When your best friend from high school sends you an URGENT!!! email about the postcard virus, or your Aunt Tillie tells you she’s appalled that a new Pepsi-Cola can omits the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, you know what to do: go directly to Snopes.com to confirm or debunk. (In both of these cases, the latter.)
Since 1995, a California couple, David and Barbara Mikkelson, have run Snopes.com out of their home, doing dogged research into urban legends, “common fallacies, misinformation, old wives’ tales, strange news stories, rumors, celebrity gossip, and similar items” (according to their site’s FAQ).
Why did they name the site Snopes? New York Times technology columnist David Pogue asked David Mikkelson that question for a “CBS Sunday Morning” segment. He excerpted the conversation in his Personal Tech newsletter:
David Pogue: Where does the name Snopes come from?
David Mikkelson: Snopes come [sic] from a family of characters who recur in the works of William Faulkner. He typically had different families that represented a different strata of Southern society. And the Snopes[es] were on the bottom rung of the social ladder. But none of that has anything to do with the site. It just -- I knew the name Snopes from having read William Faulkner.
It was my nom de net. And then when we started the site, it turned out to be sort of fortuitous. Because it is so short and catchy and distinctive.
In the interview, Mikkelson quickly dispenses with several common rumors: Mikey from the Life cereal commercials did not die of an exploded stomach; the Chevy Nova was not a failure in South America because “no va” means “no go”; you cannot see the Great Wall of China from space. Oh, and Barack Obama? He’s not a Muslim. Pass it on.
Read the rest of Pogue’s interview.
Read a New York Times article about Snopes.com from April 2010.
The Mikkelsons were on "All Things Considered" a few months ago: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124958817 (There's a photo of them there too, if you're curious.)
Posted by: Karen | July 21, 2010 at 07:26 AM
Wow, good to know I would never in a million years have been able to actually guess this! For some reason, I had it in mind that the inspiration was Snoopy.
Posted by: mighty red pen | July 21, 2010 at 07:29 AM
I call snopes.com my urbanlegendometer. I'm on a crusade to stop the distribution of those silly emails. When I receive such an email, I check it on snopes.com and then reply to all with the link and a suggestion to verify FIRST. After a while I received much fewer of those 'fowarded to all in a panic' emails. I hoped that senders were thinking about the content and verifying before forwarding. Nope! Turns out they just dropped me from their mailing list because I'm an obnoxious know it all. :-)
Posted by: panavia999 | July 21, 2010 at 01:10 PM
I've always wondered where the Snopes name came from. I can't believe that I didn't place it given that I was a Faulkner fan in college. Thanks for another great post, Nancy!
Posted by: Aaron Hall | July 22, 2010 at 10:41 AM
I have a relative who sometimes passes on this crazy stuff. A while back, she sent one with a P.S. stating that she didn't want anyone else to respond with "Snopes says...". She was vehement that Snopes doesn't know everything! A lot of these things happen! After reading these things, i delete them. (Some I look up.) Then, she polled all her relatives and friends: What do you do with these items that I ask you to pass along? Told her the truth and I rarely hear from her now.
Posted by: Mary L | July 22, 2010 at 01:42 PM
I had a similar experience with a coworker who sent us emails on his experiences in England while he was there for a 2 month job. He was so pleased with his essays, which were as illuminating as something written by a 12 year old. "There are 800 year old castles in England! Nothing that old in the USA!" He also sent what the Snopes people call "glurge": sickening, mawkish stories meant to inspire, like the one about Alexander Fleming saving Winston Churchill twice: once when they were kids and once again with penicillin.
"Glurge" was coined by a contributor to Snopes.com and captures the concept brilliantly.
When the coworker returned to California he kept asking me what I thought of his "writings". Because we had to work together I tried to avoid the question, but he was relentless in his pursuit of praise. I finally gave a frank opinion and he dropped me from his mailing list, thank goodness.
Posted by: panavia999 | July 26, 2010 at 10:52 AM