March 25, 2008
Snopes (run by spammers?)
I'm constantly getting e-mails from friends and family that are... annoying to say the least. I think I've finally gotten to the point in life where I can resist the urge to reply, instead simply deleting and moving on. Today, however, I deleted but couldn't move on. I needed to vent and you are my victim. Sorry.
It's just that I can't believe the utter lack of skepticism that otherwise intelligent people have when they read that Applebee's will give you $50 for forwarding a chain letter (one of the e-mails I received this morning), or that Mr. Rogers was a trained sniper, or that entering your PIN in reverse will call the police.
It's not like it's difficult to find out whether these things are hoaxes or not. I knew the chain letter this morning was BS, but assuming I hadn't, all I would have had to do was type "Applebee's $50 certificate" into Google for an instant answer. This is virtually as fast as hitting the "forward to everyone in my freaking address book to clog their inbox" button in your e-mail client.
Someone should write an e-mail plugin that ties in with a database like Snopes, Urban Legends @ About.com, Break The Chain, Truth or Fiction, VMyths, scambusters.org, hoaxbusters... well, you get the picture. There are dozens of these sites. I think the extraordinarily credulous and extraordinarily lazy might benefit from an automatic scan (or a manual "check veracity" button - but maybe they're too lazy for that?) telling them whether or not they should forward e-mails that will clutter inboxes and annoy curmudgeonly skeptics like me.
Anyway.
I have to mention this classic xkcd strip (click to enlarge):
Speaking of xkcd, here are a couple of other classics...
25 Mar 12:38 | Link | Category: Humor, Opinion & Thoughts, Technology & Computing