Saturday, March 01, 2008

Hoax emails

Okay, so like, November 4th, 2003, Jim Valverdi of Sacramento, California, spontaneously combusted with a crowd of nearly 200 people standing near by. Look for the video on YouTube! This was the most witnesses ever for a spontaneous combustion, according to renowned scientific researcher, Dr. Sven Karlson of Cambridge University. Sacramento coroner Richard Windberg says that many of the people who witnessed the event have asked that no one contact them with regard to the event, as the trauma was too great to recall for the satisfaction of a few prying inquirers.


What we have here is my own, off the cuff, made up scenario to hopefully show a pattern. Anyone can make up stuff. Many people do. I teach Grade 7 and 8, I'm sure many of my students, if they thought about it, could come up with something far better than my feeble attempt at the top of this post and would have far more reason to, the chance to get their email sent around the word and laugh and giggle that they were able to deceive people.

I made up names, I made up a fantastic scenario, I added a little data to make it look it was based on facts. I added a suggestion to look up the video on YouTube, so people would think, "why would he say to look it up if it wasn't there."

I copied and pasted this from here and though I didn't research to see that this was a real interview, it makes a valid point!

(Rich) Buhler (founder of truthorfiction.com): There's one of the ingredients of an e-rumor. An e-rumor always has what I call the Wow Factor. "Wow, this is interesting," "Wow, this is funny," "Wow, this is important," "Wow, this is just what I thought Bill and Hillary would do," or whatever the Wow is that I want. So even though that rumor is really ludicrous, you can see where somebody who has the Wow Factor as a vegetarian would want it to be true and would use it as something to spread to their non-vegetarian friends, "Hey lookee here!" That's one of the key ingredients of an e-rumor.

www.truthorfiction.com

http://snopes.com/

Just a couple of places to look if you're wondering.

And, you know the people who send you anything. I try to tell my students, just don't pass it on. Try to just avoid the fact that it says, if you don't do this within 22 seconds your computer will fail, your teeth will fall out and you will never get married. This is really hard for some people to do, but it is possible!

I'm doing some research right now on Ron Wyatt from the email I got today regarding Chariot Wheels in the Red Sea. He seems to be a bit of a fraud, but it doesn't mean the pictures or story is false, I'll keep looking!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

we watched a dvd about the chariot wheels and a bunch of other stuff. what are you saying its a hoax? i agree about the email fwds though, my favorite button is delete!!
B

Anonymous said...

ya, sometimes I email back to the person who sent it and ask them not to forward me stuff that promises me bad luck or worse if I don't pass it on because I'm certainly not going to do what it says no matter what. If they really believe it'll send them bad luck, well, they should be more thoughtful than to send it to me!!I'm not afraid of the bad luck etc. I just hate getting those dumb forwards so much.
Heh heh, needless to say no one sends them to me again after my blunt reply so that's nice of them.
P

Ron Easton for Dads UnLimited said...

As far as the "archaelogist" goes, he is not trained, more of a buff than an actual historian. This makes it hard to tell exactly what he's doing, whether sensationalised to sell books/dvds (he's now passed away, btw) or whether he's just publishing stuff that others are not saying has been discovered.

Patti, I think its good to get the truth out there, don't forget that email itself is a terrible way to communicate and people may take your replies in more of a harsh way then you intended them. Unless they know you, then they know that you are just plain mean:)

Anonymous said...

ya, for the most part they still send me personal emails so I guess they know it's just me being mean. (intrinsically evil, Laura always said)
I should add I also say if they begin their forward with a note from them I'll read it because then I'll know they really think it is important for me to read it.
P