I'm sorry for fact checking...?

There's this thing that a few of my friends have been sharing on Facebook. It's totally fake, and I've found myself directing several people to Snopes.com about it. Here's what my friends have been sharing:

Photo from PublicPhoto.org

"On Sunday a family went to picnic with a few drinks in tin cans. Monday, two family members were admitted to the hospital and placed in Intensive Care Unit. He died on Wednesday. Autopsy results concluded it was Leptospirosis. The virus was stuck to the tin cans and consumed, without the use of glasses / cups. Test results showed that the tin was contaminated because mice urinated on them, and then it dried. The urine contained Leptospira. I Highly recommend to rinse the parts evenly on all soda cans before drinking it. Cans are usually stored in the warehouse and delivered direct to retail stores without cleaning. A study shows that the top of all beverage cans are more contaminated than public toilets (full of germs and bacteria.)So, clean it with water before drinking in order to prevent this from occurring. Please Share!"

This is bogus. If you're interested, you can read the Snopes article about it here. So of course, I shared the link with my friends.

People normally don't get all excited when I point out they've shared a fake story. Often they don't respond. Maybe they take the story down. Occasionally they thank me.

But yesterday, someone seemed to get ticked off, and she may have taken it personally. Her response was a little vague, and I would like to think that she was angry about the hoax getting started in the first place. But her wording seemed to suggest that I have too much time on my hands if I can bother doing quick (and simple) fact checking.

And, um...

...I have no idea how to respond.

The suggestion that I have too much free time is quite amusing, considering that I didn't actually fact check this one myself. Someone else did so before I had the chance to ask Google about it.

But you know what? Fact checking things like this is simple. It doesn't even take much time. I'm sure the research for this one only took a few minutes. Maybe not even that.

I'm still amazed that someone got angry. Then again, maybe I shouldn't be.

EDIT 1/25/2013: Just found out that she was irritated by people starting hoaxes in the first place. Yet I don't want to delete this post...just because of the time I spent writing it...