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 normally try to ignore them, but one day a post popped up on my feed about a missing girl which set off an alarm. There was something odd about the photo, and something a little off about the text. A quick google of the girl's name showed that the "photo" was actually a drawing, and the details were entirely fictional, concocted by a racist group to have people believe Asian men in vans were kidnapping little blonde girls in their area. I felt it would have been irresponsible to not correct that one.

I'm so glad I found this thread - it makes for such therapeutic reading!

One of my pet hates is when people share those stupid made up stories (e.g. young woman serving old woman at supermarket checkout and berating her for not bringing reusable bags and old woman ranting about how they were way more environmentally friendly back in her day, airline check-in person knocking rude entitled customer down a peg, woman in hijab refusing to "show respect" to veteran etc etc) as though they are bona fide "news stories" and really happened - FFS.

I also have family members who will share absolutely anything (10 year old lost children stories from Canada, "share" this completely fictional report from unnamed policeman about rapists/child molestors/murderers/road safety, "if this picture gets 100000000 likes the doctors will perform life saving surgery on this baby" (with deeply distressing photo attached) and when pulled up on it will use the "it's better to be safe than sorry" and "there's no harm in sharing it just in case" excuses

My favourite one to debunk is the old 'being mugged at a cash point? Type your PIN in backwards and a crack commando unit will be immediately dispatched to your aid along with the A-team and anyone else who looks handy - but the cash point will still give your money to the muggers so they don't know what you've done'
I may have paraphrased slightly

I normally just put 'Really? My PIN is 1111, so how will it know?'
My dad responds even more succintly with the word 'bollocks'

Just this morning I had a perfectly nice ex-colleague post a story about how an Italian doctor had 'created' AIDS. I mean- how could anyone intelligent see that and think 'Oh yes- this MUST be true!'?

Further to this, it does my swede in when people put 'Shared (postcode)' underneath lots dog posts etc. The internet doesn't work like that!

I had to deleted a couple of friends for this kind of bollocks. During the EU referendum, they shared that nonsense about 'take a pen to vote! Otherwise the government will run out your Leave votes'. Despite being nurses, they also share sub-DM health scare bollocks about bananas curing diabetes,or some such cobblers.

May I also say that hell has a very special for David "Avocado" Wolfe and any of his shite that gets reposted?

My mum,DP and I were just talking about this yesterday.
I remember a really awful one, it was a photo of outside a random co op or Tesco with the words

'A MUSLIM WORKER AT THIS TESCO STORE IN random English town REFUSES TO SELL POPPIES - SHARE IF U THINK THIS IS A DISCRACE!!!!!!!111!!!!

One tiny google is all it took to show that, of course, it was all bollocks.

And actually those who say 'Cant hurt to post's 'Just in case' etc - It actually does do more damage than a lot of people realise. It divides people, gives bigotry a voice, and makes people look thick as shit.

I post links to Snopes too. Usually the same person who posts things about Romanian/Bulgarian gangs in Asda shaving children's heads, or gang initiation ceremonies at petrol stations. All complete bollocks.

Also same person usually shares the spammy "share and add your email you you'll win a holiday" shite.

She's a teacher. Mind boggles.

Even worse are the people who post "I'm off to Las Vegas for three months" and everyone who replies gets a twee little response about how it's all for cancer awareness.

Just awful.

I don't get it though. What is the point of creating these posts - I get the sharing aspect.
Something to do with like farming but what is that?

7days
There's info about Like Farming here:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.consumeraffairs.com/amp/news/like-farming-facebook-scams-look-before-you-like-042215.html

Thank you cock

Yanbu. It's the work of seconds to check these stories using Google. What amazes me is that people do it time and time again.

I have a family member who regularly spams fb with the ‘I bet none of you evil twats will share this post to raise awareness of the stigma of mental illness blah bah blah’ types of guff, then went to town with a series of posts ridiculing Kanya West for being ‘weak’ when he walked off stage following his breakdown.

Apparently, she saw no dissonance or irony in this whatsoever

Stealth the Blue Whale Challenge is one of those that prices sharing theses things 'in case' or 'just to be safe'is potentially dangerous. The first reports of Blue Whale were fake news, posts just like these mentioned here, in Russia. There is still no proof of a single death linked to it. However, there is evidence of challenges relating to this starting up after Blue Whale was shared as fact. In any case, suicide contagion is a real thing, and suggesting it in this way is very dangerous. Have a read of this There are lots of other similar reports.

Prices? Proves.

There was one doing the rounds a few months ago where people apparently had to put as their FB status that they had been chosen to be on the next season of MasterChef.

One friend (who is a very keen cook) put this as her status, promptly got over 100 likes and about 80 comments/messages of support from very excited friends and family, then had to post a "whoops sorry guys, this is just to raise awareness of cancer (or whatever the "cause" was), now the joke's on you and you have to put this as YOUR status and pass it on" (smileyface).

A lot of people were understandably pissed off and said so - she ended up deleting her post.

I unfriended my mother for exactly this reason. She would share a lot of those "Facebook has changed it's terms and is abusing your privacy! To protect yourself, go to your security settings and inadvertently block all your friends!" type of spam.

I would post the Snopes link in the comments, and the most infuriating thing was that her FB friends would continue to thank her for sharing the information and tell they had changed their settings.

The ones that aren't even pretending to be real are mind boggling. 'An elderly professor told his class that a box full of stones would show them how to be kind...' etc usually with hundreds of comments from Rita in Lithuania and her ilk saying 'oh so many blessings! Truly you are good!' etc.

Cop on, Rita.

People keep sharing that "if you are being forced to withdraw cash at an atm enter your PIN backwards and the police will be alerted and sent to you" bullshit. It drives me fucking crazy.
I enjoy the semi regular warnings about the symbols burglars leave on houses and gated.

All the dog theft ones...people breaking in to steal dogs...or you left the door/gate open maybe..surely an epidemic of dog thefts would make at least the local news?

Someone upthread mentioned this too but the one that regularly goes round about how all these rapists have kindly shared what they look for in a victim drives me round the bend. Where do they get all this info from, seeing as probably about 99.9999999% of men in prison for rape will swear blind that they didn't do anything wrong and they've just been stitched up by some evil man hating bitch so that she can have everyone feeling sorry for her. So that being the case, how could they possibly comment on what makes a potential victim, seeing as none of them are apparently rapists?