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Mickey Richaud

Mickey Richaud

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...to get people to stop forwarding <span style="font-size: 23pt"> GARBAGE </span> without checking for accuracy?

I am so tired of bad information being disseminated without verifying.

How can people be so gullible?

~ <span style="font-style: italic"> Yeah, I know about P.T. Barnum's ALLEGED saying! (He didn't say that, by the way.) </span> ~

Sorry, rant over and out.
 
and we would be referring to what?
 
Discretion, J-P, discretion!
 
My mother-in-law used to send around all sorts of stuff when she first got on email. I politely sent her the appropriate Snopes links, and she eventually got the message and started doing at least some basic fact checking first.

Folks seem to be willing to believe things if they fit in with their world view, whatever that may be. Somehow the "I agree, so it must be true" notion is quite prevalent these days.
 
Mickey Richaud said:
...to get people to stop forwarding <span style="font-size: 23pt"> GARBAGE </span> without checking for accuracy?

I am so tired of bad information being disseminated without verifying.

How can people be so gullible?

~ <span style="font-style: italic"> Yeah, I know about P.T. Barnum's ALLEGED saying! (He didn't say that, by the way.) </span> ~

Sorry, rant over and out.
Click to expand...

I get a lot of stuff from "friends" who send me stuff that, if true, would really be upsetting. The problem is, much of it isn't true. Sometimes its stuff that seems plausible based on actual reality, but in fact it often isn't reality. Many of these emails will say "This has been verified on Snopes" but of you check on Snopes, it has been verified as FALSE. However, a word of caution - Snopes is a Mom and Pop operation and not always accurate itself. Not assume that because Snopes says so it must be true (or false).
 
I too dislike getting "forwards"... for one it BLASTS your email address across the net without your permission and it's a way to harvest email address's; that's why we all get phishing emails and emails with offers to sell us meds at dicounted prices.
On one occasion I had asked an a friend multiple times to refrain from sending me forwards. The last time he did I replied to ALL with a short email telling them if they wondered how they get spam it was because of these forwards that your friends send you. Oh yeah, my friend stopped sending me forwards... a small victory.
 
I used to get a ton of it from 1-2 guys in one of our clubs here. Usually they were emails I'd seen years before and were obviously false. I kind of made a game out of sending them the link to Snopes that debunked whatever the latest email was...finally they stopped sending them.

On the other hand I know someone who has a friend that constantly forwards the latest stupid false emails. Some of them are really off the wall stupid things that aren't political or historical falsehoods, they're just crazy things like (making this up) "punching in 3:00 on your microwave on Friday the 13th will cause it to explode". Receiving an email like that would cause this person to forward it to everyone she knows, then she'd go unplug her microwave to be safe.

The most annoying part of all of this is <span style="font-style: italic">if</span> the person forwarding the email spent as much energy checking snopes or even just googling a sentence from their original message, then this would stop. Even more so for the people that continually send them and continually get corrected for it.
 
I gave up after a few attempts asking "friends" to stop sending nonsense.
I have a number of people blocked now (they go into my Spam folder, which I delete without reading).

I recently saw one guy who was sending me a lot of crap.
When he saw me, he asked:

<span style="font-style: italic">"Did you read that one about.....blah-blah-blah."</span>

Me:
<span style="font-style: italic">Nope. I'm too busy these days. I blocked all your stuff.</span>

Harsh, I know, but I feel no need to be diplomatic to someone who wants to waste my time with nonsense.
 
The "educated" people I work for here (most with Masters degrees) are always forwarding me the foward this and get a free.... (computer, applebees meal, money from Bill Gates, ect..)

they then (most of them) learned to SNOPE it after I did a "send all" to everyone they sent it to with the SNOPEs link detailing it as false and embarrassing them.

The newest twist on it is some where in the message body it will say "this is true, I looked it up on SNOPEs" or "if they don't pay us we will sue them". This small sentence they some how seem to think makes it true every time. They just do not get the If it is too good to be true.

Are people so silly to truly beleive Bill gates is going to pay them $80,000 for having the message forwarded 20 times to test his new software? And how would he know who you are even if he wanted to (well Bill migt be able to do that). Then they always say, well we could sue if he doesn't... some how implying he started the email to begin with...

At least my one receptionist is honest, she tells me "I am not that smart, I am not rich, and not good enough looking to get a sugar daddy so, even if the chance of it being real is very small, I am not passing up the opportunity to get something free"
 
PATR8 said:
Are people so silly to truly beleive Bill gates is going to pay them $80,000 for having the message forwarded 20 times to test his new software? And how would he know who you are even if he wanted to (well Bill migt be able to do that). Then they always say, well we could sue if he doesn't... some how implying he started the email to begin with...
Click to expand...

Say it ain't so... are you saying Bill G. is NOT going to pay out? Oh Jeeez, duped again :jester:
 
Gliderman8 said:
PATR8 said:
Are people so silly to truly beleive Bill gates is going to pay them $80,000 for having the message forwarded 20 times to test his new software? And how would he know who you are even if he wanted to (well Bill migt be able to do that). Then they always say, well we could sue if he doesn't... some how implying he started the email to begin with...
Click to expand...

Say it ain't so... are you saying Bill G. is NOT going to pay out? Oh Jeeez, duped again :jester:
Click to expand...

I'm still waiting for my $40million to be deposited from that Rich diplomat in Nigeria!
 
Basil said:
Gliderman8 said:
PATR8 said:
Are people so silly to truly beleive Bill gates is going to pay them $80,000 for having the message forwarded 20 times to test his new software? And how would he know who you are even if he wanted to (well Bill migt be able to do that). Then they always say, well we could sue if he doesn't... some how implying he started the email to begin with...
Click to expand...

Say it ain't so... are you saying Bill G. is NOT going to pay out? Oh Jeeez, duped again :jester:
Click to expand...

I'm still waiting for my $40million to be deposited from that Rich diplomat in Nigeria!
Click to expand...

you too?
 
Got fed up long ago. Gullibility should be a punishable offense. I'd post a link to my "scare remedy" but I'd be charged for excessive bandwidth... them bloody spiders! :devilgrin:
 
DrEntropy said:
Gullibility should be a punishable offense.
Click to expand...

Usually is. Tends to be self correcting
 
You have just received the Amish virus. Since we have no electricity or computers, you are on the honor system. Please forward this message to everyone in your address book and then delete all files on your hard drive.

Thank you
 
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