Jesus Christ I hate this too. “Ummmmm…yeah sure. Lets ignore a reputable website and trust some damn chain mail you got from some guy you don’t even know.”
I actually had to admonish my mother several times for repeatedly forwarding me drivel like this.
Mom, THIS IS NOT THE WAY WE GET NEWS!!!
[hijack]
OK, this cow-orker business is starting to get to me. The correct hyphenation is, of course, co-worker. Scott Adams (the Dilbert Guy) had a funny bit in which he began referring to them as cow-workers, because it was similar to his experiences on the dairy farm of his youth. But I don’t understand this cow-orker business. Is this some kind of inside joke that I’m not getting? What’s the deal here???
I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!
Thank you.
[/hijack]
“Cow-orker” was common on certain Usenet newsgroups long before Scott Adams tried to claim credit for it. The first mi-shyphenation was a typo, but it caught on, because 1. jokes involving cows are funny and b. jokes involving cows and funny words (“Ork! Ork! Ork!”) are very funny.
The denziens of the SDMB have a habit of picking up on a misspelling and use the same misspelling until it becomes passé (e.g.: manny, inslut). “Cow-orker” may be a combination of this, the usage in Dilbert, and a disparaging remark with regard to the worker in question.
Paul Harvey’s son is the writer for his Rest of the Story and was probably responsible for that piece. There should be a disclaimer at the beginning of those reports.
Hesus Kristi this thought scares me more than ANY Anthrax news.
About a year ago someone sent out the “cancer fundraiser” e-mail to a listserv I’m on. I’m afraid I came down on it rather hard in my reply to all (attaching the snopes link, like a good Doper). Someone wrote back the whole “delete it, it doesn’t do any harm.” And I came back hard on them to…(to paraphrase):
"No harm? I’m a sysadmin. Last weekend I spent six hours rebuilding a mail server in part because someone had seen fit to send this sort of thing to every person in the company. That’s six hours that I could have been home with my kids. Its lost time and productivity for the company I work for when no one can get their e-mail. E-mail may look free to you, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t costs associated with it.
But that’s small potatoes, if you would have followed the link, you’d see that this particular chain letter has caused resource issues at the ACS. They do good work - most of it with minimal resources. They’ve had to move resources from raising money to fight cancer, to answering questions about this untrue e-mail. Meaning that you are actually hurting the cause of finding a cure for cancer, not helping it when you forward this thing."
I got back - “I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t really understand the implications of forwarding this sort of thing. I’ll check before I forward from now on.”
My mom got the same e-mail. She asked me if I was going to take the kids trick or treating at the mall and I, of course, told her “no.” (Why the hell would I go to a mall for Halloween anyway?!?) Then she told me about the e-mail she got saying the terrorists are going to attack the US malls on Halloween. I just laughed and asked her why she would believe such a thing.
She said, “I got the e-mail from Blah Blah, he’s really high up in our Amway organization.”
“Oh,” I said. “You’re going to believe that’s true just because someone high up in Amway sent you the e-mail?”
“Yeah. He’s really high up in the Amway organization. And, you never know. It could be true.” She said. (Yeah, Amyway makes it more credible. :rolleyes: )
I told her she should look these things up on Snopes before she forwards them on and she said the same thing most people have been saying… “How do you know the information on Snopes is true?”
Why is it so hard to get ignorant people to see the light?
Anyway, I went to Snopes and found the appropriate links and decided to forward them, along with a link to the FBI press release saying the UL was false. I sent it to my mom and everyone she forwarded that stupid e-mail to. No one has even bothered to respond back to me to say “Thank you” or “Fuck you.” Oh well. I tried to do my part to fight ignorance.
Dangerosa, with your permission I’m going to copy your post to a text file and use it as a model for the next time I have to debunk some piece of inane drivel.
Otay?
Just last week I sent a gushing letter to them telling them that I thought that they were heros. I received a very nice and humble reply from Barbara Mikkelson.
I send Snopes link replies all the time. A few people have stopped sending me their crap which is fine by me. Better yet, several people have learned to check Snopes first before they send out stupid bullshit.
Haj
Hater of Ignorance
I’m sick and tired of receiving this crap. I used to admin a couple of servers as volunteer, and when I see someone send out a HOAX to an ENTIRE COMPANY (1000 people?) without taking the time to check if it’s true (esp when it’s a virus hoax, that info is readily available at ANY AV site) it riles me. I snapped once and sent a ‘reply to all’ to the whole company, stating that it was a hoax, providing the relevant link, and asking people please NOT to forward it on. The offender replied to me that he hadn’t had time to check, I replied to him that it had taken me 2 minutes to find. My boss told me in the future I should only respond to the offender, but strangely enough the server admins were silent (imagining them cackling in the back room)
I have also may have lost a friend because she kept sending me this shit, and I told her straight out I would kick her ass repeatedly if she didn’t bother to check it out first. (she sends to her entire address book.)
haven’t heard from her since.
My only, only problem with SNopes, and I know I’ll get flamed for this, are the annoying and silly little phrases that Barbara Mikkelson feels she must insert at the end of each entry. They’re not funny, they’re seldom clever, and in my opinion, they somewhat undermine the site. I never liked that stuff on usenet and I like it less on the site.
Apart from that, however, I totally dig snopes. Though to be honest, I have gotten out of the habit of informing people about urban legends. Call me a bad soldier in the fight against ignorance, but my experience is that telling people that something they have sent you is an urban legend is about the same as replying with, “Your mother was a drunken whore, your god is false, and your political party is a bunch of clowns. In addition, your significant other turns tricks for crack.” The response you get is usually the same.
i had started a new thread, but i think it should really be part of this thread:
mods, close my thread, please?
oh damn, messed up the code.
this is the page on snopes.
See, I debunked some of my mom’s forwards, virus hoaxes and such, and she sent me an email saying
**
I love my Mom. Haven’t gotten another forward from her since. 
Steven
Scarlett, go for it. Edit appropriately, we don’t want that post becoming another UL.
You people think you’ve got it bad…
My father used to send every piece of drivel that came his way to everyone in his address book. I got sick of saying “Dad, that’s not true”, “Dad, that won’t happen”, “Dad, it’s a fake” so in the end I sat him down one night and introduced him to Snopes. I hoped that he would use it, and was thrilled a couple of days later when I got a message from him on iCQ asking what the address was for “that Urban Legend page”. He’s using it!
What I failed to realise is that my father is an incurable stirrer, and that I’d overstated how much I hate getting the chain mail. Now he checks it out on Snopes, but forwards it to me anyway just to annoy the crap out of me. So I’ve stopped him sending the rest of the world into a panic over these ULs, but he’s sitting there at his computer chuckling and forwarding them to me and me alone just to drive me nuts!
I remember when my reality check bounced…
In the event that it had actually BEEN on Paul Harvey, then, yeah. But Paul Harvey has said repeatedly that he never did the piece. Which should have ended it right there, but didn’t - people still called in and said “Well, maybe Harvey never said it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
Considering that the whole thing was about the Paul Harvey piece, I’d say that that was pretty conclusive evidence that it ISN’T true.