I was procrastinating writing this week’s blog entry by checking email and I came across one of those annoying forwarded assertions that just sound too…too…too wrong to be right. So, what did I do - sit back and scratch my head and wonder?
No. I just got onto www.snopes.com to check it out.
Great website. Bad idea to go there when I had other things on my To Do list.
Snopes, for any of you all who haven’t heard of it, or gotten sucked into the vortex of its wild tales and mythbusting, is the best Urban Legends reference page going. Want to check out if it’s true what they say about Coke and Pop Rocks and that kid Mikey from the old Life cereal commercials? Check it out. Are you convinced there are alligators in your sewers? Relax.
In fact, sit back and enjoy these great Crime Urban Legends Explained. Then get to work and create your own urban legend email menace and see how soon your creation ends up on the Snopes website. Or in someone’s crime story…
Hey, it could happen…
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I have a considerable number of relatives who are….well, let’s just say that when you go to their house, the latest Ann Coulter screed is displayed prominently on the coffee table. They used to constantly bombard me with FWD’d e-mails. John Kerry made nasty remarks about Reagan at his funeral! Hillary Clinton defended Black Panthers accused of murder! Target stores are owned by the French and they refuse to support veterans! I started going to the relevant Snopes story, copying the link and sending it to everyone on the list via “reply all.”
After a while, I stopped getting these. I highly recommend the technique.
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A couple months ago, my sister called me genuinely concerned that I might accidentally be poisoning my daughter by letting her drink diet pop. While we were on the phone, I went to Snopes, and they cleared the whole thing up. From now on, she’ll check there before she let’s herself get wound up by these things.
I love Snopes.
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Snopes Education is a program I’ve adopted too, guys! Now, whenever one of my relatives sends me something provocative, they always preface it with - “and I ALREADY checked it out on Snopes!”
Let the revolution march on!
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I’ve heard of Snopes but never ventured over there. Instead, I frequent Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel.
I found I can multitask while watching it until they wind up blowing something up.
Here’s one of the coolest things they did. Get a little piece of dry ice and an empty 2 liter pop bottle. Chop or cut the dry ice so it fits in the bottle. You don’t need all that much. Pour a little water in the bottom of the bottle and twist the cap on tight. Then run like hell. The water releases the CO2 until it blows up the bottle. It’s actually pretty spectacular.
Okay, so the guys that read this might be intrigued.
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My son watches endless episodes of Mythbusters and has the “Plausible” t-shirt! Just last night, I watched them fire a cannon to see what the effects of shrapnel might be on a ship.
Kinda like Pop Rocks in Coke.
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Yeah, they did the pop rocks in coke using a pig stomach as a surrogate. BUSTED
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I will say that my friends and I did the dry ice in a pop bottle trick in empty parking lots while we were in HS. We called them dry ice bombs…
I’ve never visited Snopes but I like the idea of deterring annoying and untrue emails by sending the link to everyone!
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My kids keep asking me to buy Mentos and soda or seltzer to do exactly the same thing, Stephanie. I still remember a local scientist coming in to our elementary school, dipping a banana in dry ice and then hammering a nail in with it!
Somehow, I’m more comfortable with my kids playing with Mentos…
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Mentos and Diet Coke work great. Harmless fun. Not necessarily clean fun, if you aren’t fast enough to get out of the way.
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My friend (from Idaho) had sent me a be on the look out for a missing girl who was from a town here in MO that I knew but I had never heard of the case. I got on Snopes and it was a scam.
It’s a great website.
by Lynn
on April 4th, 2008 at 12:06 am
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Saves me a lot of time and worry that way too, Lynn. With the internet and email bombarding us every day, every little bit helps.
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