Thanks for the link.
You know its bad when a husband sends follow-up emails to apologize for what his wife just sent out. Unfortunately through mutual acquaintances, we are on her mailing list. In her case it is more gullibility or dementia than pure hatred, but someone started those email chains.
Some other scams to watch out for are those where they say to contact your representative or senator about a certain bill, usually sent without a link to the actual bill. Occasionally there might be something to it, but often the bill has already been defeated, sometimes years ago, or a lot of the time, the bill does not even apply to what they say it does. For example, "This bill is going to shut down backyard chickens" when practically always, it is aimed at the big commercial operations and we are already in the exemptions. If you look it up, you'll find the bill usually does not do what they say it will do, if it is even still active.
The other one I don't like is where they want you to save certain animals from being destroyed by whomever. There are a lot of people that bite on these. Practically always the herd or flock has gotten so densely populated that they are in danger of being decimated by starvation and disease and are doing property damage. The numbers are just out of control. Proper herd and flock management to keep the numbers at a good level means a healthy herd or flock. Most of the time, humane methods are being used to get the numbers back under control.
Another one I don't like is when they take things out of context and present it as ridiculous, when it is really not. I've even seen these on network news, like the shrimp on a treadmill. A responsible news story would explain what they are trying to learn and why they chose shrimp. Would you prefer they used elephants? Maybe shrimp are cheaper than elephants and still give good results. I'm not opposed to some pure science research, but usually there is a valid reason for what they are doing. I don't remember the details of the shrimp one, maybe what happens to your muscles when they get tired so they could better understand how certain medicines react, but I'm not sure. But next time you see something ridiculed, stop and think if you are getting the whole story.
See, I just did it. I don't remember exactly why they were using shrimp or what they hoped to learn. But now someone will possibly spread as fact that it was for medical research. I really don't remember.
Enough of my ranting. I totally agree. Don't believe everything you see on social media, whatever form, until you perform your own due diligence.