Before I started to read this forum, and before a friend pointed me in the direction of Snopes (two totally unrelated events which happened more or less at the same time - OOOoOOOOOOhhh...), I must admit that I was guilty of both believing and perpetuating every single urban myth that dropped in my inbox. Even the Darwin awards.
Shame on me.
My fiance, her mother and her friends were the same way. For a long time, I would simply reply to their forwards (sometimes I would even go a couple levels deep), with a link to the snopes article and a comment asking (not too nicely), if they could possibly find some evidence on stories before believing them. Fortunately, she always checks now.
There was an interesting one going around a couple months ago that a couple people I knew fell for. It stated that Mars would be closer to the earth than it had ever been in the past, apparently it would show up in the sky as large as the moon. This was a partially (although a small part) true about 3 years previous. Obviously it would not be that big (I could only imagine what the tidal forces would do to the Earth), and it gets that close every 17 years or so. They were all convinced in the email, even after I explained what the email really meant, that the event had already happened. I even explained eliptical orbits, apparent magnitudes of stellar objects, and tidal forces caused by massive objects.
Did they believe me? Nope. Pointed them to the Snopes article and they still didn't. All I got was the response "How do you know?" After the "event", they dropped it and never spoke of it again.
It is this kind of thing that really, really, REALLY bothers me. I can understand how one could believe in something really wacky but if the evidence against it is sitting right in front of you, how can you still believe? Why do people never take the time to look for even the smallest bit of evidence.
Take for example, the radio show I heard yesterday morning. They had a large number of questions that they asked the audience. One of them was the common "Which direction does water drain in your toilet in the northern hemisphere?" Every one of them answered that it turned either clockwise or counter clockwise and they said that it was based on the Coriolis effect. Obviously you should all know that the Coriolus effect has a insignificant effect on the flow of water down a drain, and only shows up when water has been sitting unmoving for 24 hours or more. It amazes me that none of these people had ever observed that the water actually drained both ways. In 25+ years of life, using a toilet, sink or tub at least once a day, none of these people had ever bothered to check if this common knowledge was true or not. Easily the most common urban legend of today. I hear it repeated all the time.
What is wrong with the world that they will accept such an easily disputed fact? I guess people are just lazy.
