Facebook scaremongering

Rosy Posy

In the last few days I've had two similar warnings pop up on my newsfeed warning women about elaborate plans involving an altruistic act on their part leading to their rape and murder. The first was 'set' in South Africa and described a man in a shopping centre car park offering to help a woman change her tyre after which he asks for a lift to his car. The woman's spider senses tingle and she goes back to get the security guard. When they get back to the car the guy is gone but his briefcase is in her car containing knives and duct tape and other murder paraphanalia. The second was 'set' in New Zealand and involved a car seat on the side of the road with a fake baby in it, luring a woman to stop and be dragged to her doom.

The emotive language in these posts had my bullsh!tometer twitching. I can't seem to copy and paste from FB and they're too long for a screen grab. The creepiest part for me was at the end of the first:

Send this to any woman you know that may need reminding that the world has a lot of crazies in it

Why would someone want to put this kind of message out there- making women feel unsafe and warning them against altruism? Especially since most violence against women is perpetrated in the home or other 'safe' places by someone known to them. The whole thing smacks of misogyny and 'keeping women in their place'.

ted1

Thats a ten year old urban legend.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_flat_tire_mall.htm

One if my friends is constantly sharing these type stories and building up hysteria etc.
I called her up on it and she replied saying that even if it's made up it good to alert people that these things happen.

I explained that on that premise no man should ever offer to help a girl change her tyre and no women should accept. She still thought warning others was the correct thing to do.

Eeden

snopes is usually also a good place to look these things up.

XxMCRxBabyxX

Those stories annoy me. Every so often someone will post up a "Larry Murphy sighting" and everyone gets oh so worried and on the alert but it just seems so ridiculous to me. Why should we only be worried if Larry Murphy is apparently around (which 99-100% of the time he isn't)? Larry Murphy is not the only rapist around so we should always be careful and building up panic and hysteria doesn't actually help anything.

You see discussions about how difficult it can be for men to do some things these days and hysterical things like this are the reason why. It can be difficult for a man to even offer to walk a girl home in order to try and protect her in case he gets accused of something in the process. It seems like a constant circle of women need constant protecting but you can't allow a man to be near her.

Yolandi Boraine

Rosy Posy wrote: »

In the last few days I've had two similar warnings pop up on my newsfeed warning women about elaborate plans involving an altruistic act on their part leading to their rape and murder. The first was 'set' in South Africa and described a man in a shopping centre car park offering to help a woman change her tyre after which he asks for a lift to his car. The woman's spider senses tingle and she goes back to get the security guard. When they get back to the car the guy is gone but his briefcase is in her car containing knives and duct tape and other murder paraphanalia. The second was 'set' in New Zealand and involved a car seat on the side of the road with a fake baby in it, luring a woman to stop and be dragged to her doom.

The emotive language in these posts had my bullsh!tometer twitching. I can't seem to copy and paste from FB and they're too long for a screen grab. The creepiest part for me was at the end of the first:


Why would someone want to put this kind of message out there- making women feel unsafe and warning them against altruism? Especially since most violence against women is perpetrated in the home or other 'safe' places by someone known to them. The whole thing smacks of misogyny and 'keeping women in their place'.

I am from South Africa the amount of scaremongering about us really distorts the reality of living here.

But I have no issue with genuine stories being passed on. People should always have their wits about them the world is not kind always. But hysteria for hits is low.

ted1

Yolandi Boraine wrote: »

I am from South Africa the amount of scaremongering about us really distorts the reality of living here.

But I have no issue with genuine stories being passed on. People should always have their wits about them the world is not kind always. But hysteria for hits is low.

How do you indentify fact from fiction?

Rosy Posy

ted1 wrote: »

How do you indentify fact from fiction?

For me the language is a giveaway- tabloid style hysteria inducing emotive language- plus the addition of lots of detail. I studied psyche in college and one of the things that people do when they're trying to sell someone a lie is to include lots of seemingly spurious detail in order to set the scene, where as most people if reporting a truthful incident just include the relevant facts. Once suspicions have been aroused a fairly basic internet search usually exposes the fakes.

username123

Generally when someone posts that kind of nonsense on FB I call them out on it there and then in a reply where I post a link showing them that its a silly urban myth and that they are just spreading the virus.

Unfortunately its the same idiots over and over who spread this kind of nonsense so over time I end up just unfollowing them so their rubbish doesnt clog up my newsfeed.

At this stage Ive unfollowed so many people for some many different reasons that FB has become rather pointless!

Tabitharose

whenever these stupid urban legends show up on my news feed, I always post a link to snopes confirming it's rubbish, if I see one that I think might be true, I post the snopes link along with it, as confirmation that it is true.... I don't understand people who randomly put up things as "fact" without taking 30 seconds to verify it - really annoys me :rolleyes:

Rosy Posy

Tabitharose wrote: »

whenever these stupid urban legends show up on my news feed, I always post a link to snopes confirming it's rubbish, if I see one that I think might be true, I post the snopes link along with it, as confirmation that it is true.... I don't understand people who randomly put up things as "fact" without taking 30 seconds to verify it - really annoys me :rolleyes:

What hacks me off is when someone has shared a status of someone you're not friends with so you can't comment...just see the snowballing hysteria in the comments 'omg I'm never driving anywhere again' 'let's grab our pitchforks and assault any man that might dare to offer help'!