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?

One aspect of this is truthiness:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

People want to believe things that reinforce their beliefs.

nauticant I've never heard that, but what a perfect description. Thanks for sharing

On my facebook a lot of idiots shared that Hitler lived until he was old aged and married a Brazilian lady.

I hada relative unfriend me as for every "warning" she'd post I'd post the snopes debunk.

This happened to me when someone posted that totally bollocks story about a six year old girl being kidnapped by an 'asian grooming gang':

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/missing-amy-hamilton-poster-circulating-on-social-media-revealed-as-racist-right-wing-propaganda-9104555.html

I pointed out it was total bollocks and her response was to unfriend me! It's like, ok, sure, never mind about the veracity of what you're posting, as long as it fits your racist agenda?!?!

It makes me livid actually because are people that thick that they believe a six year old girl would be kidnapped in this country and not be plastered all over the news?

What you mean the perfume one isn't real!!

It happened to my friend in Camden market 15 years ago!

Yes, I'm sure that totally happened

The reality is that it takes at least 5 minutes of inhaling chloroform to knock a person out and that is constantly inhaling from a soaked cloth. If there was such a substance that you could spray in a person's face and render them immediately unconscious I'm pretty sure it would be more widely used by the police, armed forces etc

That's what I don't get about these stories. A lot are just totally implausible.

I've a Facebook friend who's a very right wing, gun-nut Israeli-American (We have other interests in common, but I've stayed friends with her in a kind of 'know your enemy' spirit, as it's fascinating to see what these people believe). Since Paris though the stream of fake Islamophobic bile that's come from her is just unbelievable. There's no arguing with someone whose worldview is so fixed, but I did have to call her out on a picture of 'Palestinians' burning the French flag in celebration of the Paris attacks. A quick reverse google image search showed this was actually from a Charlie Hebdo protest back in January... As posters have said above, it's 'truthiness' and confirmation bias massively in action.

The main irritation clogging up my news feed though is the Virgin/BA flights give away page sharing. Grr! Why do seemingly sensible people believe this! It's just the updated version of those stupid chain emails back in the 90s that claimed Bill Gates would give $100 to everyone the email reached because he was testing a new email tracking system . Soon it was Gap giving jeans, Jack Daniels giving whiskey....

My favourite one recently was at Halloween.

A random picture of a bunch of pills, with a "warning" along the lines of:

IF YOU GET THESE ON HALLOWEEN, DON'T EAT THEM AND PLEASE THROW THEM AWAY IMMEDIATELY, THEY AREN'T CANDY, THEY ARE DRUGS!!!!!! IF YOU HAVE ONE YOU CAN HAVE HALLUCINATIONS, IF YOU HAVE A LOT YOU COULD DIE!!!!

Yes of course, because people really want to give away their drugs which cost ££££ for free to kids on Halloween.

I ranted a lot at DP when I saw my daft friends sharing that one.

My MIL assured me that we musn't use magnets on fridges as the magnetism does something to the food inside that gives you cancer

She does know that it's magnets that hold the door shut, right?

Yep. Mum sent me the 'trick or treating' drugs one as well.

I have just seen on fb that a Muslim woman dropped her bag and told the woman who helped her to stay away from Meadowhall on Boxing Day. You have all been warned.

I like this one

nerr I've just seen that one too. Sigh.

I just had 2 people, a teacher and an accountant, so should be at least semi-intelligent, sharing the following warning 'X company is sending out perfume samples as gifts. Do not open and smell them, that's actually poison! I don't know exactly, but has something to do with refugees.'

WTF? Perfume? Refugees? How..what..I can't even..

I have just seen on fb that a Muslim woman dropped her bag and told the woman who helped her to stay away from Meadowhall on Boxing Day. You have all been warned.

I've had that three times in the last 12 hours, as well as Subway not being fresh because of Dihydrogen Monoxide being used - from the same person.

Another friend has posted the 5 Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays in 823 years thing. I pointed out it also happened in August..

Have just had the Lauren and the perfumed phone! I mean here is the phone one, it's seriously bad

I phoned 112 in an eu country with no signal and the call connected fine.

There was a signal. If there hadn't been you would not have connected. There is a difference between what is shown on the display of your phone (no signal) and what the phone is actually experiencing (a detectable and usable signal).

I have a good smirk when I see the dihydrogen monoxide ones!

The one that always makes me laugh is when people post 'if you are ever asked for money & threatened at a cashpoint, enter your PIN backwards and this automatically alerts the police who will come to the cash point and rescue you'

so what if your number is the same both ways? or the same4 numbers eg 9669 or 8888?

the 'abandoned baby in a car seat' one was actually plastered all over the local hospital a few years back, goodness knows who by but apparently it had happened to a member of staff, I saw it while waiting in the kids ward play area. I came home and googled it, first hit was snopes, obviously!

It will use any signal it can find. Known as emergency roamer, the operator will introduce your call as "connecting emergency roamer"
This means we don't get the telephone number so don't hang up as we can't call you back if you get cut off! We will ask for telephone number straight away

This explains it better

Dihydrogen monoxide drives my inner chemistry pedant crazy!!

All mobile phones, even crap 15 year old ones, have the ability to connect to the nearest mast to make an emergency call regardless of network. So if you're with EE and have no signal but somebody with O2 does have signal, then you can use your EE phone to make a 999 call. You can also use a phone without a sim card to make a 999 call as long as you're in range of some mast. If you're in the middle of the ocean, you won't get a signal for 999 or normal calls. This doesn't make a difference if it's 999 or 112.