If this isn’t already being spread around Tumblr, please do. This is important and was posted two days ago. It applies to all states in the U.S.
Tumblr I would like you to introduce you to a good friend of mine.
I understand that many people want to help their followers out with valuable information. Sometimes this information is overblown, over-exaggerated, or simply false. A few might say, so? Might as well repost it just in case!
This isn’t really a good way to think, because the false reports and information will clutter and overshadow the things we really need to be cautious of.
False stories that have been spread around on Tumblr (that I’ve seen):
Amber Alert (“IF SHE WAS YOUR LITTLE GIRL…”)
Baby Car Seat Lure
112 as a magical dispatch connect number
Eggs thrown at cars by robbers to get them to stopA minute of cynicism, time taken to look up the alert that apparently so desperately needs a signal boost, can prevent false information from being spread.
Basically: just look it up on Snopes, especially if it doesn’t link to a news story.
i forgot snopes existed. i love snopes
((just so you know))
I reply to my mother with Snopes links all the time these days… she’s always sending me forwards.
This is really good to pass around, though. They’re very good at checking sources and a great place to verify if a rumor is true or false. If you email them something you’ve received, they will get back to you either with a link from their page, or a message that they will investigate further.
damn that snopes logo sure looks like an image of someone dying while having an mri scan, that’s uncanny
I’d say it looks more like mechanically separated chicken meself…
Hooray for this post. Tumblr drives me nuts with all of the misinformation and urban legends that get reblogged around here. Here’s some more stuff I’ve seen at least once that I recognized from previously reading about them on Snopes:
- Teacher says sperm has sugar in it, girl asks, then why doesn’t it taste sweet?
- Girl looks at cheek swab under microscope, sees something moving, teacher says it’s sperm
- Depressed tiger adopts abandoned baby piglets
- Tumblr will delete your blog if you don’t reblog this to prove you’re active
You can’t really expect sources for stories like the first two, but I think it’s worth recognizing legends like that. By nature, they say a lot about us (and how little it really counts for anything when someone swears a story is true) that we keep passing them around.
Beyond stuff listed on Snopes… so much of the fake stuff passed around Tumblr as true could be avoided if people were more suspicious of information posted without a source, and actually glanced at the source listed for controversial information to see if it supports the contents of the post. The number of notes on a post does not say anything about whether something is legitimate.
(via complicatedtriangulated)
