So I logged in to MySpace today to see how some of my friends have been doing.
Fully five of my (college educated, very computer saavy, not particularly dumb) friends had posed hoaxes in the belletin areas. These were by no means new hoaxes, but largely the same dumb “Pass this on and some organization will donate some amount of money to some dying orphan” that has been circulating since the goddam net was born. Well, that and that rapists are slipping drugs that permanently sterilize women in to their drinks.
Really, guys. You all know how to use the Internet. You have all surely heard of Snopes. You SEEN all these hoaxes before. You’ve been hooked to your computers for the last ten years!!! You can’t have missed the whole email hoax thing!!! Why oh why are you posting them on MySpace? What happened that turned you from young smart power users in to middle aged ladies new to this whole “Electronic Mail” thing?
So many of my friends have just lost one little notch of respect for not realizing that it’d actually be kind of evil for the Make-a-Wish foundation to tie life-saving surgery to the whims of MySpace users. Gah!
You’d be surprised how often I still get these e-mails and Myspace bulletins, and you’d really be surprised how many people have NOT heard of Snopes. My father is a relative newbie to e-mail and the Internet, and he loves passing these crazy hoaxes along to me (after receiving them from his co-workers, who are all teachers in one of the country’s largest public school systems). I’ll refer him to Snopes without any condescension or insults, and he’s starting to get the idea to ask questions before pressing “Forward.” I’ll be really impressed when he starts forwarding Snopes links back to them!
What I hate are the assholes who get pissed when you send them the Snopes link. It’s like you’ve killed their puppy just because you pointed out that no, little Johnny is NOT missing and forwarding this crap will NOT help him buy a new uterus.
I’ve even managed to pull that one. I do it a lot differently, though. I send the link back, and I’ll say, “Hey, that’s not true, check this link out. Look at all this interesting info. And hey, check this out!” And I’ll paste some pieces of the article, and then include some info from a different, true article, and pretend to be interested in it. I have to handle my family with kid gloves, that’s all.
My mother gets offended VERY easily. Seriously, sometimes it’s easier just to smile and nod .
My sister…well, it kind of all just sails right over her head. I don’t think she’ll make the connection between sending her Snopes links and the next chain mail she sends.
Maybe I’ll give it a try. I’m feeling brave this week:).
So does mine! I’m there! And I’ve offended her plenty in the past. Sometimes I think my mere existence offends her. But I did manage to get this one over diplomatically. It took over a year, though, of such gentle e-mails. Now she doesn’t forward me things like that at all, which is an improvement. And btw, she’s mad at me anyway, but not for this - something else.
My sister in law is awful about this. I used to try to send her Snopes links with all the diplomacy and tact I could muster.
All it did was convince her to launch a preemptive strike. I now get email hoaxes that start with a note from her saying something like “I know MaddyStrut will likely think this is a hoax, but I thought it’s worth taking a chance…”
I alerted my mom to the existence of Snopes today. She forwarded me some glurge about the alleged meeting of Winston Churchill and Alexander Fleming’s father.
Yeah, SuperDude and Anaamika, I can’t even imagine how much that must suck.
My mother is a loving and caring person. She’s great. But she was no better than the people y’all have been mentioning. I’ve tried and tried and tried to convince her to just check on these things before forwarding them. Sometimes she’d listen, often she’d not. She held onto the Ring Around the Rosy thing pretty tenaciously.
That was years ago. The whole UL subject was a long forgotten one. Then two days ago, when I was visiting her in Florida, the subject popped up somehow. I think it was because we’d just been bitten to death by sandgnats, and I mentioned the mosquitos and Guiness thing. Suddenly my mom was on a rant about her friends that send her stupid stuff. “I just send them the Snopes link”, she said. “Don’t these idiots even know about Snopes?”
It’s taking longer than we thought, but we are fighting it, folks. Baby steps.
.