What do you do when you hear people telling Snopes stories?

Man of Honour
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Over the years I've heard many people tell Snopes type myths and tales and I just want to shout out that it's a tale.
The person as normally heard it second hand but takes it totally in.
For instance a work colleague is telling everybody about their neighbour who went on holiday but another neighbours dog had killed their rabbit.
The neighbour cleans the rabbit up, puts it back in the hutch and waits for the other neighbours to come home.
The neighbours can't believe that some sick ******* has dug their dead rabbit up and put it back in the hutch.
This woman has told this story to everybody and I'm just sitting there wanting to tell everybody it's a tale.
Another one about 6 months ago was their mate who is a hairdresser.
She lets a man into the shop for a quick cut and puts a towel over him.
While she is cutting his hair he is fapping off under the towel so she knocks him out with a hairdryer and calls the Police.
When they arrive he was cleaning his glasses with a cloth.
Again I want to shout 'It's not true, you've been taken in'.
I just don't get how people fall for this stuff.
 
I once had an argument in a pub with a guy who was adamant that a local Chines restaurant had been kidnapping people's cats and using them in their food. The story goes that a customer choked on a microchip that had got into the food as that's how they were found out.

He was telling this story to a big group of people including me and my friends and it didn't sound right to me so a quick look on Snopes showed it was an urban myth that has been told 1000 times before. However when I pointed this out to him he wasn't too happy, telling me that his mate told him and his mate 'never lied' and that I could check if I wanted. I tried to explain that even if it were true, a cat's microchip is so small you'd never notice it let alone choke on it but logic didn't seem to work. Not wanting a fight I backed off and let him carry on thinking he'd told us some amazing story.

Working for the council, I went back to work and checked with the environmental health department if the Chinese restaurant he had named, or any in the City were under investigation and surprise surprise there weren't and they'd never heard anything about it.
 
Wait until they finish their story, then just say "cool story, bro" then drop kick them in the face. That's what I did.. well, it was a friend of mine. But I was there.
 
Honestly when people tell those urban legends as true it makes me rage! Haha, don't know why but it seriously winds me up.
Ended up in a huge argument with my housemate and gf over the one about 'we only use 10% of our brain power'. Because it's been repeated so much they would not back down, ended up me getting the laptop out and emailing them both loads of links proving them wrong :D

They both ended up sulking for the rest of the day!
 
I forgot to say what I did during the 10th telling of the tale in the first story.
I couldn't keep the secret to myself so emailed my lady colleague with a Snopes link of the story and said 'Don't say anything to embarass her'.
A bit later she said that she still thought the story was true :eek:
 
I just hit reply-all with a link to the relevant Snopes article, with a brief explanation saying not to respond to pyramid schemes. I know I've created more server load by hitting reply-all, but if at least a few of them stops doing it, then it helps in the long run.
 
Another one about 6 months ago was their mate who is a hairdresser.
She lets a man into the shop for a quick cut and puts a towel over him.
While she is cutting his hair he is fapping off under the towel so she knocks him .
That's BS I was only slightly stunned. :D
 
I've actually seen two (the "stolen UPS uniforms" and the "dial 91 on your mobile") sent out as official security warnings. In the case of the first one, it was circulated by the Home Office. When I sent the Snopes link for the second story to the person who posted the warning, he thanked me but didn't withdraw the circular.


M
 
I've actually seen two (the "stolen UPS uniforms" and the "dial 91 on your mobile") sent out as official security warnings. In the case of the first one, it was circulated by the Home Office. When I sent the Snopes link for the second story to the person who posted the warning, he thanked me but didn't withdraw the circular.


M

Oh yeah, I used to get these kind of warning e-mails all the time at my last work. Our HR department (or whoever was sending them out) were trying to be nice of course but I'd say at least 50% of them were urban myths you could look up on Snopes.
 
"Drink 2 litres of water a day" is another good one. Misinformation constantly rehashed by magazines, newspapers and the like.
 
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