Idiots who blindly forward anything

[Hyena Dandy]

Oh, and that "I revoke all Facebook rights to my material" thing came up again this week, and people are posting it. This time, it starts out with a claim that it was on some news show that you have to post that, or risk having all your stuff shared.

I love that one, because I can usually point out that if Facebook can't share anything you post, they can't share anything you post with ME, therefore, if that worked, I couldn't see it.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Of course, there's a Snopes page on it, too.

http://www.snopes.com/computer/facebook/privacy.asp

Snopes is a godsend for crap like this. Back in the days when the internet and emails were only just invented and were new and exciting, a lot of people would send me shit thru email. Every time, I checked Snopes, found the page which debunked said shit, then send the link to everyone listed in the bcc.

No-one ever sends me crap thru email now, or facebook.

[Andara Bledin]

The depressing part is that people don't not send them because they've learned anything. They just don't include you on the list because they don't like it being pointed out that people are preying on their credulous simplicity.

[smileyeagle1021]

The only thing more irritating than the people who don't fact check are the ones who will immediately point out that you posted something that was proven wrong when you already had in your original post that you knew it had been proven wrong (I had one today where I posted a picture warning about a scam going around, and I explicitly stated, "I know this one isn't true, but watch out for it anyway in case this gives someone ideas on how to actually pull it off." apparently that is failure to fact check )

[violiav]

Oh my gawd! The facebook one going around is so annoying!. Grr. I posted the link to the snoops article in response to people spreading the falsehood and my replied that it was peoples way of taking a stand.
A stand against what I say? If you're opposed to facebook then get off facebook.

[DGoddess]

The sad part is, a lot of these "idiots" are smart people otherwise. My brother graduated second in his class, and it took me several tries before I finally convinced him that there is no such thing as an "email tracking device", and that he wasn't going to get free beer for forwarding emails.

I think you have a point there. Seems as if a lot of highly educated folk out there don't have what's called everyday horse sense.

My brother is intellectually different (think kinda like Forrest Gump, or better yet Randy Hickey from My Name is Earl) yet even HE would laugh at the notion of an email tracking device.

"Shit," he would say "I'm not buying that."

[Ree]

Snopes is a godsend for crap like this.

Nope. Not for some of the people on my list.
No sir! They believe that snopes is run by some liberal democrat who slants the results in favour of his own pro-Obama beliefs.

If snopes says that picture of Obama kissing Huga Chavez with the claim that Obama wants it off Facebook, so share he hell out of it, is really just a Benetton ad taken out of context, well then, don't let the actual facts get in the way of your delusion. Go ahead and believe that snopes is the one who is lying.

Yep, they've been sharing the "snopes got snoped" garbage.

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/
http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com...-the-internet/
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/int...es_exposed.htm

Just now, a friend shared a picture of what is supposedly this incredibly long snake, and the picture was allegedly "spotted on Okeechobee extension west of the Turnpike in Ft.Pierce a hour ago....at least 20ft."

I posted and shared 2 links proving it was a hoax, and yet, there have been 2 comments after mine that clearly show the people believe it's a true picture, and they haven't even checked out the truth.

[Lace Neil Singer]

For those people, spam them with lolcats and ponies instead. XD

I'd suggest the site that lolcats originated, 4chan, but on second thoughts, might not be a good idea when there might be children around. Lolcats and ponies however are perfectly reasonable and you can even make your own captions to get the message across.

[Ree]

The latest is that silly giraffe riddle virus warning on Facebook.

There's a silly little riddle going around, and if you answer it wrong, you have to put a giraffe as your profile pic.

Some website posted a warning that it was a clever trick set up by hackers to gain access to your computer and back accounts. Allegedly, as soon as you did a google search for giraffe images, it started the process of the virus taking over your computer. Within a day or so, that had become a warning that the group "Anonymous" was behind it to get to our bank accounts.

When I read the very first warning on Saturday, it quoted the SANS Internet Storm Center as the source of the info. I googled and didn't find anything on the usual hoax busting sites, so I went directly to that site and there was absolutely nothing posted there in their latest news.

Then, within a day or so, HoaxSlayer did have a warning that it was a hoax, and then ThatsNonsense.com had a warning about the hoax too.
I posted both links over the past couple of days, as well as a giraffe image that one of the sites provided with a joke that it didn't have a virus attached to it.
Still, even after all those posts I have friends sharing the warning.

Why does a hoax spread like wildfire, yet a legitimate story with the proof goes nowhere?

What I hate is when they post the false info and then say, "Sharing just in case." Why??? Just find out if it's true first.
Then, when the truth is pointed out, they leave up the original message.

I had one friend who shared that "Send Christmas cards to the soldiers at Walter Reed Medical Center", with an incorrect address. There is a program, but it is not run by the organization in the message. Sending cards there is a waste of time and postage.

I commented and gave her the link to the snopes article with the correct address.
Yes, she reposted a new message with the correct address, but she still left the original message up! Why?

[HYHYBT]

I might well leave up something like that if there was a correction in the comments under it and if I'd posted a corrected version later. Correcting an error is a very different thing from making it look like you hadn't made one in the first place, and removing an old post doesn't get people to unsee it. Meanwhile, the way Facebook is laid out, anyone who hasn't seen it has to pass by the correction first.

Until a few days ago, I'd never had it happen, but two pages I until recently enjoyed have blocked me just since Thursday, one of them directly for sending them to Snopes and the other for disagreeing with a post calling those who said that passing along untruths unchecked was bad for their credibility "concern trolls."

[Pixilated]

I've forwarded incorrect stuff with a message saying, "IF YOU GET THIS BE AWARE IT'S A HOAX." In all caps. Hopefully most people see that part ...

Man, some people are stupid.
I have this friend who posts every conspiracy theory going, as long as it paints Obama in a bad light.

There's this picture that I've seen a hundred times or more, of Obama and his wife, supposedly pledging allegiance to the flag with their left hands over their right chest.
*snip*
They forgot that Michelle parts her hair on the other side, and the soldier in the background has his medals on the wrong side of his jacket, though.
*snip*

They're getting sneakier ... the last version of that photo that appeared on my wall had nobody in the background.

*snip*

Just now, a friend shared a picture of what is supposedly this incredibly long snake, and the picture was allegedly "spotted on Okeechobee extension west of the Turnpike in Ft.Pierce a hour ago....at least 20ft."

*snip*

Dammit, I was afraid that was too cool to be true!

[Ree]

OK, is this irony?

I have a FB friend who is constantly posting anti-government, anti-police, ant-military posts. He posts every conspiracy going. According to him, the world is just one big dying mess of a sinkhole filled with hatred and crime and violence and everybody trying to screw everyone else over.

The other day, he posted a meme about "questioning everything" in relation to the government and the media.

Tonight he posted this news story with this comment:

Another greedy company...no surprise there! Owned by the '1%ers'....both fast food places can shove it up Their ass! I don't go to either of them!!!! Kick them both out of Canada!!!!!

http://thelapine.ca/burger-king-kill...react-angrily/

"The Lapine" is a satire news site.

The story was mocking all the outrage because a traditional Canadian company was just bought by an American company.

So, he apparently questions everything, except fake news sites before passing their stories along as truth. LOL

[Ree]

OMG...someone commented on his post

I work for Tim Horton's, this is actually unfortunate for us

So I added

There's nothing on the CBC, or on the Oakville News site, about protesters at Tim Hortons. My daughter also works at Tim Hortons and there has been no announcement as far as she knows. Googling about timbits and protesters only brings up this satire news site. Searching the CBC for Tim Hortons brings up nothing about this story. http://www.cbc.ca/gsa/?q=tim+hortons

So he just commented:

I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens! But it wouldn't surprise Me! They are owned by the '1%er' group now! Things will change at Timmies...it's just a matter of when!!!

Good grief!

[Mr Hero]

The only missing persons notices that get posted by my friends have proven to be legit. They'd come up as amber alerts on my hotel's software hours later. The one that irks me is the ones that say "X month will have 5 occurrences of certain days, which only happens once in 800+years. This is easily proven false.

Also, relevent: Stop Forwarding This Crap to Me by Weird Al Yankovic

[Ginger Tea]

The one that irks me is the ones that say "X month will have 5 occurrences of certain days, which only happens once in 800+years. This is easily proven false.

I saw two quite recently and after the first I looked at my calendar to find that it was not this December that had five Saturday, Sunday and Monday's, I knew it wasn't an 800 'lucky cycle' we had two quite recently.

There are only 14 calendar's you ever need to buy all you have to do is know which one to fish out due to leap years.