Please Re-Post so We Don't Get Charged for Helping the Haiti Victims and the Dying Soldiers

That's probably the longest title of any rant I've ever written. It would have been longer, but there's no way I could include all the groups, pages, people, and other bullshit that seems to invade Facebook.

From helping a supposedly dying child, to not accepting friend requests from hackers, to pages started by pedophiles, to the currently popular pages about Facebook charging for use, the list goes on and on.

And for the life of me, I can't understand why people believe this crap. Of course, all this started in emails. You'd get one about some kid who was dying and needed the email forwarded. Or another about a soldier who was treated wrongly. Maybe it was one warning women about a rapist who had an unusual way of attacking his victims. Remember the notice about how gangs initiated members by driving around with their headlights off?

But let's get one thing out of the way. And I'll put it in Texan. AIN'T NONE OF IT TRUE.

The one hoax that finally convinced me to put fingertips to keyboard is this whole "Facebook is going to start charging" crap. And to me, it's the easiest one to debunk. For anyone who had a MySpace account, it should be familiar. This thing was going on years ago. How people can believe this is beyond me. If Facebook were to start charging people, their profits would be in align with Exxon/Mobil. When you consider the number of people worldwide who use Facebook, charging them would be a daunting, if almost impossible, task.

But we, as humans, still continue to believe what we're told. We believed Milli Vanilli. We believed Clinton. Nixon, as well. The disease Munchhausen Syndrome By Proxy, is named after Baron Munchhausen, a famous liar.

In my opinion, one reason we fall for these lies is because it's easy. We live in an age of digital media, where information is instantaneously transmitted to us. Where as in the past, when something newsworthy happened, we had to wait for the paper to publish it, or the local newscast to report on it, now we get reports, photographs, and video the moment the event happens. And this Facbook stuff is just an extension of that.

When we see a page the says Facebook will charge us, it's a lot easier for us to buy into the lie and join up, than it is for us to do a little research. The first thing I do when I see something like this is hit Snopes.com. While not a completely infallible source for all things questionable, when it comes to email hoaxes and things like the Facebook hoaxes, they are pretty much spot on.

It takes no time to do the research. But in an age of instant gratification, many can't even take that extra minute to find out if what they are doing, forwarding, or joining is actually legit. And truth be told, some of these hoaxes can do damage. One particular group about Facebook charging contains scripts, that if clicked on, hacks into your computer. Truth be told, there are quite a few pages out there like that.

As a matter of fact, Facebook had responded to this falsehood a while back. Facebook's CEO, Sheryl Sandberg, was quoted in a 2009 Business Weekly interview, stating, "The answer is no, we are not planning on charging a basic fee for our basic services."

But it's easier for the sheep to listen to the rest of the herd, than it is for them to think for themselves.

So, with all that being said, here's my tip of the day. Use Snopes. Use Yahoo. Use Google. Use something, anything, that will make you a better informed person. Your mother and father taught you to look both ways before crossing the street and not to jump off a bridge just because everyone else does it. Apply that to your time on Facebook.