minikin

This is my entry for LJ Idol, Topic 6: Urban Legends


Didja read the one about .. ?

Everybody knows that ..

Tell a friend!

Tell ten more!

Note to self: Don't read glurge when wearing mascara.

So here's the deal. I've become a Snopes-server for some of my dear friends. (No, not you!) Worse, how about the friends who pass along email prefaced with "I've checked this out on Snopes, so it must be true."

But I learned this week that leaning on Snopes can be a bit,
.. pause, rewind, reroll..
It's not that leaning on Snopes is lazy, it's that there may come a time when laziness is justly rewarded. That time for me was this week.

I tend toward laziness myself. However, if it involves following very convoluted lines of inquiry, then tappety-tap wins out over laziness any day of the week. I felt both vindicated and a bit silly, when my deeper research on a Snopes article led to a forum discussion that pointed out the clues in the webpage. The voice-over in the page by Mr. Ed: "Maybe I didn't go to college, but I'm not stupid." The absurd pictures purporting to show the black-and-white representation of a color picture of a zebra. And finally, the link to "More information about this page." that explained the purpose of the hoax. Yes, Snopes itself is not beneath putting on its own hoax.

Maybe next time I'll respond with a more rational answer than a knee-jerk "read this article on Snopes that explains how this is a hoax." Maybe next time I'll simply ask my friend why they think it would be reasonable for this email to be reproduced another exponential times. Maybe I'll simply ask them if they have any idea how old Craig Shergold is these days, and whether he really cares for any more Get Well Cards?

Maybe next time I'll just hit delete.