The last time I got one of those it was via a work email a couple years ago. It was one of those "fact" lists.
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I had some slack in my schedule that day so I set to debunking every one of them, line by line with citations. I closed it with a statement to the effect of, "sharing of knowledge is admirable, but one must take care to not spread falsehoods and misinformation."
I then pasted in an excerpt from company policy prohibiting chain mail on email.
I sent it as a "reply all" which probably sent it to several hundred people.
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That was the last time I got a chain email, there or anywhere else.
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Though I did get a few emails from time to time afterwards about various myths and misconceptions. I became the company email mythbuster.
I've found that responding to chain mail with a brief explanation and a link to snopes.com takes you off of a lot of people's mass email lists. People just don't seem to like feeling like an idiot for believing Internet nonsense.
.
I had some slack in my schedule that day so I set to debunking every one of them, line by line with citations. I closed it with a statement to the effect of, "sharing of knowledge is admirable, but one must take care to not spread falsehoods and misinformation."
I then pasted in an excerpt from company policy prohibiting chain mail on email.
I sent it as a "reply all" which probably sent it to several hundred people.
.
That was the last time I got a chain email, there or anywhere else.
.
Though I did get a few emails from time to time afterwards about various myths and misconceptions. I became the company email mythbuster.