To wonder why people repeat myths on the internet without checking

[hackmum]

Someone on Facebook has just posted a link to the story about Zouheir, the "Muslim" who supposedly confronted a suicide bomber outside the Stade de France last week.

Except it's not true, as this BBC story explains:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-34845882

It takes a matter of seconds to check something like this. Yet the Muslim Council of Britain repeated the story in its advert condemning the attacks.

Obviously it's not just this story - it happens all the time. Another friend just posted something purporting to be a speech to schoolchildren by Bill Gates, except it isn't. But I don't get why. It's so easy to check stuff now - just a few seconds of googling.

So why do otherwise intelligent people (and both the people I've just cited are highly educated) not check? Why don't they learn from experience? Is it that they're just not that bothered whether something is true or not?

Can anyone enlighten me?

No, they leave their lights off on the highway and murder people that flash them. I don't fucking know, it's all bullshit!!

I spend half my fb time correcting these stupid rumours. The worst though are the missing people ones. All it takes is a few clicks on the original photo, and normally there's an update from the family.
The worst one for me is of a young man here in Ireland. His missing photo comes up every few months, but his body was found about three years ago. His poor family must despair every time they see it.

I do like this picture lol

Someone posted the 'my friend went for a smear with a glittery foof' story today. I resisted pointing out how weigh she was.

I have a friend who can be pretty thick. She has recently shared the onion poison one and the cashpoint backwards pin number one. I linked each time to snopes where it said they weren't real, she just ignored me. She is someone who will argue the sky is red if she thinks she is right so it was probably wasted me trying to tell her anyway. I'm surprised she didn't fall for the 36 books one tbh. I had some idiots who did.

It does work as an emergency number
If you ring off a landline, we know where you are, same with a pay phone
If you ring off (a pre pay unregistered) mobile, we don't. It can be traced to say "somewhere in the vague area of a mountain, or somewhere in these 50 streets" but that's as much as we can get

If you have a landline teach DC to use that when possible if they need to use 999

I've had a couple of people post the "tampons contain asbestos" one. What happened to the M&S cactus hatching gazillions of cockroaches/spiders/dragons. That one always freaked me out despite knowing it was nonsense.

It's usually older people who send them to me, inlaws or my dad in particular although they've now got the hint and check Snopes or google themselves first (or just miss us out of the email as too pernicketty) so we get fewer

So 112 is pretty much pointless and you might as well phone 999 then?

Thought as much.

Pretty much! Same thing really
And no point tracing a mobile to the registered home address if you're using it when you're out

I've had a couple of people post the "tampons contain asbestos" one.

It's true - protects against burning sensations.

WMittens

I don't see that many of these things, but remain fond of 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays in a month occurs every 823 years. For any 31 day month it happens approximately every 7 years as 1/7 of the time the month starts on a Friday. It must move about a bit erratically due to leap years, but 823 is both very specific and very wrong.

The other one I saw recently was the following quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte:

Religious wars are basically people killing each other over who was the better imaginary friend.

A lovely quote and I do think my friend probably knows that Napoleon didn't say it, but who could look at that phrasing and think it sounded older than about 30 years?

The post with a picture of a pile of money..'share within 30 seconds and money will come your way' ...yeah right course it will..
....and the picture of some sick child ..FB have agreed to donate a dollar for every like.....bollocks have they..
...and the don't scroll without posting Amen to a child...yeah like that will help...
plus all the 'share if you love your son/daughter/grandchild'..usually shared by dysfunctional families who ought to be on the Stately homes thread..

Drives me nuts!!

I hada relative unfriend me as for every "warning" she'd post I'd post the snopes debunk.
She even posted the this is a hoax, but here's the story link for the " package at Christmas" fake delivery after posting the original hoax link...

Banging head against brick wall

It's worrying that so many people believe things that don't make sense without question. I see people post ones that are about 7 years out of date. And there are some that are just ridiculous.

So now it's your turn to let your friends know about 112 (112 is an emergency number on your mobile that takes you straight to the police because 999 does not work if you have no signal).

How in the name of fuck is 112 going to work if you have no bastard signal?

It's all rather similar to the chain letters we used to pre internet. The ones that you had to copy out and then send to 5 friends and then add yourself to the bottom of the list or dreadful things as listen in the letter would happen. No one ever questioned how the 'dreadful things' ever mad wit to the letter when it was copied out in full from the first one.

The good samaritan muslim story has been doing the rounds since 9/11

My otherwise educated mother believes them all!
The last one she told me was this:
A woman goes to the loo in John Lewis when an arm reaches over the door an nicks her handbag. She reports it to the store manager and the police are called etc. Fast forward a couple of days and she gets a call from the manager of JL asking her to go back into the store to get her back. She does so and the house is burgled while she's out.

Just think for one minute how tall you would need to be to reach over the top of a toilet cubicle and be able to reach the hook on the other side.

Pipbin I used a loo in a US airport a while back, which had signs saying the hooks on the back of the doors had been removed for that reason.

It's not just on the internet. The right wing press, for instance, have been spreading that myth about Winterval since before the internet really got going, and are still doing so now.

I used a loo in a US airport a while back, which had signs saying the hooks on the back of the doors had been removed for that reason.

I can understand if they are right at the top of the door but not when they are lower down.

Hate this. Especially bollocks on FB. My thicko SIL shared something a few months ago about how in October this year it was the first time since 1938 that there have been 5 Friday's in one month I smugly commented saying this isnt true and that the last time was July this year. She removed it soon after

People posting this crap is my pet hate.

The latest one I saw was a warning that if you post the word Amen on pictures of animals, foreign men would hack your facebook account.

I despair

This is the absolute worst one I've seen. Usually comes with a message like this:
THIS was actually found this morning in a house in Manchester, , Fire Brigade were shit scared apparently and handed it over to a spider specialist. Family fled screaming from their home, , think Id do same its like something from a horror movie!!!

I freaked the first time I read it. Then common sense kicked in and I googled it. It's actually a giant huntsman spider native only to Laos and almost certainly photographed there - not in whatever UK city it is supposed to have sent the local family screaming from!

"Have you been kidnapped?" "No."