I've done it, Windsparrow.

I tend to "reply all" with a Snopes link when someone sends a ridiculous, unfounded health-related e-mail (like, don't drink cold beverages with a meal, because the cold beverage will hit the food in your stomach and solidify the fat in the meal and prevent digestion -- that was a real e-mail my mom sent me, and I Snopes-ed her on it).

Oh lord, someone sent me that one just yesterday. Gives my Coke Zero-loving self the screaming irrits, it does.

This was not the first time this person has forwarded utter crap. In the past, I have taken the more subtle approach of sending the Snopes link to her saying, "You'll be relieved to know that is not true...." and hoping she would also forward the Snopes link to all she misinformed. I kept hoping she would learn to check things out first before forwarding. At this point, seeing as she has not learned that yet, I figure I can't trust her to correct the false information she sends out. So I want to make sure to spread the truth myself. And to be honest, if it just happens to cause a smidgeon of embarrassment, just enough for her to either stop sending me crap or check the crap out on Snopes first, I won't be horribly taken aback at the depths of my own evil.

I'm fortunate that my Mom is happy to Snopes our relatives when they forward stupid shit, so I don't have to deal with it.

The difficult ones for me are the autism/vaccines posts on local parenting mailing lists. I know from experience that correcting people publicly generates all light and no heat, but GODDAMN IT PEOPLE, VACCINATE YOUR FUCKING KIDS.

GODDAMN IT PEOPLE, VACCINATE YOUR FUCKING KIDS.

srsly.

Don't think of it as evil, Andi. It's a public service.

(And once again I'm relieved that my family has never picked up the "forward stuff to everyone on your contact list" meme. I don't know why they haven't, but I'm not about to question it.)

I've sent a 'Hey folks, please analyse the shit you get sent and ask yourself "Hmm, is this insidious racist bullshit?", and if you think maybe it is, check Snopes! See, here's the Snopes link proving that your junkmail was, indeed, insidious racist bullshit' to my mother, and to all the people on the mailing list who'd received the email.

She was horrified, and has been much more inclined to think critically about the junkmail her friends send her.

I've sent a 'Hey folks, please analyse the shit you get sent and ask yourself "Hmm, is this insidious racist bullshit?", and if you think maybe it is, check Snopes! See, here's the Snopes link proving that your junkmail was, indeed, insidious racist bullshit' to my mother, and to all the people on the mailing list who'd received the email.

Nods. I try to evaluate how important it is to be corrected (vaccination bs: yes; cold drinks with your meal: eh; racist/sexist tropes: yes; sappy inspirational junk: not so much) and then very carefully word the response to make the point with the least amount of upset.

So in this case if I did decide to respond I could see something like "wow, that really shocked me because I drink cold sodas with my meal all the time so I looked into it and I was so relieved to find out that any moron could have seen that it's not true! Isn't that great news?

OMG. So sleepy. Send sunshine.

We have a woman in my office who periodically sends out messages to everyone about something that's been exposed as a hoax; usually, I'll just send her the Snopes link. My mother, thank heaven, doesn't send offensive stuff, but she tends to forward messages that (a) have been floating around for years and (b) are multiple forwards, which means that they're several layers of nested messages. I've told her that our office e-mail system cuts off after a certain number of forwarded attachments and, since she can't figure out how to save and re-attach something, I just delete them and tell her that the system cut it off.

I'm a bad daughter, aren't I?

In better news, has Jilli seen this? stripey corset and skirt!