Tuesday, April 06, 2010
URBAN AND NOT SO URBAND LEGENDS
The people at Snopes got a great writeup today in the NYT.
Debunkers of Fictions Sift the Net
I have used them for a long time.
At first, I was interested in their interest in urban legends. You know. The guy with the homicidal maniac with a hook on his hand on lovers' lane? Or the woman who woke up in a tubful of ice with a kidney missing? Or the alligators coming up in the toilet? I did. Bunk.
Then, as the net began to spew more and more bogus email chain letters, Snopes became the default source for truth versus fiction.
I have never hesitated to send someone a Snopes citation when they send me some shit that they didn't check on themselves which is almost all chain email except for pussy cat pictures and inspirational doo dah.
As a result, I notice that I am not included on anyone's chain letter list anymore. They have figured out that I am not drinking the Kool-aid.
The article points to something that I have observed of late on blogs and that is the skepticism about simple truths.
Find one flaw and the whole thing is thrown into disrepute.
Sadly, this is true of the lefties as well as the right. I get tired of it.
I have cut down now on any blog reading because I just don't want to enable any of it. Or hear it.
I am using a newish site which has won the Pulitzer. Run by the St. Petersburg Times. Politifacts.
Try telling friends that they are full of shit and see how quickly you deplete your friendship bank.
It is OK with me actually. If people are going to run their life and their network of friends on the basis of scurrilous and unfounded rumor they need to be cut away.
One disappointment. The article doesn't say how they got the name Snopes. Or did I miss something.
Labels: culture, lefty fringe, republican whack jobs
The Snopes were a family of characters weaved throughout the works of Nobel Prize-winning American writer William Faulkner. When David Mikkelson, creator of snopes.com, first came onto the Internet in the late 1980s, he worried even back in those relatively uncrowded days that no one would remember yet another David. He was thus inspired to adopt a nom-de-Net, selecting one that honored those fictional Faulknerian characters, and began signing his newsgroups posts as "snopes."
Over the years snopes established a fearsome online reputation for his ability to thoroughly research and debunk false claims. When it came time to name our domain, www.snopes.com seemed the obvious choice.
As to how to pronounce "snopes," the word rhymes with "soaps."
