One thing that drives me nuts in GQ are the scads of UL’s that pop up. I’m not upset at people who have been duped by some apparently authoritative source, but all these “I got an email about this” crap drives me up a wall.
Fer chrissakes, there are entire sites dedicated to ULs, Snopes being (IMHO) one of the best of them. Go there. I know we are supposed to be fighting ignorance, but why should we be the ones to go to Snopes for you, and provide you with a link?!! Do it your damn self, ya lazy putz.
Blessed are those who have found Snopes, NetSquirrel, Curse of a Thousand Letters et al., and have bookmarked these for easy retrieval, for they shall forever be grateful for this, and shall be able to help the non-bookmarkers to the pinnacle of knowledge.
Maybe they’re no lazy, Sua. Maybe, they just like going “D’oh!!”
A boon to all who fight the ignorance and duplicity of misleading chain letters, the web site chainletters.org (The Curse of a Thousand Letters) will be shut down unless this email is forwarded to 10,000 people by next week! Don’t worry about duplicate names- they’re being managed. And the first 5,000 people who forward this will get a ride on the space shuttle donated by NASA.
Of course, there are some people who simply don’t believe Snopes (my idiot dad, for one). I’ve started the practice of printing out Snopes articles to debunk his right-wing nutcase conspiracy theories, and he just grumbles something about “damned liberal websites…”
Apparently, some people want to debunk the debunker.
I personally have found the Snopes website to be a fascinating one. But I do believe that they are too quick to declare “Status: False” based on faulty reasoning. I specifically object to two rationales that they frequently give.
Because there are numerous versions of the story floating around, often with missing and contradictory details. This has IMHO, no bearing on the veracity of the story. Most true stories also have numerous faulty versions circulating as well, and there’s no reason to think that such a story must have no basis in truth.
Because it doesn’t make sense. “Why would someone…etc?”. The world is full of people, six billion approximately, with zillions of events taking place. The fact is that in this vast wide world, the improbable will often happen. The reason why these stories get such wide circulation is for this very reason - because they are bizarre and improbable.
This does not completely detract from the usefulness and interest of the Snopes website - they are upfront about what they are saying, and you can accept or reject their reasoning. But their conclusions cannot be given undue weight. Bottom line - you have to be skeptical about every thing, including the skeptics.
Every now and then at school comes the conversations about the messages in Disney films or the little ghost boy on Three Men and a Baby. Or my favorite (sarcasm there) is the midget who hung himself on the set of The Wizard of Oz and you can see it. I tell these people that it’s not true, they should check snopes.com. One person told me (about the Wizard of Oz UL), “It’s true.” I said, “How do you know?” “Because I saw it on television.” I hate when those conversations come up.
Well, I try to be charitable and think, “Maybe they just don’t know about Snopes.” I didn’t, at first.
However, this doesn’t excuse the occasional repeat offenders, who get such a nice encouraging response to their first “What do you think of this e-mail?” that they do it AGAIN.
For a card carrying member of the DDHF…You can be very reasonable at times.
My standard response is to thit the REPLY TO ALL button and send an emabarrassing letter that links to the debunking page, a seperate link to the snopes.com home page, and instructions on how to use a search engine.
Then I follow it up with an “ooppss…didn’t mean to send that to everyone” letter:)
For a card carrying member of the DDHF…You can be very reasonable at times.
My standard response is to thit the REPLY TO ALL button and send an emabarrassing letter that links to the debunking page, a seperate link to the snopes.com home page, and instructions on how to use a search engine.
Then I follow it up with an “ooppss…didn’t mean to send that to everyone” letter:)
IzzyR, I certainly agree that Snopes is not perfect. My pet peeve with the place is that too often their explanations of why various ULs exist smack heavily of pop psychology/sociology.
[TIC]
Good Lord, Gigi- you’re taking exception to incorrect verb usage as regards suicide? Sayyy, I’d like to go out to dinner or something with you. You know, jsut to see…
[/TIC]
