Category: Teh Interwebs

Every now and then I go through a few days or weeks that I read Snopes regularly. After some time of it, I just have enough. There’s just so much bullshit floating out there that people are for some reason believing and spreading around more, all of which could be avoided if they gave it five seconds of thought. The idea that Snopes even has to debunk some of this stuff is just exhausting to think about.

A fair share of new posts to Snopes are debunking bullshit floating around about Muslims. The assertion is like “help, a Muslim forced some event to stop serving pork products!” and they’re like “no, some satire site made that up”. Or “help, Christian imagery was removed or banned because Muslims complained!” and they’re like “no, some right wingers made that up”. Or, as one recent one, “help, look at this image of a pro-ISIL rally in the US!” and they’re like “no, that’s actually an anti-ISIL rally”.

This shit spreads around, for one, because bigoted assholes. But also because people seem to really want to be offended or outraged or indulge some sort of persecution complex. I guess screw facts if it gets in the way of running around like a panicky idiot. And not in a delightful Wade Duck sort of way.

(Have I really not posted in three months? Ugh. Well, let’s see how far this December thing goes this year…)

You know those posts that float around social media saying “only 90s kids remember this” or someone else whose adolescence occurred entirely or in part prior to the turn of the century?

Cassette tapes. Getting film developed. Car windows that roll up and down by use of a hand crank.

Yeah, I, a 90s kid, am glad to be rid of all that shit, too. Thanks for reminding me.

Oh, but the next generation won’t appreciate not having annoying things like this anymore because we have digital media files and power windows? Well, good, it gives them more room to find what’s lacking in the current technology so they can in turn improve on that! Yay, progress!

And then there are the posts suggesting today’s kids will never know such bygone things like, say, a Pez dispenser or ending friendships by playing a well-timed Draw 4 card in Uno.

Except they can because Pez and Uno are totally still around, so I don’t know what the fuck these people are talking about. *shrug*

So often on Tumblr when a post so much as includes mention of a temperature, I know what’s coming.

Let’s say it says something like “This is 50 degrees in Michigan” and there’s a picture of people wearing t-shirts, shorts, and sandals. Then it says “This is 50 degrees in California” and in that picture everyone is wearing heavy winter coats and shivering.

But in the replies, before long at all, there will be some idiot who says “I live in England where we use Celsius so I was confused.”

No you fucking weren’t. You’re pretending to be confused. You’re in England, so while the Fahrenheit scale is not in use anymore, you all are at least aware of it. Hell, you all switch back and forth between it and Celsius in some contexts. And even so, you’d know full well the US is on Fahrenheit and that the locations mentioned in the image are in the US, so you could probably deduce as much.

Enough of this “tee hee, I don’t know the other scale” nonsense. Context, people! If someone is referring to 35 degrees as being hot, it’s Celsius. If cold, Fahrenheit. If referring to the day’s weather being 80 degrees, it’s obvious Fahrenheit, because 80 degrees Celsius isn’t exactly livable.

But that one wasn’t as bad as a similar one, where the temperatures -40, -30, -20, and -10 were shown in four respective pictures, showing Canadians considering them warm comfortable weather. And even in this context, there was some temperature scale confusion.

First of all, it’s negative temperatures. That’s still below freezing on both scales and still fucking cold. What’s to be confused about?

Also, and to mimic Futurama’s Morbo for the moment…

MINUS FORTY FAHRENHEIT AND MINUS FORTY CELSIUS ARE THE SAME FUCKING TEMPERATURE! GOODNIGHT!