To be annoyed when apparently reasonable and intelligent people share blatantly false 'warnings' on FB.

[EarlessToothlessVagabond]

Yes I know it's fb and I have a choice to be on there but... come on!! I have friends (not just fb friends, real actual sane and sensible friends) who share the most awful, obviously fake warnings along the lines of 'DO NOT EAT BANANAS WITH BLUE STICKERS ON THEM THEY'RE ALL INFECTED WITH EBOLA ...RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!' etc. Why why why?!

I have one highly-intelligent, educated friend on FB who hasn't worked out that the 'competitions' asking you to choose what colour free iPhone you want etc are never going to result in anyone getting a free iPhone...

And also that no matter what it says in the blurb, considerably more than 1% of people will be able to score full marks on whatever incredibly easy grammar or geography questions there are in that quiz...

Not to mention the people who still share or hit like on pictures of sick babies in the expectation that Facebook will pay per like towards their medical bills...

YANBU - it's SO annoying! I saw one earlier today about how you mustn't post a proud picture of your daughter's first day at school on Facebook because a child-trafficking gang will pick her up from school and by the time you get there she will be halfway to South Africa (why South Africa?? Is it just because it's far away and foreign??) with a bag over her head to be sold into the child sex trade.

I mean I totally get that internet safety is important but have there really been cases in this country of child trafficking gangs kidnapping children from school playgrounds at pick up time and then taking them to South Africa because their mums shared a picture of them on their first day of school on Facebook??? Really??

I swear if I see one more supposedly intelligent friend pos this bullshit post....

"Always here, are you ?😞😞😞😞😞
I would like to see five of my friends post this message (not sharing) and like the post to show that you are always there if someone needs to talk. I think I know who will xxxx
#mentalhealthawareness"

When there are tons of posts which take a 5 second google to show this is actually not helping at all. Just virtue signalling at its most holiest-than-thouest.

That pious little "I think I know who will" for fuck's sake!

I think I know who will be first up against the wall when I am in charge, more like.

Post links to Snopes on every one of them, and do it repeatedly. It soon stops it!

The one that never fails to irk me is 'Post this message on your FB wall otherwise all your stuff will be made public!' followed by a bunch of faux-legalese gobbledegook.

A friend who is a full time tinfoil hat wearer shared a link a few months ago about a London restaurant serving up human meat to diners. I Googled the story with raised eyebrows as nothing about this had come up on the mainstream news, and found some spoof site that had multiple stories, identical except for naming different restaurants throughout the UK.

The restaurants targeted were all Asian. These online hoaxes nearly always have a xenophobic if not full-on racist slant to them.

The restauranteur in that particular case spoke out in the media. She nearly lost her business and she and her staff had been threatened. All for some twat's idea of a laugh.

Oh god, and I forgot about the cancer ones. 'Ladies, post the colour of your left sock and the last place you sneezed as your status to confuse all the blokes! This is for cancer awareness!' In what world does that do even the tiniest amount of good?

I enjoy the weird medical ones. Apparently you need to drink a glass of water first thing in the morning to "activate" your vital organs

I reply with a relevant link to Snopes or HoaxSlayer.

I called out a really awful similar post by a Younique seller recently. She was recruiting people for her "team" pyramid with a post about how fabulous Younique is, how it helps victims of sexual abuse and so on, but she'd included the lyrics to a Gary Glitter song! I suggested she might want to change that, given she was posting about supporting abuse victims.

The ones that drive me insane are the beware if you need to call this number (generic 020 number) as it will cost you £hundreds as soon as they answer. No it won't, shut the fuck up.

Or "all special needs children want is one thing, to be accepted. Share this shite..." well my special needs child currently couldn't give a fuck whether he is accepted or not, he's more pissed off about the fact that I won't make him a bacon buttie for breakfast.

After the Manchester bomb I spent so much time replying to FB posts claiming the Manchester hospitals had run out of blood. Scaremongering pure and simple, plus what hospital ends a post with xxx? It made me so very, very angry.

I am amused when people share articles from The Onion or Newsthump thinking they're genuine. It's always accompanied by a long rant that becomes increasingly unhinged. Love it. My MIL is particularly guilty of this.

I have a Nurse that I use for cosmetic procedures on my FB. She has a son that is Autistic. I couldn't believe it when she linked a study that "proved" the link between Mercury poisoning (by Vaccines) and Autism. I read it for less than a minute and could see the flaws.

If I didn't know that she had worked in the NHS for years etc, I would swear that she printed her qualifications from the internet.

It's the Racism/Refugee ones from supposedly intelligent people that do my head in. What amazes me is when people have them on their business pages, i've made the decision not to hire them when I see this stuff.

I've got a FB contact who shares this kind of shite. I recently pointed out that a "missing child" link was out of date and they had been found (found out at huge personal effort by clicking the actual fucking link ). She said "only 24 hours". Cos that makes all the difference

Another one here hating the "I think I know who will ..." posts. I'm working on a response along the lines of "I never repost passive-aggressive posts and I really don't care if this means that you choose to condemn me on these totally spurious made-up grounds".

I like the ones which tell me how much illegal immigrants are claiming in benefits, nice to see they're declaring their income while they're hiding out.

These do my head in! I have deleted so many people for,

OMG The government have banned people selling pork products in all places everywhere because of MUSLIMS show your support by eating bacon outside mosques.

Or something to that effect 🙄😡🙄

Then you get all the people piling in to tell us we must make our country great again etc etc bollocks etc.

And the ... "X is beautiful even with cancer, shoe her you think so too by sharing otherwise you think she's ugly and you want her to die..." 😡😡😡😡

THANK YOU for this thread and all your voices of reason. I saw one recently about how "the police" (where!? No idea) had got a friendly focus group of rapists together, who'd put together some handy hints for women on how not to get raped. Advice included "don't have long hair or a ponytail" and don't wear thin clothes because rapists carry scissors around with them.

I mean FFS. I hate looking like a snarky know-it-all, but I can't let some of these things go.

Bloody hell Montana, that's hideous!

YANBU. There was one yesterday about people dying from rat pee on tin cans. It was so obviously rubbish - and a 2 second Google proved it.

Hmmmm actually i think YABU because one of my favourite Facebook pastimes is being annoying by linking to hoax slayer and snopes etc. Its also a good way to weed out annoying people when doing your next Facebook cull.

95% of my friends won't repost this...

Fuck off. 95% of us won't be your friend if you keep posting that shite.

I hadn't a doozy a while back and the 'friend' who posted it blocked me for pointing out the truth.
Apparently a particular code on pre packaged meat (3 letters I think) means that it's actually halal meat and this particular code means that it's not pre stunned. Many OMG's and angry faces in the post. It also asked people to share and shame the shop.
Actually a simple google told me that the code referred to the distribution place used by the company..
She told me to to stfu, called me a PC bitch and blocked me

I had (I say had, she got deleted) who insisted on sharing missing children posts.

I was always of the impression you shouldn't share missing kids posts for safeguarding reasons and thats great, so I don't, but she insisted on sharing missing teenager posts from America.

She was very much English, had no connections at all to the USA, all her friends were local, yet she thought we could all somehow help find 14 year old Bryson from Idaho who'd not come home from his mates house.
I did ask her once what the chances of finding this kid in our local town on a Saturday afternoon but she reasoned it all helped.

Thankfully none of my Facebook friends share the racist ones. Over the years, I have steadily been working on encouraging people to check & verify information before they post (which takes mere seconds) and it does seem to be working (either that or I've managed to unfollow all the culprits).

A few years ago, I fell out with my cousin after pointing out to him (in a private message) that his warning about paedophiles targeting children with cartoon characters as profile pictures was bollocks. His response was that it must be true because he got the information from a trusted friend with a responsible job. He could not understand that this didn't verify the information, but just showed that she was as gullible as him.