To wonder why people are so gullible

[Idontknowwhyinfrench]

On here and on fb. People are so quick to respond to sob stories without giving the slightest heed to the fact that they are almost certainly bullshit.

I know people will say that truth can be stranger than fiction and that events in their own lives have seemed unbelievable but come on. Some of the stuff in here at the moment is akin to the dog with ham in his face!

OMG I actually believed that the 'backwards PIN to summon the cops' thing was real. I believed that.

How embarrassing. 🤣🤣

I saw loads of people sharing a thing on Facebook a while back saying that onions absorb bacteria and viruses and so you should tuck a couple of onions into your socks when you go to bed at night if you have the cold because it will draw the illness out.

The evidence for this was that in 'olden times' people used to place onions in their houses to absorb plague.

Well, that worked well then. Because it's not as if plague ever killed anyone in olden times

My MIL believed she’d won the Spanish lottery despite never having left the UK or entered the Spanish lottery. But she’d had an ‘official letter’ so it must be true! She swore she’d won and I have a horrible feeling (never confirmed) she probably sent money to some scumbag to get her ‘winnings’. She was 55 at the time, 12 years later she was diagnosed with dementia. I often wonder now if her being so massively gullible but an early sign of illness and we just all thought she was being thick.

A lot of scams are a numbers game I guess; send out enough messages and, sooner or later, one might bite (and the rewards then make the countless emails or whatever worthwhile)

You also have to wonder how much of it is gullibility and how much downright greed. IME not many people are that stupid, but plenty will suspend judgement if they think there's money to be made

Personally, I'm afraid it's got to the point where I think of any "financial" email as suspect unless proved otherwise

Sadly places like this are rife for scammers and liars. As a place of support, people’s heartstrings can be pulled more than usual. It’s a shame really, people end up sharing financially and emotionally with trolls. It gets worse this time of year for obvious reasons, but there’s been a couple of instances of awful emotional trolls this year as well. Some people get their kicks over hundreds of pages of posters telling them what a ‘wonderful and brave’ person they are, whilst making up some sick trauma to get that attention. Awful.

I can't stand the manufactured outrage posts. My cousin just went off about the whole "Baby it's cold outside" "controversy". His post is full of "political correctness gone too far" and "fuck political correctness".

It's not a controversy. It was one radio station doing a Twitter poll in Cleveland. Back away from the Fox News!

TheHulksPurplePanties oh I’m getting a few of those at the moment! Along with ‘Say Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays!!!’, even though no one in the UK says the latter (or gives a shiny fuck regardless).

I'm on public transport and I've never heard of ham dog before, I ended up laughing so much I was crying a bit and it's taken me a good five minutes to recover. Every time I scroll up and spot the pic, it sets me off again!

A family member of mine has autism and borderline learning difficulties. He doesn't fall for the scams (anymore) because he runs them all past someone else - usually me or his step dad - for a second opinion but he's certainly lost sleep over them; believes what they say is true and is taking a great leap of faith in trusting his step dad and me. He has sometimes told me he'd rather just send the money, or whatever, just in case...

It's easy to say that these people are 'thick' but, actually, it's vulnerable people who often fall for them.

It's disgusting, frankly.

There have been recent shortages of blood in Manchester, Crinkle. What makes you think it was a hoax?

If dog with ham on face was on here it would be up to thread #3 by now, with 514 people posting "stay strong OP! " and a few dozen more banned for troll hunting.

OMG I actually believed that the 'backwards PIN to summon the cops' thing was real. I believed that.

I'm guessing we are light years away from the technology required not to mention how overstretched I imagine most police forces are without having to do some kind of Superman stunt to come flying when a PIN is entered backwards!

That poor dog it breaks my heart 💔

Three particular people, who I really do know, on fb spring to mind for sharing the biggest piles of steaming shite. I can't keep quiet and haveto comment that it's really not true. I don't think they like me anymore

But, but... it just looks like ham on a dog's face

But, but... it just looks like ham on a dog's face

You clearly have no heart

I have seen lots of these things being forwarded by my DD’s friends on WhatsApp - you know, how “sharing” something will help some little girl with cancer, etc. It drives me crazy!!

And with the season of giving come the disgusting facebook scams when someone takes pics of ill child off google or random web, plops an account number in there including short "Our child needs xxx" and then share it from an fb page (which was incidentally set up a day before) everywhere they can. With people sharing it further with sad emojis

DO NOT GIVE MONEY TO ANYONE except someone with an official transparent accounts

The scam ones annoy me but the 'raise awareness' ones piss me off more. The ones that say stuff like '99 percent of people won't care enough to share but please repost on your timeline if you have been touched by someone bravely fighting cancer. You know who you are, you are a hero, blah blah, bollocks'. No I won't share because I'm not attention seeking or insensitive. Yes I have known many people with cancer and I'm not about to share pointless shit about it on FB that does no good to anyone.

I am often amazed at the gullible people both on her and our local fb chat. Actually I only stay on the latter because it's so ridiculous.

Local fb is "oh look, my cctv picked up this person knocking at my door on Monday at 1pm. Clearly trying to break in" (let's ignore the fact they're clutching a box labelled "dominos pizza") or "My poor little dc was prosecuted and banned for driving for only doing 1mph over on the M4, They told me so it must be true."

Here it's (at this time of year) "I've only 27p left so my poor 1yo twins will get nothing for Christmas and any helpful suggestions made are promptly given an excuse why they can't follow the suggestion." part way through the thread 1yo twins are joined by next door neighbour's dog that has been abandoned and Dh's younger brother whose parents have kicked him out for no reason.
Because people here offer so much that encourages others to say similar. Although twins are becoming so commonplace in these type of threads I'm sure they'll start trying to outdo each other with quads soon.

I wish it would be stopped because people who genuinely do want to post for ideas where they're low on money, I'm sure feel they can't post because firstly they're not as needy as User23798425479 with 17 mouths to fill and only tuppence ha'penny down the back of the sofa and secondly because people feel that they're just going to be offered stuff and accused of begging when actually they do genuinely want advice.

Here it's (at this time of year) "I've only 27p left so my poor 1yo twins will get nothing for Christmas and any helpful suggestions made are promptly given an excuse why they can't follow the suggestion."

I've not seen that anywhere but Netmums, but they're rife on there this time of year. I actually got a warning once from the mods for pointing out (nicely!) to the people offering to send toys and money that chances are it was a scammer.

This has just jogged my memory. A voicemail I picked up a couple of weeks ago saying I was about to be arrested for non-payment of a debt!
Hollow laugh and delete. But it could have been really frightening for someone. Gits.

It's the pictures of a dog with one eye / cat with one ear / sad looking rabbit with the quote, 'I bet I won't even get one share' that I don't get. Thousands of shares, likes, and comments about how, 'you're beautiful' and 'I'll share for your kind heart', and 'my heart is breaking that you feel like this'. JUST STOP IT!

I'm pretty very gullible (thought for years that mobile phones flashed so deaf people could tell they were ringing, just because DM's now ex husband told me so and I just didn't think about/question it).

This isn't totally untrue. Most phones have a setting where you can make the camera flash when you get a text/call so that deaf people can see it. I use it myself. It's usually in the accessibility section of the settings.

I can't answer calls obviously, but if I miss a text message people sometimes call just because they know it will flash for longer and I have a better chance of seeing it.

What I don't get is WHY DON'T THEY JUST GOOGLE FIRST. CHECK YOUR SOURCES PEOPLE
It takes two seconds to check.