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snopes.com's David Mikkelson Interviewed
pipingguy writes "Online Journalism Review interviews David Mikkelson of the Urban Legends Reference Pages. While the Internet has taken its share of knocks for helping scammers perpetrate e-mail and Web hoaxes (the Bambi hunt reportedly was staged to sell videos on the proprietor's Web site), not enough credit is given to the folks who are using the Internet to debunk them. Snopes.com is the work of the husband-and-wife team of David and Barbara Mikkelson, who have taken their passion for urban myths to the Web since 1995."
There's a matter of trust I'm wary about, when it comes to sites like snopes.com. How easy would it be for them to be 'infiltrated' somehow by a hack attempt or by bribery and the like, and pass off something that is a hoax or scam as being 'real'. or perhaps pass off something that's a real and present danger as being just another net hoax?.
I know about half the mindless net followers will believe everything they read in email. Most of those who follow up to check if something is valid or not turn to snopes. That's a big responsibility.
holy animated gifs and midi soundtracks.. snopes.com looks like my mom's first website
bite my glorious golden ass.
It's still useful. They've been debunking articles hours after they've started, especially handy in the recent "Metallica sues Canuck band for the use of E and F chords".
You want to learn how to troll? GO HERE
DEFINATELY an URBAN LEGEND.
Really.
You are not the customer.
from the interview:
MG: "What about the role of the Internet in hoaxes?"
DM: "I think in general, nothing's changed but the technology. There's a lot on the Internet that you can't trust. But frankly, there's a lot on your bookshelf and the library shelves that you can't trust either. There are books on UFOs and alien encounters that require some examination. There's never been a medium that you could inherently trust. You still have to look at who's telling you this and why are they telling you this. Is there anything else they should be telling you? That concept hasn't changed. The Internet has made it easier to debunk hoaxes while at the same time making it easier to perpetrate them. Nothing's really changed but the technology."
The only other thing he could have mentioned is that people trust TV news and newspapers way too much also. 'nuff said.
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
Or so they would have us believe... what if Snopes is a secret CIA plot to spread deliberate disinformation (the same CIA which is run by Masonic Lizards who would love nothing better than to enslare the world's population using advanced psychic mind-control tactics)
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Or the false nostradamus prediction, debunked on snopes.com:
:)
In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb,
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.
*NOSTRADAMUS 1654
Written by a student to show how vague prophecies can be misinterpreted easily. Popped up after Sept11... now applies only a couple of years later to Uday and Qusay Hussein.
Just thought that curious
A good article at CommonDreams.org about how the fact that it turned out to be a hoax seemed to make it 'acceptable' according to mainstream news sources.
Right-wing misogynists need not apply....
Its not a real interview its a hoax.
The problem is that according to my wife, a podiatric (foot) surgeon, the recovery period following a phalangectomy (ampution of a toe (or finger)) is almost nil. The big toe, let alone a vestigial "pinky toe", is not crucial for balance or stability. You can verify this yourself; lift up your big toe and walk around. Bet you can still do it, can't you? Sure you can, especially if you're wearing a shoe with a sole that is even moderately stiff, which would replace some of the big toe's stabilizing influence.
I reported this via the Snopes.com comment form. After a couple of days, I received a reply that basically said "everyone knows you can't walk right if you have a toe cut off", and my wife's qualified medical opinion was pretty much ignored. Now, I really don't think that Marilyn Monroe had six toes. However, I stand by my assertion that at least one of the reasons they give opposing such an idea just doesn't work.
Why do I think that's important? Because I don't know anything at all about a lot of the subjects that they speak authoritatively about. Since I know of at least one topic where they discarded the opinion of a subject matter expert, I have no reason to believe that they haven't done so elsewhere.
An old saying, paraphrased, is that "the news is accurate, except for the parts you personally know about", and I now kind of feel the same way about Snopes.com. I agree with a lot of their findings, but I have to take it all with a grain of salt.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Right Now I am looking at my email. 75% of whats come in today is spam. Mozilla mail has caught 95% of that, classified it and moved it into my junk folder.
My Point is if you know people that believe half of what they read in their email do them a favor. Unplug their computers and reacquaint them with reality Its the kind thing to do before they start taking HGH, Viagra and herbal estrogen mixtures.
Claim: Linux can replace Windows as a desktop OS
Status: False
Example: Somebody installed Linux where they work and found they could answer email and visit Slashdot, thus claiming that the OS can replace the ever popular Windows.
Origins: Slashdot is the home of a number of self-righteous Linux zealots who...
Ya know, I really wanted to continue writing this but I'm not sure how to dodge a Troll moderation!
"Derp de derp."
What is THE strangest story that you thought couldn't POSSIBLY be true, but upon further research, was?
:)
BTW excellent site, been reading it for years
I would hate to interrupt this self-congratulatory pat on the back, but "Hunting for Bambi" wasn't much of a hoax. A publicity stunt, yes. An hoax, not really. Assuming you have the money and assuming you have the desire, shooting paintballs at naked girls isn't something an *unlicensed* escort service would shy away from. Afterall, fullfilling sexual and/or sadistic fantasies is their business.
If we call "Hunting for Bambi" a hoax, we might as well call the Nike publicity stunts hoaxes as well. For example, the incident where they blocked traffic by setting up an impromptu tennis court. The news may be shocking to you, but that was staged -- even the outburst of the bus driver was carefully choreographed.
I found two major problems with this:
The funny part, to me, is that I pretty much agree with the conclusion he reached. The offered evidence, however, had little bearing on the theory being proved.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Look at his lecture Series, If he comes to your city it is well worth attending the lecture.
Help fight continental drift.
That was just an urban legend.
I've been playing on the Foresight Exchange for a couple months now, and while it's no crystal ball it's an interesting way of making public polls that are weighted both towards how successful a prognosticator a respondant is and how strongly he feels about a particular issue. I'd expect that adding money to the mix in the case of terrorism forecasts would both make the game "more serious" and allow it to act as a sort of anti-terrorism insurance.
What I couldn't believe was that this was the mistake that forced Poindexter to resign! The man waded through Iran-Contra, tried to create Big Brother, but now he's finally getting pensioned off because he wanted to start an idea futures market? That's just weird.
I have to say I really agree.
I think some of the poster are better than others. Sure, link the parent site, but if you link the interview, the link should be embedded in the word 'interview' or better yet, 'interview with ###'. If you link somebody's name, that link should point to a bio or vanity page of that person.
Hey editors, maybe some guidelines on links in posts?
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
I visit it every few days to see what's new.
Though I was startled to find that there's a transsexual model out there who appeared in a James Bond film and is married to someone who has the same name as I do. I hope that if I ever become famous nobody will look back on that article and draw the wrong conclusions.
The closest I know to this was a radar system that used to sit on top of the Ford Aeroneutronic building in Newport Beach, CA in the 1980s. This was the development test unit for the DIVAD gun system (a disappointing weapon), and it had a powered gun mount, but no gun. Instead of a gun, the test system had a telescope and a TV camera, and would produce good pictures of aircraft flying into LAX.
The DIVAD was supposed to engage low-flying helicopters, so the system could look down to the horizon. where it could see a freeway. It was usually set to ignore ground traffic below 100mph, but occasionally at night, some speeder would exceed the threshold and be identified as a possible target.
I heard that once the system picked up a speeding car and identified it as hostile. Apparently the car had a "radar jammer" to fool police radar. To a military radar, that helps mark the target better; it's like waving a flashlight around.
But that test system couldn't do anything more than videotape cars; it had no weapons whatsoever.
I don't know how many times I have referred my friends to snopes.com after hearing them recite to me an urban legend. Their response to me is "you believe this crap? You can't believe everything you read on the internet!"
I stumbled upon snopes.com for the first time while trying to determint whether the Peter Lynds story above was a hoax. I was searching for info about his publicist Brooke Jones, an Independent Communications Consultant. The google search leads to numerous links about urban legends. One site in particular http://www.truthminers.com/truth/jones.htm has a further link to snopes. Cool, eh? 6 degrees of internet separation.
"Christians and Muslims both believe in the same God, just disagree in the nature of Jesus Christ. Chrisitians believe he was the Messiah. Muslims believe he was just another prophet. The two, combined with Judaism, are referred to Abrahamic, because they all worship the God of Abraham."
The Gods are different, the religions are different. They are logically contradictory. The Muslim god has a prophet Mohammed, the Christian god does not. The Christian god is in a trinity with his only Son Jesus. The Muslim god, of course, is not.
They cannot be the same, as they contradict each other.
Before I was introduced to Snopes by my humanities teacher 2 years ago, I had found a "Straight Dope" book that had some questions like those addressed by Snopes: urban legends & "my friend said" kind-of-stuff. Cecil Adams (no relation) and his crew publish their stuff online @ http://www.straightdope.com By the way, I've also been known to my friends to send them to Snopes on a regular basis for the "crap" they love to fill my email box with. There's a lot of disinformation floating around out there.
Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
-Tom