AOLers Tricked Into Deleting AOL

from the why-people-shouldn't-be-allowed-to-use-computers dept

Following on the hoax virus warning that caused people to delete a harmless file from their computers, someone posted a “joke of the day” that copied the wording from that fake virus, but suggested people remove AOL.exe from their computers. The scary thing is that, despite this being from a joke of the day site, and despite the fact that just about anyone with half a brain would think that the AOL.exe might logically be their AOL program (okay, I’ll admit that not everyone will know what a .exe is, but still…) many people believed it and apparently deleted AOL.exe from their hard drives. It wasn’t a huge number – though one person says maybe they’ve only heard of a few because the rest can’t get online.


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Comments on “AOLers Tricked Into Deleting AOL”

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3 Comments
Ed says:

Darwinism at its best.

So the people that fell for this “hoax” were on AOL… which indicates that they are intellectually inept enough to believe the hoax… which removed them from the internet. I’d say this “hoax” performed a public service.
To paraphrase Darwin, “the really stupid ones die off”.
Although, there is a “Sex for Dummies” book. Think about it: if you are so stupid as to need a book to follow your reproductive instincts, perhaps you shouldn’t be reproducing after all…

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