afparent Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/a/top_10_uls.htm Here, in ascending order of popularity, are About's Top 10 Net Hoaxes and Urban Legends of 2004: 10. 'Sex Bracelets' Rumor has it there is a game popular among junior high school students in the United States called "Snap," in which sexual favors are granted to whoever breaks a jelly bracelet off of someone else's wrist. What is a jelly bracelet, you ask? Let me put it this way: if you have teenaged children and you don't know the answer to that question, you will want to educate yourself on the subject, which caused quite a stir this past year in many parts of the U.S. 9. Bill Gates Is Giving Away His Fortune! Believe it or not, this logic-defying Internet hoax is seven years old and still going strong. As originally composed, Microsoft founder Bill Gates purportedly promised in a personal message to pay $1,000 to each and every person who helped him beta test his new "email tracking software" by forwarding the missive to everyone they know. Subsequent versions included phony news reports about mergers taking place between AOL, Microsoft and chip manufacturer Intel. Do I need to add that not a word of this is true? Judging by the fact that this remains one of the top-circulating specimens of Netlore ever, evidently I do. 8. Patriotic Pepsi Can Omits 'Under God' in Pledge Excerpt Though completely innocent of the charge, Pepsi-Cola inherited a sizable burden of bad publicity when an unknown hoaxer replaced the brand name "Dr Pepper" with "Pepsi" in an email circular condemning the former for omitting the phrase "under God" in an excerpt from the U.S. pledge of allegiance on a special promotional soda can. Despite a terse disclaimer on Pepsi's Website, hundreds of thousands of people accepted the hoax as true and passed it on to friends and family, urging them to boycott the popular soft drink in the name of outraged Christians everywhere. 7. Terrorists Are Buying UPS Uniforms on eBay Despite a miniscule grain of truth — namely that articles of clothing bearing the UPS brand have occasionally shown up for auction on eBay, leading to at least one FBI investigation — the main implication of this still-circulating message from February 2003, dubbed "the urban legend of missing uniforms" by a United Parcel Service spokesperson, is false: no large cache of UPS uniforms has fallen into the hands of suspected terrorists. Definitely scary, if true; but it's not. 6. The Eye of God This striking composite photo of the Helix Nebula, a "trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases" 650 light-years away, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and Kitt Peak National Observatory in 2002. Because of the angle from which we view it here in our solar system, the unfathomably large Nebula bears an uncanny resemblance to the human eye — hence its popular nickname: "The Eye of God." 5. Altoids Mints as Sexual Aid This perennial crowd-pleaser has generated constant reader interest ever since the 1998 Starr Report revealed that Monica Lewinsky had flirtatiously handed President Bill Clinton an email printout of the Altoids legend during a secret White House rendezvous in 1997 (the president rebuffed her, by the way). I apologize for not being able to verify the rumored erotic benefits of chewing Altoids mints conclusively. As our reader comments show, there is considerable disagreement on that point even among those who have put it to the test. 4. Giant Human Skeleton Unearthed in Arabian Desert If it surprises you that educated adults in the year 2004 would buy into a photograph of an archaeologist literally dwarfed by the gigantic humanoid skull he appears to be digging out of the ground, consider that a recent Gallup poll showed that two-thirds of Americans aren't convinced that the theory of evolution is supported by scientific evidence. One-fifth fully agree with the assertion that man was created by God in his present form only 10,000 years ago. It appears we live in an age when, for a great many people around the world, mythology still trumps science, so it should come as no great shock that some are open to the notion that there really were "giants in the earth" in the not-so-distant past. For the record, this much-circulated image was fabricated for entry in a Worth1000.com Photoshop contest in 2002. 3. Penny Brown Is Missing Not a month goes by without tens of thousands of people forwarding this heartrending plea for information leading to the whereabouts of a 9-year-old girl named Penny Brown. The problem is, she never existed in the first place. This distasteful hoax was launched in 2001 by an anonymous prankster and has circumnavigated the globe many times over since then, with variants adding insult to injury by claiming that Penny Brown originally went missing in Texas, Australia, Singapore or Namibia. Stay tuned for next year's version. 2. World's Tallest Woman Even if the strapping female depicted in this set of forwarded images were really 7 feet 4 inches tall as the accompanying text claims, she'd fall three inches short of stealing the title of "World's Tallest Woman" from the real record-holder, Sandy Allen. Still, at 6 feet 5-1/2 inches, Heather cuts a fine figure — especially when posed in 6-inch heels beside male and female models chosen for their diminutive stature. 1. Attack of the Camel Spiders Thanks to the ubiquity of digital cameras and wireless Internet, the war in Iraq is the first to be documented instantaneously by soldiers on the ground. Among the earliest dispatches to make the rounds of inboxes back home was a photograph of a nasty-looking critter unfamiliar to most Americans (even though it can be found in the southwestern United States as well as in the Middle East) called a camel spider. "With a vertical leap that would make a pro basketball player weep with envy," the anonymously-written caption reads, "these ****s latch on and inject you with a local anesthesia so you can't feel it feeding on you." In reality, entomologists say, camel spiders are neither venemous nor a threat to human safety. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beaudry Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Yes! Santa Claus is still incognito.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Mike Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 THIS is the best one, some of you may remember this gem showing up here .... http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp Internet hoax hoodwinks McNealy By Stephen Shankland CNET News.com December 8, 2004, 2:43 PM PT http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5484053.html SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy showed a photo during a Wednesday speech to illustrate how rapidly technology improves--but instead illustrated another computing phenomenon: how easy it is to fall for an Internet hoax. At a keynote address here at the Oracle OpenWorld show, McNealy displayed a picture supposedly from the magazine "Popular Mechanics" showing how people in 1954 envisioned the home computer. His point was to show how far computing has advanced beyond what was expected. Alas, in reality the photo he used is a doctored picture of a nuclear submarine control room mock-up, according to the myth-debunking site Snopes.com. The black-and-white photo, which has circulated by e-mail and Web postings, shows a man in an Eisenhower-era suit standing before a long panel studded with dozens of gauges and a single steering wheel. A bulky monitor looms above, and a keyboard is placed in front. According to Snopes, the original image is a U.S. Navy photograph taken of a Smithsonian exhibit. The modified version was submitted to an image modification contest. Hoaxes are nothing new for the Internet. There have been bogus MP3 viruses, virus repairs and e-mail taxes. McNealy might be a hornswoggled high-tech CEO, but he showed some rightly skeptical instincts. "Being from Detroit, I have to wonder: What is the steering wheel for?" he asked the audience of thousands at the show. And his next point certainly made sense: "It's hard to imagine where we'll be 50 years from now," he said. McNealy shouldn't feel too bad about his gaffe; he has good company. Lotus founder Mitch Kapor posted the same bogus photo to his blog in November, later noting his mistake. The original photo can be found here: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/news/news_stories/sub-centen02.html On a side note: Scott McNealy spends way too much time surfing the web. God's honest truth, he once plagiarized me (or came damn close to it) in a speech he gave some years ago. A freind of mine recognized something he said about the future of computing that he stole from my Break Up Microsoft site. It was almost word for word and I confirmed that I was getting traffic from Sun's corporate site. :doh: Oh well, they say laughter is the best revenge and it warms my heart to see him hoodwinked like this.:laugh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leonard Washington Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 i never heard of any of those hoaxes what about the one that said george w got re-elected? :laugh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopper Dave Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Originally posted by afparent http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/a/top_10_uls.htm Here, in ascending order of popularity, are About's Top 10 Net Hoaxes and Urban Legends of 2004: 10. 'Sex Bracelets' Rumor has it there is a game popular among junior high school students in the United States called "Snap," in which sexual favors are granted to whoever breaks a jelly bracelet off of someone else's wrist. What is a jelly bracelet, you ask? Let me put it this way: if you have teenaged children and you don't know the answer to that question, you will want to educate yourself on the subject, which caused quite a stir this past year in many parts of the U.S. 5. Altoids Mints as Sexual Aid This perennial crowd-pleaser has generated constant reader interest ever since the 1998 Starr Report revealed that Monica Lewinsky had flirtatiously handed President Bill Clinton an email printout of the Altoids legend during a secret White House rendezvous in 1997 (the president rebuffed her, by the way). I apologize for not being able to verify the rumored erotic benefits of chewing Altoids mints conclusively. As our reader comments show, there is considerable disagreement on that point even among those who have put it to the test. 10. They actually do have those, as I remember them from middle school. Nothing ever came of it (no pun intended), but they did exist in theory. 5. Altoids may not do it, but other mintiness works. Supposedly . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dks1240 Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 Originally posted by afparent 5. Altoids Mints as Sexual Aid This perennial crowd-pleaser has generated constant reader interest ever since the 1998 Starr Report revealed that Monica Lewinsky had flirtatiously handed President Bill Clinton an email printout of the Altoids legend during a secret White House rendezvous in 1997 (the president rebuffed her, by the way). I apologize for not being able to verify the rumored erotic benefits of chewing Altoids mints conclusively. As our reader comments show, there is considerable disagreement on that point even among those who have put it to the test. oh this one has been going around since i was in high school! nothing new about this :doh: and on a side note, it doesnt work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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