I got another Facebook share from my inspiring Facebook friends claiming that drinking cold water after meals will cause oil sludge build up and will eventually cause heart attack. Scary?
The Facebook share comes as a photo share with an illustration of the heart in pink background and some warning text. The image comes with the header, EFFECTS OF COLD WATER and with the opening lines: “Please be a true friend and send this article to all your friends you care about“:
The image in the text then details a warning to those who like to drink cold water after meals, because supposedly the cold water will solidify the oily stuff the person consumes and will turn the oil into sludge. The oily sludge reacts with the acid and then other usual scare tactics blah blah blah then it will lead to heart attack.
Why I find it hoaxy and spammy? It uses the usual tactics, the use of words to relate to emotions, get sympathy and entices user into forwarding or sharing.
1. Giveaway hoax opening line:”Please be a true friend and send this article to all your friends you care about”
2. Giving Medical and Statistics related data (not backed up by anything): “A cardiologist says that if everyone who reads this message sends it to 10 people you can be sure that we’ll save at least one life“
3. Giveaway hoax closing line: “Its never late, forward soon” .
Disclaimer: I am not a medical expert so I may be wrong here.
But my gut feel and common sense suggest that I should blog about this false warning.
Really, I am smiling about the sending to 10 people; it was a basic email hoax catchphrase some years back. So I guess this Effects of Cold Water Heart Attack warning is originally from email hoax spam before and is now converted to fit Facebook share and other social network re-sharing mechanism.
Doing some more research on this topic points that this is a confirmed hoax as it uses older text from old email hoax. Read related notification at snopes.com
http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/coldwater.asp
I strongly suggest that we DO NOT SPREAD or SHARE these kinds of Facebook hoax.