UL e-mails from a friend... advice sought.

I keep getting e-mails from a friend (quite a good friend) that sound like complete garbage. They aren’t sent just to me, but also to a huge list of her friends, none of which I know.

Sure enough, when I check snopes, there it is. False as false can get.

What should I do ?

It seems to me I have three options :

  1. Get over it. Delete the e-mail and get on with life.

  2. Reply with the snopes link, and a gentle message.

  3. Reply to all, with the snopes link.

What are your opinions ?

Relevant info : She’s a nice, sweet person, whose company I enjoy, but I know we’ll be parting ways in a couple of years. We keep in contact mainly by e-mail, and spend about two weeks together in a year (split into three or four occasions) holidaying and catching up. Her partner and mine work at the same company but only see each other one half day a week.

O.K, give me your opinions, humble and not-so-humble :smiley:

  1. Maybe. It depends how much she sends you.

  2. This is what I usually do. Although purists will say that this adds to the volumes on unneccessary email clogging systems around the world.

  3. No. She’d be embarassed by this. (Unless you try 2 and she just doesn’t get the idea)

I get about one e-mail a week, if that makes any difference.

I’m just thinking what I want the end result to be…

I’d be ecstatic if she started thinking and double-checking stuff (the subject is always “true story” or something like that) but I honestly don’t think that’s very likely. Ideal situation would be a gradual decrease in the amount of UL’s because she’s checking the facts first, but if that isn’t going to happen… I guess I’d rather she stopped sending them to me, but I don’t want to end the friendship early.

How about a reply in the form of “Wow! What a coincidence! Just after your email arrived, I happened to be looking at Snopes (link provided) and there’s the email you sent me! What are the odds? Looks like some sneaky devil is trying to trick us. Man, I’m glad I’ve found this site - now I’m never going to fall for one of these again!”

Alternatively, you can do what I do

“If you visit this link (to the Snopes story), you’ll see that you’ve been taken in by a hoax.”

After a few of those, she’ll start thinking twice about including you on her mass mailing list.

Wish I was as subtle as cazzle; I’d never thought of that. But I’ve never had anyone take (noticeable) offense at just having the debunking cite–Snopes, Cecil, et al–provided, either. Several of the gullible have been converted, which fits the “fighting ignorance” theme. But I’d recommend against the broadcast option, as that really wastes bandwidth.

Classy, cazzle. But I’ve done #2. Unless I know other people on the mailing list, in which case I do #2.5. :wink:

Never 3. What kind of hellish world is it where spam comes in response to spam? Surely the devil himself could have thought of no greater punishment for man.

cazzle has the right idea.

My mom occassionally sends me that same type of crap, and I’ve thought of a way to bring up Snopes that should work well for her: I’ll send her my own glurge (no, really, hear me out …) but one of those glurges that is actually certified as real by Snopes.

(For example, the pictures of the snow sculpture representing an angel comforting a firefighter who holds an American flag in his hands.)

Along with the glurge that I send will be the appropriate Snopes link, and something like, “As you know, there are lots of false stories floating around like this. Snopes is a good website for determining the accuracy of these things.”

The idea is that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. :slight_smile:

Well,

My sister, who should know better, kept sending my UL stuff and other crap. I tried the nice thing, didn’t work. I replied with a link to snopes, didn’t work. Finally I got tired of it and just forwarded all my spam to her. She got a clue pretty quickly. She called and asked why I was sending her all this crap and I told her that I was just trying to make a point. The point being that she sent me alot of crap and I did not like it. She got the point and since then she has sent one questionable email to me and she apologized for sending it.

YMMV,
Slee

One of the things I’ve done with this kind of thing is gently point out that it’s an urban legend, along with a cite.

One of the other things I’ve done is make it a point to ask that nothing be sent to me without proper attribution.

We all know these emails circulate like gnats, along with actual newspaper columns and other things which are copyrighted. One of the things that really burns my bacon is copyright infringement, which I consider circulating unattributed articles and stories to be. These things don’t just write themselves, after all.

Since I ask beforehand, in a general email, that nothing be sent to me without attribution, and the reasons why, I don’t get a whole lot of ULs stuffing up my inbox.

I’m a jerk, I reply to all with a snopes link. I even did it once when one of my coworkers sent a virus warning hoax email to everyone in the call center.

Embarassment is the most effective way of stopping this crap.

Um, ah…what does UL mean?

Urban Legend.

Thank-you Algernon, from the bottom of my less-than-cryptic heart.
In fact, here’s some flowers for you…

Alright, so I can’t do flowers on this board.
Bugger!

Just to answer the OP, do NOT reply to all. Jesus, just what I need. Some whacko email from a dork, and then 15 replies to that same crapola.

Most people I know actually give it a big “doh” when you point out that the spam they sent out was complete dog doo. Many even remember that the next time around before they forward the babble of the day onwards. YMMV

If most people on the list are known to me, I usually reply-to-all, adding some comment along the lines of me being sad enough and bored enough to actually check these things out, and a suggestion that people do the same before sending junk in future (this applies to virus hoaxes as well!)

If it was sent to a whole bunch of people who I don’t know, I’d send the same message to just the sender - there’s nothing worse than continually getting e-mails from 2 people you don’t know who can’t work out how to use ‘reply’ instead of ‘reply-to-all’

It depends. If it is a computer virus hoax I’ll use “reply to all” since most people aren’t that technical.

If it’s just an urban legend I’ll start by replying to the sender alone.

The wife of one of Mr. S’s friends sent me two in one afternoon – the Klingerman virus and I forget the other one. When I sent her the Snopes link for Klingerman and the usual polite request to check things out and don’t send me this stuff, I got back, “I only sent it because I CARE about you and Mr. S!” sob

I’ve also gotten the “Well, you never know” in reply to a Snopes link for the “Forward this and get money!” crap. :rolleyes:

But I keep fighting the good fight. I’ve managed to train most of the wrongdoers to leave me out of it.

I reply all, because it’s usually from someone I don’t know too well. People who know me well generally know not to send crap into my box. Yeah, screw the spam for spam counterargument.
Maybe someone else will be spared the waste of time of an e-mail forward.

And you know what? Those people never send me crap again.

Problem solved.

I have a friend who does this. Love her dearly, but I’m getting sick of hearing about sick kiddies and miracles.

I usually take option 2, with a Snopes link and

a) a hint that she might want to check some of this stuff out before she mindlessly forwards it on to fifty people (I wish I was exaggerating), and
b) a note that I get enough emails without having my inbox clogged up with crud like this.

The frequency of the emails cycles; occasionally, she’ll remember I don’t like this crap.

But I have a worse problem - we have a tech & IT person at work who routinely sends out virus warnings of the “forward to everyone you know! It’ll delete your hard drive and paint your cat purple!” variety. I nailed him about it, face to face, and got the old “Well, you never know, it might have been important” response.

sigh

Never-ending battle with the hoax-hydra.

For me it depends on the subject matter of the UL. If it is just some glurge I either let it slide or just reply to the sender.

If it is some horrific, oh my god it could happen to you, sort of thing I send the snopes link to all. One of my office workers sometimes does this at work to everyone in the office. I busted her on the ‘Code Adam’ about the kid found half naked and had their head shaved in the bathroom.

I had to bust her a couple of more times about some 9/11 stuff to make her quit.