgot)(didn’t have time)(must’ve missed it)(picked the wrong search term)(insert any other convenient lie here).
No, obviously you DON’T usually check it out or you would be sending us this crap non-stop! I don’t understand why some people think constantly disgorging crap is preferable to appearing to be an intelligent, cautious person who uses their friends’ email inboxes judiciously.
Now, everything he sends on he prefaces with “I don’t know if this is true or not.” Um, then why are you spewing it out?
I wish I could remember what the story was that I got once, but suffice to say what made the story funny was that it was “true”. There would have been no story and therefore no laughs if it were fiction. So when I replied with the snopes link, I got back “well, okay, it’s not true…but it’s still funny!” Um, no it’s not, what made it funny was that it was “true”, you idiot.
I was recently reaquainted with my college roommate. We went out to dinner and the conversation turned to spam, glurge, forwards, etc. Apparently to her
sounds just like
because the very next day it started.