The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Have a crazy uncle or a Facebook friend you knew from high school, whose friend invite you're regretting accepting, that isn't coy about sending you political chain emails? Sure, we could just ignore these posts and emails, delete them, and pretend we never received them, but then unfortunately, other people will read and believe them, and forward the messages onto several other potentially gullible individuals. I'm rather obsessive about fact-checking as it is, but especially when it comes to these chain emails, which I've come to learn are typically false to one extent or another. It's gotten to the point where I'm almost 100% accurate on whether or not such an email is at least partially false when reading through it one time. There are times it simply amazes me that anyone could believe some of them. However, since it seems there are plenty of such individuals out there, I thought I'd provide a few pointers on how to spot a false political chain email. ...

I sometimes get flustered by the lies that get spread by people over the Internet and through other mediums. It seems that ever since the government shutdown's inception, these myths have been increasing in frequency on an almost daily basis and all I can say is, I feel sorry for Snopes.com . Most of these rumors and posts have been about President Obama - showing him in a negative light. All of them have been false to one degree or another. This isn't the first such week or two that this has occurred. Peruse Snopes.com under Barack Obama and you'll find well over 100 chain emails being spread about him - close to 90% of which are false on some level. What's even sadder is often times, even when I take the time to fact-check such nonsense and report my findings to the sender, he or she tends to believe it anyway and continue forwarding the debunked information onto others. Why do some do this? Why, even when their spread lies are proven to be such, will they continu...