Urban Legends and the morons who perpetuate them

The BBQ Pit
21

I get these kinds of things all the damn time, via e-mail, from people who should know better. I mean friends who are qualified to work in tech support. They also send me tons of “forward this to 27 people and receive a Gap/Victoria’s Secret/Disney World/etc. gift certificate.”

I just ignore and delete the friendship chain letter drivel unless (and this is more and more rare) it’s genuinely touching or funny; a few of my friends and I do sometimes enjoy sharing some awful saccharine tearjerker but only to the two or three of us who we know will get a kick out of it (Who remembers the kids buying golden slippers so their mom could meet Jesus in style?). Of course, there haven’t been many new chain letters lately and I’m sick to death of all of them at this point.

22

Let’s see…

I generally respond to the individual the first time, giving them the basic UL info and some links (including Snopes and one that goes thru basics of ‘how to identify UL & chain-mail’. That usually doesn’t work, but I’ve given them a fair chance. After that, I reply to ALL with the same info, usually accompanied by some (snide to scathing, depending on how often they do this) commentary.

I’ve only had one person try to use me as a fact-checker. I went along for a couple of times, but always just replied with links. The last time was when she had forwarded some garbage to a bunch of people and I replied to all. She sent me email apologizing and saying something like ‘I know, I should have checked with you first.’ I answered her very bluntly and said ‘No, you should have looked it up first. If you can’t take two minutes to websearch with the links I’ve sent you repeatedly, then don’t send it out at all - just delete it. If even that is beyond your abilities, at least stop sending them to me.’

Haven’t gotten anything from her since. Don’t know if she’s ticked & don’t care. Of course, she’s the same one that sent me an ACTUAL virus (Melissa, maybe?) having carefully changed the subject line and added a line asking “Can you tell me what this is?”. !!!

My boss does use me as a fact-checker; he knows I’ve been following ULs since long before the Web was around. And he gets away with it, being my boss and all.

I like the idea about listing personal experiences so over the top that it’s unbelievable - that method’s always worked for me to combat ‘martyr syndrome’. I’ll have to try that, if I ever have this problem again. I think word’s gotten round - I don’t see nearly as many of these as I used to. :smiley:

My two favorite stories:

Someone sent me a chainmail. The Snopes site listed it not only as a chainmail, but as having a followup virus hoax chainmail. (Yeah, that one, can’t remember the name.) I replied to sender with the appropriate Snopes link. Shortly afterward I received a plaintive email asking ‘So how do I get rid of the virus?’ :rolleyes:

I sent my dept coworkers a copy of the ‘Free Money Virus’; it was the first I’d seen of the ‘your appliances will be corrupted and your computer will throw itself out the window screaming’ satires and it just cracked me up. One of my coworkers carefully caught me alone, “just to make sure it was a joke”. Apparently was worried I’d sent her an actual virus!! :eek:

23

Myrr21 said:

[nitpick]
Actually, this isn’t entirely true. In the “DVD Internet community,” of which I consider myself a member, we use Internet petitions all the time to indicate to studios that a desire is there for this movie, or that feature. Often, they actually listen. While I have no doubt that, as you say, Myrr21, a random petition for marijuana legalization or what have you would be ignored, Internet petitions can actually be quite effective in certain narrow-scope applications.
[/nitpick]

24

[HIJACK]

as_u_wish, get AIM. I wanna talk at you.

[/HIJACK]

It would appear that those people who think those ULs are true aren’t bothering to show their faces in here. [smiley deleted due to impending wrath of ChiefScott]

25

[slight hijack cuz I haven’t raised any hell today]

Have you folks noticed that UL believers and UL debunkers have something in common: a seriousness that borders on a complete lack of humor?

Lighten up! Laugh at them like I laugh at you!

[/slight hijack cuz I haven’t raised any hell today]

26

My favorite (or is that most hated?) are the

“Hi, my name is Linda from the Save the Children foundation. I’m here to tell you about little Suzy. She only has one arm because her father chewed the other one off over a peiod of 3 days. He also set her hair on fire and broke her legs off at the knees. Please forward this email, and the poor little shit will get 5 cents, etc…”

Last time I got one like that, I went straight to Hotmail, created an email account called “Save the Children Foundation” and replied to all from there,

“I regret to inform you that little suzy has died. You are all miserable excuses of human life. You can’t take 5 seconds to help a child in excruciating pain. If there’s one lesson you should take from this, it is to forward EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF EMAIL you get, without pausing to even consider it’s validity. May you all rot in eternal HELL.”

27

change “suzy” to “Didino” :smiley:

28

wring, I don’t get it.

29

Come to think of it, has anyone ever received any forwarded email containing a story or news item, that was actually true? In the five years I’ve been online, I honestly don’t think that’s ever happened to me.

30

I don’t trust forwarded memos, even.

31

everyone should send an email to everyone they know explaining that any email that requests you send it to everyone you know is bullshit and that they should forward the message to everyone they know. :smiley:

32

you have to read it aloud:

Little Didino

Little Did I Know…

blame my DH, and his foster child, Little Didino…

33

I particularly hate the ones with “did you know?” lists attached to them.

“Did you know that the signers of the Declaration of Independence got screwed in the Revolutionary War? Here’s fifty bogus examples proving you should be thankful (sniff) to be an American:”

“Did you know Abraham Lincoln was a real go-getter? He was a miserable failure at everything but he just kept going. (insert bogus examples list)”

“Did you know that every single member of Congress is a convicted felon? Here’s a vague list without names, dates or proof, that should really open your eyes:”

“Did you know the origin of all these common household phrases? Golly, isn’t it interesting how we can lie and be boring at the same time?”

Save me from this irritating bullshit.

34

To all who use the “reply to all” method of dealing with urban legends:

Please consider not “replying to all”. If you do, instead of having one piece of spam, now I have two. And, if it continues, another kill-filter to create

Fenris

35

here’s a good urban legend debunking site. i’ve sent this guy some chain crap i received and he debunked it in his next column:

http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/columnists/galloway/index.html

36

just to nitpick…but where did you check last time? CBS can do whatever the hell they want with their line up. not necessarily illegal, but just an unpopular move, it would be…

37

Lately, i’ve been getting them and they say something to the effect of “weird facts [unconfirmed]”, or i read a great forwarded article on thinking outside the box and how bureaucratic standards become entrenched and the size of roman ruts determined the size of the space shuttle and I post an url correcting them and i recieve a reply to the effect of “oh, that was just as an EXAMPLE to show how bureaucracy can be entrenched.” well, if it isnt freakin TRUE then its not a good example right? and if the weird facts are unconfirmed, how useful are they?

Lately I have been reading them sometimes and producing a ratio of ones which have specifically been denied in SD…its around 25% usually.

The last one I got, I was wondering where the fact about the female pig was. Oops, I simply skipped over it it was there after all. with the requisite “wow” attached.

38

Psst. That was me.

(And, anyone who wants to flame me for hijacking a hijack can go to hell. This is the Pit, assface!)

(Ahh, that was fun.)

39

I usually reply to this sort of thing with a link to the pertinent Snopes page, and put the sender on my list of People Too Stupid To Ever Talk To Again. This strategy worked well for me until last week, when I got the one about tampons containing asbestos and lots of other Bad Things. This came from a distant acquaintance named Linda, who sent it to (I counted) 82 other people. Apparently, the asbestos is supposed to cause excess bleeding, so you’ll buy more tampons. The e-mail instructs me to buy only all-cotton tampons from some company I’ve never heard of, because otherwise I’ll be dead in a year, or something like that. So I sent back a short note with the Snopes link and a short note, and felt better for having helped to stamp out ignorance. Until the next day, when Linda wrote back that she knew the crap about the asbestos wasn’t actually true, she just thinks using all cotton and supporting small fledgling companies is a really good idea.

I just couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I give up.

40

I got one just today on a horror book e-group list.

This was the one about the baby stolen in Mexico, later found dead, its stomach full of smuggled drugs.

I sent the Snopes report back to the list, and I was very nice. The group is great, but having a few problems with idiots lately, and I didn’t want to add to the acrimony.

This was the sender’s reply:

IMHO… False or not…its still very evil and sad…someone just sent it to me today… I love Horror but the thought that this might actually have happened it [sic] pure evil

All you can do is shake your head.