Ninety percent of the outraged e-mail forwards I’m getting are about illegal aliens, that Congress voted to give them Social Security benefits, and that illegal aliens are costing the US more than the Iraq war.
It doesn’t seem to matter that I do a Reply All with a Snopes debunking, people keep sending this crap.
Does Coca-Cola really clean the gunk from car batteries? I’ve heard that for years but haven’t tried it.
I actually got into an argument the other day with a guy who insisted that even if Obama isn’t a muslim now that makes it even worse because he demonstrably used to be a muslim, and–you know–those people, the worst thing in the universe for those people is if someone leaves the religion because then they’re automatically on a kill-on-sight list, and the entire Muslim world hates us already, think how much more they’ll hate us and how many terrorist attacks we’ll have if the President was an ex-Muslim!!!11!.
It was about that time I decided it prudent to vacate the premises.
Sigh.
Yes, but you have to tap the top/side a few times before you open it so it doesn’t explode/foam over. 
I did my good deed for the year the other day. A local blowhard/Limbaugh wannabe radio talk host has repeated the Obama=Muslim crap for months now. Our computer guy at work, who is young, bright, a great cook, was telling another employee this a few weeks ago. I said “Obama isn’t Muslim.” Told him to look it up. He did, and now won’t ever listen to that doofuss on the radio again.
This is the UL I hear most often as well. I’ve got an acquaintance that has stopped talking to me because of it. We got into an argument after a few drinks, he likes the idea that we might have undiscovered super powers in the untapped 90% of our minds. Like invisibility or the telekinesis.
I just like the idea of being right.
The issue I have with it isn’t so much the numbers but rather it’s in the ‘everyone knows’ category of facts. Nobody can be bothered to actually check it when it’s so much easier to just parrot what they’ve heard because it has some shock value. I’d be just as annoyed if the actual number was 75%.
I work in the auto industry, and every rah-rah bullshit meeting I’ve ever been forced to attend works the Nova misnaming UL in somewhere.
If I tell the speaker it’s false, I get the “Well, the point still stands” reply.
I don’t know about the one I heard the most, but the one that drove me the craziest for awhile was the so-called MIT commencement speech by Kurt Vonnegut that started, “wear your sunscreen.”
What drove me crazy about this was that it was not written by Vonnegut, who didn’t need the publicity, it WAS written by someone, who not only didn’t get credit but was actually accused of plagiarizing the thing (Mary Schmich wrote it in her column in the Chicago Tribune, as the kind of commencement speech she would give, if she had the opportunity), and that this misinformation continued unabated to arrive in my various email boxes, for years, often from writers who thought I was just being a wet blanket when I corrected them.
What drove me crazy about this was that I got it as an email from people who are smart and educated and not ignorant, and even from one who was a friend of Vonnegut himself!
Why? Why not say, “Here’s a very clever, funny column that was written by this columnist at the Chicago Tribune.”? Did it make the column better if it came from Vonnegut?
Oh damn, now I’m getting pissed off all over again.
(No, I do not personally know Mary Schmich. I just think this one was wrong, wrong, wrong. Even though it was probably less damaging than the “Obama is a Muslim” one.)
I keep hearing that global warming really exists.
Trying to being funny? Try again.
My favourite response to this is what was posted on Snopes: that a Spanish speaker not buying a car called “Nova” would be like an English speaker not buying a dining-room set called “Notable.”
Yeah. I’ve done it before, but I’ve heard that it’s better to clean corroded terminals with a wire brush.
The one I hear most, and from far too many sources that really should know better, is that lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping from cliffs.
Also, if you’re a college student and your roommate dies (or is it just suicide in the UL?), you get straight A’s for the semester.
:rolleyes:
I keep getting that email forward about protesting certain gas stations on certain days to make gas prices go down. I hate that one.
I got into the habit of replying to crap UL emails by sending the Snopes link to all in the email distribution list. People got embarrassed and now they don’t send them to me anymore.
I used to be upset that people don’t take to this very well, but now I consider it a win-win.
The one I remember most when I was a kid was the myth that you can redeem Tootsie Roll Pop wrappers for a free one if the wrapper has the Indian shooting a star on it. Even as a kid, my bullshit meter was pinged because I noticed that a huge proportion of the wrappers contained the Indian, and that they were all cut from a repeating sheet. One could potentially buy a box of the suckers and get almost a whole new box for free.
Nowadays, I frequently hear that the government will soon release cell phone numbers for telemarketers. While the link provided in the email is accurate, no such list exists.
I work in advertising, so I hear it a great deal as well. It pops up in just about every book on international branding.
Granted, it does make a good point, but it’s still not true.
Oh yeah, I also work with idiots.
I’ve never heard this one. What did she and the wild girls in the Home Depot parking lot do?
The “graduation speech/wear sunscreen” thing cracks me up. It was even a single that got tons of radio play for a while and was recorded by Australian film director Baz Luhrmann.
And I think the first iteration of the “cookie recipe” UL was Mrs. Field’s.
I cannot stand the Limbaugh-inspired screeds against Mexican immigrants. My MIL is a flaming racist so I get to hear/see those a lot.
Long before Hilfiger, Elvis Presley was the victim of this same type of smear. There’s absolutely NO evidence that Elvis ever said anything like this, but millions of black Americans are convinced that he proclaimed publicly that black people are only good for shining his shoes, scrubbing his toilet and buying his records. I’m pretty sure that’s the reason Public Enemy ripped into Elvis in “Fight the Power.”
Sad thing is, Elvis KNEW this rumor was out there, and it hurt him. I can’t vouch that he had no racist tendencies, obviously, but he had black friends and colleagues and he regularly felt compelled to reasssure them that he’d never say anything like that.
One I hear all the time is that the average American swallows 2 spiders every year in their sleep.
This, of course, is not true.