Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies
PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET AND OUTLYING AREAS: Before you forward an email with a threat to our health or a Muslim plot or a cunning way to bring down gas prices or a whimsical story of how the phrase "It's raining cats and dogs" came into being, could you do me a favor?
Please?
Go to snopes.com. Ignore the flashing ads and the pop-ups, they're really quite awful, but snopes will provide you the great gift of telling you whether this story has anything whatsoever to do with truth. And with one click, you will know the email you sent is eight years old and the little boy who wanted birthday cards has been free of cancer for years. And you will not forward that email and someone won't forward it after you. It'll be as if you stopped a stupid but pernicious cold. And maybe if enough people do this, some day we'll live in a world where the only lies in our inbox will be from our alumni magazines.
Please?
Go to snopes.com. Ignore the flashing ads and the pop-ups, they're really quite awful, but snopes will provide you the great gift of telling you whether this story has anything whatsoever to do with truth. And with one click, you will know the email you sent is eight years old and the little boy who wanted birthday cards has been free of cancer for years. And you will not forward that email and someone won't forward it after you. It'll be as if you stopped a stupid but pernicious cold. And maybe if enough people do this, some day we'll live in a world where the only lies in our inbox will be from our alumni magazines.
posted by Unknown at 8:53 AM
16 Comments:
*stands, stomping feet and whistling exuberantly with two fingers in her mouth* Amen! Amen!
I've gotten so irritated with those emails that, whenever I get one, I just reply all with the appropriate link. Just that and with no accompanying commentary from me. As a result, people aren't sending me quite so many emails of mass hysteria.
I love the ones that have "this has been verified by Snopes" in the e-mail, yet when you go there it says false!
it's called reading people, please do it!
I know you're not fond of FB, but that stuff even goes over there in the form of status updates of stuff that isn't true. The new way of forwarding. So annoying!
Snopes is great. However, go to Mr. Ed entry on Snopes.com. To show how dumb I am, I believed it. They put a few bs entries in there to make people think and not just rely on the site. LOL!
One of the most useful PSAs I've ever read.
Ugh. Half the emails from my mother...
*** applause ***
Amen again!!! If we paid attention to some of the "stuff"
that comes in we'd all be living
in a bubble.
Amen sister! I have had an email account for over ten years now and I have received the same stupid chain mails a million times. Please, everyone, JUST STOP!!!
I was on my high school class e-group and when such junk was posted I would send the appropriate Snopes link to correct it without a comment. Some classmates thanked me for correcting them and claimed to be amazed that I found the time to check these posts instead of just forwarding them (DUH!). Most, though, complained that I was being a smart aleck — a couple sent rants! It was our 30th HS reunion last year. I did not go. : )
I received one of "those" emails this morning. I politely explained that this urban legend had been circulating for years and included the snopes link explaining the myth. Then I reiterated that snopes was a great place to fact check email forwards. Sigh. I do this every time and some have learned. Once, I got a reply with a rant that snopes is run by the liberal media and blah, blah,blah.. I stopped reading.
Thank you! I plan to send this post to a number of people who have never taken the hint that Snopes.com should be consulted prior to further distribution of this type of e-mail. (Wonder if anyone will consult Snopes to see if Quinn Cummings posted an e-mail about consulting Snopes when in doubt about the veracity of a chain e-mail?)
Sadly, but also fortunately, my mother in law passed away before she could try or learn to use email. I can only imagine the kinds of forwarded emails I would receive from her as one of our last conversations was her trying to convince me that yes, breast cancer WAS contagious and I should stay away from a family member that was suffering from it.
Thanks for the info!
So does this mean that plug-in air fresheners don't cause house fires or that you can't ingest roach eggs from licking an envelope? :)
Thank you Quinn! Maybe one or two people will hear you!! I've been practicing this nifty little trick for a few years and started to assume I was the only person interested in the truth! I also found that some people become downright hostile when you steal their thunder because they truly believe they were the First person to report the news of Justin Biebers untimely demise from eating an undercooked hamburger in Mexico or that he was abducted by aliens and decided not to return because they have bigger Walmarts on Mars! I have been deeply saddened to learn that folks are gullible enough to believe some of this stuff or heartless enough to prey on those that do. Thanks again for being another voice of reason!
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