Almost everyday, I get a "Stringsters" brand string cheese in my lunch. They have two different packaging for their individual cheeses: Trivia and Riddles. The Riddles are silly little jokes meant for kids. Each Trivia cheese has a fun little "fact" that appear to be presented as truth ("trivia" implies truth, doesn't it?). Two recent facts I got:
1) A goldfish has a three second memory.
2) A duck's quack does not echo.
Both of these facts seemed suspicious. In fact, only the briefest of googling found that both hypotheses had been tested and were found to be totally untrue.
In two separate recent instances here at work, I was told information that was wrong. In the first case, it was your basic email "forward" from a friend with some ridiculous story posing as truth. Again, a brief web search revealed it to be a hoax. When I told the guy that it wasn't true, his response was disappointment. "That's no fun", he said. I agreed. Fantasy will almost always be "more fun" than reality, unfortunately.
In another case, a workboy emailed me with some information about Rock Band that was just plain wrong. I was struck at how difficult I found it to reply back and correct him. I found myself wanting to use phrases like "I'm sorry", and "I'm pretty sure it works like this" when I WASN'T sorry, and I was VERY SURE it worked like this.
Probably sense the advent of stupid hoax emails, a very real part of me feels the need to fight the dissemination of patently false information presented as "fun facts". But correcting people, even if you're right, isn't really the most awesome way to make friends, either. Like Mark Renton said, "It's a tightrope, Spud… it's a fuckin' tightrope."
I emailed the string cheese people. I wonder if they'll write back.
3 comments:
I understand...I always feel kind of guilty when I correct someone. A lot of times, I just let it go b/c it's easier that way.
Also, you're awesome for quoting Trainspotting. So this might be your Best Blog Post Ever, just 'cause of that.
My favorite change to the email forwards has been the opening line: I just checked on snopes and this is true!
Of course, a quick perusal of snopes shows that it is, in fact, not true.
The problem with the wishy-washy correction is it occasionally butts up against the adamant defense of the wrongness. At that point, I'm usually left with a shrug and an eye-roll. (Don't use the shrug and eye-roll move on your wife though. They, apparently, are on to that move.)
Given the subject of your post, I feel duty-bound to point out that "sense" does not equal "since" ... and I will not apologize.
D
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