Hail! Hallo, Hulloo.. Hello? Is it me you’re looking for?

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of misinformation and half-baked so-called ‘facts’ and faulty ideas that circulate on the net. Often they could be refuted with but a moment’s effort to check, but apparently this is too much bother.. although it is apparently not too much bother at all to pass them on like some infection of the mind.

The simplest form of ‘chain letter’ without even any empty threats, or bogus promises of good luck.

I suppose it really ought to have ceased to amaze me by now because this is not exactly a new thing. I suppose just I have too much misplaced faith in humanity. The sheer credulity of so many people and the urge they seem to have to pass on any random nonsense positively takes one’s breath away in sheer wonder.

 People have studied this stuff. Here is a definition. A meme can loosely be described as an idea that spreads from person to person that can be spread from one mind to another like a virus through writing, speech, gestures, habits and rituals, like genes they self-replicate, mutate, and ‘selfishly’ respond to selective pressures.

 Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some like diseases replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

 Why am I discussing this? Because – call it serendipity – I have several times in the last few days heard something to the effect of the following:

 That "Alexander Graham Bell invented the word hello because it was his girlfriend’s surname and it was the first thing he said on the telephone,”

It is chirpy, if slightly odd, English as follows: 

No. That is not love. That is not even true. That is actually prime, Grade A, Bull S*. You should take anything that anyone who tells you otherwise with a large pinch of salt as they are unreliable.

 A simple check on the net reveals that Mabel Hubbard was Bell's actual girlfriend/fiancée in 1876 when the telephone was patented He married her the following year on July 11, 1877. Feel free to go verify this. No nice easy links to cut your facts up into small digestible easily chewed lumps in this post.

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent came partly out of his work teaching the deaf. He taught deaf people at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, and at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. Mabel, the daughter of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a founder of the Clarke School had become deaf, after an almost fatal bout of scarlet fever and had been one of Bell’s students.

Alexander and Mabel fell in love and married. That is love.

Alexander Graham Bell is never recorded as specifically using the term "hello" . The first call he made was to his male assistant Thomas Watson who was in an adjoining room. He said "Come here. I want to see you."

Alexander Graham Bell’s preferred term after he had thought about it was was apparently the naval “Ähoy".

You will be aware by now that this was never as widely adopted as, say “Yo!” or “Wazzup?”

Margaret Yo Wazzup has a certain “ring” to it - don’t you think? Do you know what is the real meaning of Yo! Wazzup?

Early telephone operators, it seems, were known as "hello girls," Obviously more innocent times...

You want to pass stuff on?

Here is something awesome to pass on, and tell your friends. Apparently it is a little known fact!!

It can keep you from being ripped off and loosing out. It can save your friends and family from making mistakes, looking stupid, being horn-swoggled anduuuh… man-ip-ulated, by salesmen, politicians, and con men.

CHECK THE KNOWN VERIFIABLE FACTS before you repeat, act on, or accept something to be true - Even if a nice elderly relative passed an email on to you.

If you fail to check, then you will at the very least look foolish to people who do bother to check their facts, if you repeat things that are not true.

And the worse thing? If you don’t check you probably won’t even know - Like leaving a paper roll tail hanging out your underwear after visiting the rest room and being totally unaware.

Hey. They are looking at you because they admire you - right?

Pass this on to seven friends.