Snopes Beclowns Itself

[Butter!]

Yeah, Reddit is a true trash fire these days.

I know, I know - smaller subs are still supposedly cool, Reddit is all about how you tailor your experience, etc. I'm not sure. Politics really seems to be leaking all over that site, and people just go there to fight and nitpick.

*has moment of self-awareness*

Haha, oh well, at least there's kind of a sense of community here.

 

[mumblethrax]

I really wish I could do something about "beclowned". It's the "throw under the bus" of whatever year this is.

 

[Armitage72]

I use Snopes often to find out if the current meme I'm asked to believe on Facebook is meaningful. Unfortunately if I post a link to Snopes instead of a link they used, then more often than not I'm told Snopes is biased. I'm sure they are to an extent.

That's a pretty mild dismissal. I've been told that Snopes is a Democratic propaganda site secretly funded by George Soros. The man seems to be involved in everything.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I really wish I could do something about "beclowned". It's the "throw under the bus" of whatever year this is.

Coin a new expression! "Bus clowned"!

"Boy, Biden really bus clowned himself with that story about a razor fight with a guy named Corn Pop!"

 

[Trebuchet]

That's a pretty mild dismissal. I've been told that Snopes is a Democratic propaganda site secretly funded by George Soros. The man seems to be involved in everything.

Politifact says no, but that's just because they're another commie Soros site!

 

[theprestige]

Yeah, Reddit is a true trash fire these days.

I know, I know - smaller subs are still supposedly cool, Reddit is all about how you tailor your experience, etc. I'm not sure. Politics really seems to be leaking all over that site, and people just go there to fight and nitpick.

*has moment of self-awareness*

Haha, oh well, at least there's kind of a sense of community here.

I visit about a dozen subreddits every day. None of them get political leakage. Even the obviously political one (the only political one on my list) puts a lot of effort into keeping a narrow focus and rejecting political leakage/expansion.

There's also hardly any fighting/nitpicking. Mostly just complaints about reposts.

 

[Elagabalus]

I visit about a dozen subreddits every day. None of them get political leakage. Even the obviously political one (the only political one on my list) puts a lot of effort into keeping a narrow focus and rejecting political leakage/expansion.

There's also hardly any fighting/nitpicking. Mostly just complaints about reposts.

Reposting should be an automatic ban.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

I think Brainster seems to take exception to the article pointing out that, historically, white entrepreneurs have been known to take credit for recipes or other fruits of labor or ingenuity by people of color, and would have preferred if Snopes omitted that context altogether and simply declared that the lack of corroborating evidence for this specific claim makes it "false".

Historically entrepreneurs have been known to take credit for recipes or other fruits of labor or ingenuity by other people. Period. If these thieving entrepreneurs have been predominantly white it's only because entrepreneurs in general have historically been white. And the people they have been stealing ideas from have been other white people.

The notion that there is a long history of white people stealing the ingenuity of people of color is absurd.

I saw an anonymous post on a website that said Oprah Winfrey stole the idea for her talk show from a white man. Somebody on Facebook said the exact same thing. There's really no concrete evidence that the idea for her talk show wasn't hers but considering the long history of blacks stealing from whites, Snopes would no doubt answer the question "Did Oprah steal the idea for her talk show from a white man?" as "unproven...but alluding to a deeper truth"

 

[Butter!]

I visit about a dozen subreddits every day. None of them get political leakage. Even the obviously political one (the only political one on my list) puts a lot of effort into keeping a narrow focus and rejecting political leakage/expansion.

There's also hardly any fighting/nitpicking. Mostly just complaints about reposts.

I still like r/totallynotrobots, lol.

Actually, I do have one non-goofy sub I visit that's still pretty good. It's just a bit slow sometimes because of the very thing that's keeping it good - smaller community. I don't post on Reddit at all, though. I just subscribe to certain subs and read. Lately, some of them have been pissing me off with annoying political leakage, turning what is supposed to be a quick reading break into an additional aggravation.

But on topic - I don't think this Snopes situation constitutes beclownage. It's just them following their own categorizations, which have always been pretty much the same.

 

[Butter!]

Historically entrepreneurs have been known to take credit for recipes or other fruits of labor or ingenuity by other people. Period. If these thieving entrepreneurs have been predominantly white it's only because entrepreneurs in general have historically been white. And the people they have been stealing ideas from have been other white people.

The notion that there is a long history of white people stealing the ingenuity of people of color is absurd.

I saw an anonymous post on a website that said Oprah Winfrey stole the idea for her talk show from a white man. Somebody on Facebook said the exact same thing. There's really no concrete evidence that the idea for her talk show wasn't hers but considering the long history of blacks stealing from whites, Snopes would no doubt answer the question "Did Oprah steal the idea for her talk show from a white man?" as "unproven...but alluding to a deeper truth"

Don't you think that's sort of a joke, though? How can anyone steal the idea for a talk show? Once that idea was out there, it was out there. There's not much to steal. And the hosts of the first talk shows were white guys, so...

Its probably a joke.

 

[eerok]

Reddit is all about how you tailor your experience, etc. I'm not sure.

No, that's true. Reddit is a curated experience. If something tends to annoy you, just unsubscribe. I use Reddit mostly for my hobbies and activities, including alcohol-making, computer-building, Linux distros, still more computer stuff, diet, recipes, exercise, reading, writing, TV, movies, and the like.

The closest thing to politics I bother with is r/Canada, because I'm Canadian.

 

[quadraginta]

No, that's true. Reddit is a curated experience. If something tends to annoy you, just unsubscribe. I use Reddit mostly for my hobbies and activities, including alcohol-making, computer-building, Linux distros, still more computer stuff, diet, recipes, exercise, reading, writing, TV, movies, and the like.

The closest thing to politics I bother with is r/Canada, because I'm Canadian.

"Unproven".

...

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I've never been impressed by Snopes; they seem to cherry pick what needs to be investigoogled and what doesn't deserve scrutiny.

Really? You mean they don't randomly sample from a pool of rumors which has been carefully weighted to remove bias, then publish each and every one regardless of how boring it is? How unscientific of them!

I'm not sure such behavior reaches the level of 'beclowning'. Then again, there seems to be a bit of it going around...

Snopes has thousand of articles, many of which are 'unproven'. Why did you choose this particular one to start a thread on?

 

[Trebuchet]

Really? You mean they don't randomly sample from a pool of rumors which has been carefully weighted to remove bias, then publish each and every one regardless of how boring it is? How unscientific of them!

I'm not sure such behavior reaches the level of 'beclowning'. Then again, there seems to be a bit of it going around...

Snopes has thousand of articles, many of which are 'unproven'. Why did you choose this particular one to start a thread on?

Don't expect a reply, the OP has left the building thread. Of course, the answer is that it didn't agree with his biases.

 

[eerok]

"Unproven".

...

I'm too polite to disagree, though, so it must be true.

 

[Seismosaurus]

I've never been impressed by Snopes; they seem to cherry pick what needs to be investigoogled and what doesn't deserve scrutiny.

Well yes. Obviously they do. Anybody who is in the business of investigating things chooses what to investigate and what not to. It really couldn't be otherwise.

Other black women have had their recipes stolen by whites:

Well yes, that would be true. And it's an example of them investigating things other than the particular claim, so I'd think you would be happy since you complained about them not doing that just a minute ago.

Basically, although there is zero evidence for it in this case and lots of evidence the other way (which Snopes does cite)

Hmm, neither did you. What is this "lots of evidence" that the claim is untrue? Have you submitted it to Snopes?

, gosh it's unproven and if you don't read past the headline you'd think there was some truth to the claim instead of just "truth."

I guess you might, if you are unaware of the definition of the word "unproven". Snopes appears to presume that their readers will not be.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That seems to be a common complaint about fact-checkers. Why can't they have infinite resources to check all-the-things? It's almost like they have to prioritize which claims they check based on some criteria that doesn't necessarily match critics' priorities.

And why does reality have a liberal bias and conservatives have to use true facts and not alternate ones?

 

[pipelineaudio]

I like Snopes and I thought it was a good article myself, although I might quibble with the rating. I suspect that some claims there rated "False" in the past haven't been more disproven than this one.

I think that is the honest answer, it happens on there from time to time.

I don't know why so many in this once skeptical forum have to go all tribal and circle the wagons about it.

When Obama did something ridiculous and /or disgusting I would call it out, does that mean I wanted Palin? No.

Have some balls and stop metooing, people

 

[quadraginta]

I'm too polite to disagree, though, so it must be true.

Okay. That may not be proof of Canadianism, but as evidence it is certainly compelling.

 

[Mumbles]

Yes, that is the complaint. One of them, anyway.

Is it a legitimate complaint or does it suggest confirmation bias on the art of the complainer? Are people merely remembering the times Snopes debunked conservative claims and forgetting when they debunked liberal claims? Or, far more often, Snopes mostly debunks non-partisan off-the-wall claims that former high school classmates share on Facebook and politics has nothing to do with it?

Even if we just restrict ourselves to political claims, I seem to recall "fake news" editors stating that they tried baiting democrats using the same techniques they used successfully on dems, and they were just immediately outed as fake sites and ignored. It was a minor aside in one of many investigations into the "Pope endorses Trump!" "Hillary only has 2 weeks to live, her doctor says!" sites, though, so I'd have difficulty digging it up.

What I've noticed both on here and on Twitter, though, is that republicans are *very* good at pushing around false narratives in the face of contradictory data (Ilhan Omar said "Some people did something!" and won't criticize Saudi Arabia! Obama said business owners "didn't build that!" Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group!), and tend to twist academic terms and black American slang into gibberish - such as the "Intersectional stack" or "cancel culture", both of which are plainly nonsense. Liberals have a bad habit of latching onto picking up on these terms as well, unless they're familiar with what the terms actually mean. We then see them outraged at supposed "double standards" whenever, say, a nonwhite person code-switches when speaking in front of a heavily non-white audience, as we've seen for Obama, AOC, *and* Kamalah Harris over the past decade.

I strongly doubt that this is due to any inherent superiority on the part of liberals - rather, it's because both liberalism and tech savviness are more common among younger internet users. In other words, younger people are both more likely to correctly ID fake news, and to lean way to the left, while their older relatives are both more likely to by strongly conservative, *and* to just accept falsehoods under the guise of "news".