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?!

My husbands cousin done one of those 'share if you' things and it was 'share this if you hate child abuse' ffs.

I love this thread. It's everything that pisses me off about Facebook but made funny. Thank you op.

REPOST IF YOU THINK SCHOOLS SHOULD TEACH [insert subject already taught in schools eg] HOW TO COUNT

Treacle - made me lol

Argh I know! DH did suggest that they are just sharing them out of horror as he sometimes does with things he finds amusingly awful but with a message to show his thoughts on it but often very veiled sarcasm.

Normally I post a link to snopes or hoaxslayer or even better a BBC article. But "you never know", "can't be too careful", "better safe than sorry".

A relative of his posted a thing stating how much ILLEGAL immigrants get in benefits compared to OAPs. I commented that I hadn't realised that illegal immigrants got anything. She replied that they didn't. Never understood why she posted it in the first place.

grown ups accept when they are wrong or have been misled, perhaps even laugh at themselves.

people who blubber or sulk when corrected or told they have been fooled are not grown ups.

This is the only acceptable version of the "please share" posts:

Please copy and paste this to your status if you're constantly being asked to copy and paste things to your status by friends who copy and paste things to their statuses. Many people won't copy and paste this, but my truly sarcastic friends will copy and paste it because they're sarcastic by nature. If you don't copy and paste it, then this means you hate bacon. And if you hate bacon, the terrorists win, and a unicorn dies. Possibly kittens as well. And occasionally baby goats...You know, the ones in pajamas. And no one wants to see that.

The Amen ones bug the hell out of me.
Type Amen if you think she is beautiful (pic of poor child with a deformity) if you don't type Amen you are an uncaring bitch and will go to hell. I mean really?

I don't do Facebook, but if I did I think I would be tempted to start a stream of Hoaxslayer/Snopes snippets like NO TRUTH IN INTERNET RUMOUR THAT BANANAS WITH BLUE STICKERS CARRY EBOLA. Share this if you're not a credulous fool. I think I know who will x

A couple of weeks ago, a group of people at work were talking about the people who sell perfume in car parks except the perfume samples are drugs to knock you out so they can steal your car. I said it was an urban myth and would you really engage with a random trying to sell you something in a car park anyway?! They said it'd been on The News. I gave up.

I have a few that do just this. I used to think they were sensible, intelligent people...

Me too. It's rather disappointing to know just how gullible/non-thinking some of the people I had previously assumed to be sensible, intelligent people actually are.

It's the bastard happy sharers, the ones who share without even being arsed to click the link and have a look, the vast majority of which show a top comment confirming it's all bollocks.
SIL - this means you.
Unfollow...

Yep, these and the Amen ones really annoy me. I just hate ignorant fear mongering.

I am also one of those annoying people who post about it not being true and linking to Snopes. Like others, I mostly get ignored or told "still better safe than sorry". Grrrr

Chocolateworshiper I'm pinching that and posting it now.

The ones that really piss me off are the one of 'Loving' fathers who have lost touch with their children and really want to reconnect....share if you know X,Y,Z

So no chance there that there are very good reasons that contact was lost eh?

@chocolateworshipper, I'm stealing that if you don't mind

YANBU

I can usually tell something is utter rubbish in the first sentence.

My particular pet hate (and I have one friend who is especially guilty of this) who likes to share alternative medicine / this is wrecking the earth / technology will be the downfall of all your children because it is just like heroin type posts. I am so sick of being told my chronic illnesses will be cured if I never drink a cup of tea again or that if I grow some obscure plant that purifies the air I will live for an extra 100 years.

She believes it all. Every single one.

Yep, my Snopes link has been ignored by my sister.

Do please feel free to pinch

It's all part of the 'fake news' phenomenon isn't it? With this attitude that it's the story that matters and whatever frisson it gives people. The truth of it is almost irrelevant, as shown by the cold reception party-pooping-snopes-pasting people get.

Ah well, it's all in a good cause innit?

Oh, and FYI half the people on my FB, the UK Cabinet did not 'hilariously' pose in front of 'The Scream'

ChocolateWorshipper

The bazillion missing dogs in other parts of the country wind me up; also missing children or indeed adults - unless it's actually a police post you really shouldn't share if you don't know the back story; also the implied if you don't share this nonsense it means you clearly don't love your kids

Brilliant thread.
The one I'm not sure about is blue whale. I did some searching a little while ago and still couldn't work out if it was genuine or hoax

We had one doing the rounds about an 8 year old girl who had gone missing ten days earlier from our town. When it reached my fb page, she'd been missing for ten days. The photo of her in school uniform looked nothing like the uniform of any school in this town. Plus, it seemed odd that a missing 8 year old wasn't national news.

A quick google revealed that she lived in a town of the same name in New Zealand, and she'd been found a few hours after she'd gone missing, at the house of a friend. Ten days later, her photo was spreading round Scotland.

Maybe they're sharing it because they find it funny?
No, it's because they are being spectacularly dim.
Some of the satirical news stories might be funny but they are obviously satire. None of the fake warnings are actually funny - they are dangerous and stupid. The like farming competition free gift shit are scams run by criminals wanting to make money.

It takes seconds to check things before you share them. It's not difficult.

Let's face it, if it's shared on FB it's 99.99% likely to be a bag o' shite.

At least 2 of my Facebook friends fervently believe that Snopes has been debunked. This leaves them utterly free to believe any crazy shit they want. Interestingly, they are both Trump supporters.