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[pmcd9]

Urban legends and stuff.  I know you all get this type of shit in your inbox.  I don't really want to talk about any particular urban legend.  What I'm interested in discussing is why the people that send this shit out get it wrong so often.  They have like a 1000 batting average for sending me utter rubbish.  It seems like they would get it right occasionally, but they dont is what I'm getting at.  Have you noticed this?

And this is what I want to know.  Why is that?  Okay, sure you saw a video of a cell phone popping popcorn and thought, wow, that is amazing and forwarded it to everyone you know.  I know that you are not trying to fool me, that you actually believe this is real and you want to share it with me because you think it's cool.  And I know that there is amazing shit on the internet that is real.  It seems to reason that my inbox would be flooded with a mixture of real wow that's amazing mixed in with the bullshit.  But it's not, only the bullshit gets forwarded.

No, it's almost never real and that's what I can't understand.  It's like these people have a filter for bullshit, but it works in reverse.  Where truly amazing things get filtered out and only the bullshit gets through.. Why does it work out that way?

There must be some psychological explanation for it.

[wombat]

That is a really interesting question. Why don't I get forwarded all kinds of fascinating facts and amazing real scientific discoveries? The way the world really works is so much more interesting than the bullshit.

I don't know. I do know that one of my proudest accomplishments is that I taught my mother to always check something on Snopes.com before she forwards it.  Seriously - I taught an old lady mom to check out whether emails are urban legends before forwarding them: Now that's an amazing story that everyone should be sending around in their email.

[AugustWest]

Now that's an amazing story that everyone should be sending around in their email.

True, but will you settle for a tiny can of Dr. Pepper instead?

[pmcd9]

I trained my mother as well.

I told her several times to stop sending me stuff like this.  Finally I hit "Reply All" gave a link to Snopes dot com and wrote "Have some dignity."

Now she checks Snopes on anything before she sends it to me. 

[Carlos del Vaca]

Good on you guys for successfully training your moms.  I have gotten in the habit of hitting "Reply All" and just sending the Snopes link, and as a result I get a lot fewer emails of this nature, I think because I pissed off the original sender for making them look dopey.

So why do people send this crap?

1.  Reality is boring.  People WANT to believe cell phones can cook eggs and other crazy crap.
2.  For politically-based urban legends, people look for evidence that supports their beliefs and ignore the rest.  Some people WANT to believe that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya and ineligible for the presidency.  Some people WANT to believe that George W. Bush is so stupid he couldn't figure out that the lens caps were still on the binoculars.  So that's what they forward on, without bothering to check it first.  It reinforces my worldview, so it MUST be true.

[Choop]

Some people are just morons, either gullible or acritical. When the snopes treatment fails me, I email people like this directly to tell them that if they don't stop forwarding me junk, I'll have to assume everything they send is junk and stop reading mail from them. That usually does the trick, but there have been a couple idiots whose addresses I've ended up blocking.

[pmcd9]

Some people are just morons, either gullible or acritical. When the snopes treatment fails me, I email people like this directly to tell them that if they don't stop forwarding me junk, I'll have to assume everything they send is junk and stop reading mail from them. That usually does the trick, but there have been a couple idiots whose addresses I've ended up blocking.

Yeah, well would you do that to your mother and father?

[Choop]

I did that to my mother. My father never earned that treatment. But then, I don't have the best relationship with them anyway, so it was really no skin off my back.

[jay-ell]

I don't get crap like this in my email anymore. I did ReplyAll:Snopes my cousin into submission, but mostly I just gave the rest of my family an email address I never check and save the good email address for people who have proven that they will not spam me. 

I do have a friend who occasionally sends me jokes, and while they're usually not as funny to me as she seems to think they are (they come with subject lines like, "This is a scream!"), they don't actually diminish my opinion of her.

[theinevitable]

My little sister invited me to a facebook group about how 10 LUCKY MEMBERS will win ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS of GIFT CARDS TO IKEA.
and I was about to make fun of her, and then my girlfriend invited me to the same thing.

man, she was so upset when I brought that up. I WANTED IKEA. WHY CAN'T I WANT NICE THINGS. IT SEEMED REAL.

I think we are all just internet-jaded or something.
internet-savvy.

[theinevitable]

yeah, she was so mad/sad at having been duped due to her desire for cute furniture.

also she said "that friend of yours, *****, invited me to it, which I thought meant it was legit."
Which is like saying...
I can't think of a good metaphor, but the person who invited her is kind of dumb, and exactly the person who falls for scams like this and has a weird rationalization of why she thought this one was real.

anyway, the end of the story is that after a certain number of steps on the fake ikea website, it asked for her credit card number, and she realized it was a trick.

[Victoria Waterfield]

yeah, she was so mad/sad at having been duped due to her desire for cute furniture.

also she said "that friend of yours, *****, invited me to it, which I thought meant it was legit."
Which is like saying...
I can't think of a good metaphor, but the person who invited her is kind of dumb, and exactly the person who falls for scams like this and has a weird rationalization of why she thought this one was real.

anyway, the end of the story is that after a certain number of steps on the fake ikea website, it asked for her credit card number, and she realized it was a trick.

You have a friend named r o b o t?

[Lister]

This has been going on since the $250 cookie recipe and before. 

People want to believe they're smart enough, plugged-in enough, subversive enough, or lucky enough to get one over on "the man."  People want to be the special unique flower, and the internet is the perfect place for insecure people to present themselves as one.

More than that, though, people want to be the first to contribute something new to their group.  They want to be recognized, and by and large most people's internet contacts are universally supportive.  It's never been easier to gather groups of people who will support whatever you say, regardless of whether you're right or wrong, and all that feeds on itself.  In a world where replacing a "friend" is a matter of a couple of penis clicks, it's easy to want to ingratiate yourself to as many people as you can.  It's the opposite of trolling but it comes from the same insecure place that we all ultimately have.

In a network of this sort, fact-checking isn't appreciated; it's an active act of rejection.  People don't change their ways when called out about this because you are the one in the wrong for pointing out that this GREAT NEW THING isn't great or new.  They're used to a world where communication is costly, and where people didn't waste it on things they didn't know were true.

I was going to end with the thought that someday, someone will actually invent a for-real c*ck enlarging device and they'll never be able to market it, but given the number of TV ads for ED drugs I'm gonna guess that someone will eventually listen...

[jay-ell]

I can understand her feeling mad/sad but including you in the blame because of a dopey friend just ain't right.

This is human nature, though.

"Hey, God, this lady you made to keep me company told me to eat it...I figured, you put her here, why would she lead me astray?"

[theinevitable]

Oh, I did not interpret what she was saying as blaming me.