What the hell does a burlap bag need with a kidney?
For me, it is basically just not good website design. In essence, it just looks and feels too cute and doesn’t have a serious or credible look and feel. Not sure that I can describe it better.
I like snopes, but not for shooting down other people’s ignorance (since there are varying levels of success in that regard) but in just proving myself wrong- “Oh, so that’s how that rumor got spread” types of things.
Plus, when you know how the urban legends are created, it makes it easier to create ones on your own to fool the suckers 
It’s much better than it used to be. They’ve cut down on the cheesiest of the icons, thank goodness.
Recently, one of my coworkers asked me “Hey, what’s that website that has all the email hoaxes and stuff on it?”
It was a proud moment in my personal fight.
I’ve finally trained my mother to check Snopes, and I was so pleased to get a message from a friend last week that she sent to me to check out before she forwarded it to anyone else. One small step at a time!
It’s bad enough when civilians believe this kind of thing. But last week my local paper ran an article about this great kid who was going around collecting pull tabs to assist terminally ill children. Of course, the article wasn’t real clear about who exactly was supposed to be getting the pull tabs and writing the checks. But that’s not important - what was important was that this kid was doing something, even if it was useless, and we should all feel better because of it.
Seriously, even if the reporter didn’t see any need, didn’t the editor think he might do a little fact checking? What are they going to do when other people write to them and say they want to join up with this program?
I started a thread on this years ago. Basically, Snopes is ass-ugly and looks like a 15-year-old cheerleader’s web page. It looks better than it used to, but it’s still incredibly amateurish.
I seem to remember some people in that thread being deeply offended that I would question Snopes.
Presentation matters, folks.
To be fair, SOME charitable organizations have started collecting pull tabs, or some companies have been donating money, after the massive ULs, just so people aren’t doing something for nothing. I can’t remember where I hear that though, sorry.
Yes, but most of these businesses are aluminum recycling centers (unless they’re in Europe in which case they’re aluminium recycling centers). If you bring them pull tabs they weigh the aluminum and write you a check for the recycling value. At that point, you can do whatever you want with the money, including sending it to a charity for terminally ill children.
But what is screwed up is that because people hear this stupid urban legend, they spend hours tearing off pull tabs like they have some special value. They’d be doing more good if they brought the entire can, along with whatever other scrap aluminum they can find, to the recycling center and selling the whole lot. They’d make more money for their charity. Of course, they could also just send money to the charity and quit messing around with our 13th element.
I used to respond to those BS chain letters with bogus information.
I got hate mail back, “how can you be so insensitive to that poor child who only wants to get a million business cards before he dies of cancer?!?!?”
Idiots who can afford a computer.
Now I know why the National Inquirer makes money.
Last month, a friend of mine (a kind and educated woman with 4 children) sent me an extremely offensive email about “The Ten Commandments.” The gist of it was that because the majority of Americans are Christians, they should just tell everyone who isn’t Christian to “sit down and shut up” about removing the word God from the Pledge of Allegience, our courtrooms, currency, etc. At the end, it read, “If you agree, send this email to 10 friends. If you don’t agree, delete.” :rolleyes:
Not only was it offensive, but it was full of inaccuracies.
I received the exact same email from another friend just last week.
I sent them both the same thing: the Snopes link, and a few words expressing my complete shock, disgust, and disappointment.
I’ll probably never hear from them again. But then, do I want to associate with people who are that ignorant?
The only thing you can do, folks, and I know this from great experience, is to not only send the Snopes or other relevant link to the sender, but use the dreaded “Reply to All” function to send it to everyone on the list of recipients, also. It’s tough love, I know, but the public humiliation is the only thing that puts this to a stop. It takes at least twice to work, but it does eventually work.
It’s a necessary evil. Every copy of the e-mail takes up disk space on some server. The more unnecessary mail there is, the more disk space is needed, and the faster you rates go up. Also, one that a co-worker recently sent me had an image in it. The image was not actually part of the e-mail, but a link from another website, which received my info when I inadvertently opened the message. Gosh, thanks! I’m glad you exposed me to the risk of junk mail, ID fraud, and malware, on the slim chance that this five-year-old hoax mail about a missing fake kid was something we should know about!
At the risk of further hijacking, let me say that she also once informed me that I’d never get married because I have (and I’m quoting) “nothing to offer a woman.”
Then again, she’s an alcoholic pill-popper who’s run off two husbands and spent the last year living with my cousin because she’s been unwilling to crawl out of a bottle long enough to go back to work. And she’s a NURSE.
Snopes is invaluable, but the cutesy icons and style of it does make it look like it was put together by a 15 year old in 1994.
I use that on my brother-in-law, the worst offender of glurge in my family. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I “Reply to All” with a brief note saying, “This story is false, and here’s the link to the relevant Snopes article.” He never stops. But neither do I. 
I don’t really know what makes people ignore the Snopes links and grab onto the glurge. Willfull ignorance? Is there some comfort they find in passing on glurge that we are taking away from them by educating them about researching absurd stories?
Minor hijack:
I don’t know if there even are newspaper editors anymore. When I was a kid, one could depend on even the smallest local paper using correct spelling and grammar. Nowadays, my big city newspaper occasionally reads like someone’s blog.
The EXTREMELY aggressive Pop-up ads? Build to go past normal Pop-up blockers? :mad:
Well actually, you are only partially right. The Shriners (an international organization) as a part of their charity work collects pull tabs that they take to the recylclers and goes to support thier burn center. The reason they collect just the pull tabs is it is the only part that is pure aluminum. I am sure other organizations do the same.
Minor Hijack Nitpick:
There are certainly no more copy editors. However, every paper has someone whose job it is to supervise writers and decide if particular content belongs in the publication. Part of that individual’s job is to make sure the reporter has actually an article.