Golly, this thing has been going around for years! It started out as email, jumped to web forums and blogs, then hit the social network scene.
What people won't let themselves get sucked into doing for a "Wow, look at me, I got a unique great mind, I'm smarter than most of humanity!" fix.
And it's completely bogus!
Here's a great article debunking it. There was and is no such research study going on at Cambridge.
🙃Meme1:: Subject: Fwd: YES!!! yes yesYES!YES, yes & another yes :)
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Don't get so excited.
🙃Meme1:: Eonverye taht can raed tihs rsaie yuor hnad.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Translation: "Everyone who can read this, raise your hand."
I won't bother, you can't see it anyway.
🙃Meme1:: To my 'selected' strange-minded friends:
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I don't know you.
🙃Meme1:: If you can read the following paragraph, forward it on to your friends and the person that sent it to you with 'yes' in the subject line.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Actually, I won't. I'll just translate it. You're silly to want a copy back anyway. And you didn't even follow your own instruction about the subject line.
🙃😏Memes: Only
😏Meme2: 41 PEOPLE
🙃Meme1:: great minds
😏Meme2: IN THE WORLD
🙃😏Memes: can read this
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Rubbish, for a number of reasons, I won't go into them here. I'm not the only one who was able to read and translate it, people on this forum and this blogger obviously did too. Seems there are a lot of not-so-strange minds out there after all. The number of people who can read and decifer it just keeps climbing the more this dumb chain gets circulated. I'm pretty sure that number has risen far above 41.
as for this great minds business, talk about a play on people's ego as everybody wants to have a great mind, sad they think that gets determined by some chain letter.
🙃Meme1:: This is weird, but interesting!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: no, it's stupidly deceptive and all too common on the net.
It's a paragraph with words that are mixed up. That is, they have the right amount of the right letters, but the letters are all out of order except for the first and last letters, which remain where they should be. This isn't really so difficult to do considering all the really poor writing I've had to slog through in Cyberspace, and yes, that includes forwards I've come across or that came into my inbox. I will translate each bit as we go along.
🙃Meme1:: fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Phrase unscrambled = If you can read this, you have a strange mind too.
🙃Meme1:: Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Unscrambled = Can you read this? Only 55 people out of 100 can.
So chain1 says 55 out of 100, while chain2 says only 41 people in the whole world - well, the fact this dumb chain keeps going around, means everyone can read it, and those who do spread it, want to be recognized as among the supposedly elite super brains of the world. If everyone felt stupid because they couldn't read the chain, it probably wouldn't be circulating.
🙃😏Memes: i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
Chain gibberish translated: = I couldn't believe that I could actually understand what I was reading. 🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You've told that whopper for years and you still expect people to be astounded by it?
🙃😏Memes: The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
= The phenomenal power of the human mind, according to a researcher at Cambridge University, 🧝♀️Ocean Elf: There was no such study at Cambridge, and you can't even name the fictional researcher.
🙃😏Memes: it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.
= it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be in the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without a problem.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So what? If we couldn't, there's no way teachers could correct students on their spelling, and dyslexia would never be diagnosed. If people couldn't figure out bad writing and what it was actually supposed to be in this manner, there would be a lot fewer educated people, a lot less effective communication, one spelling/typing error could bring big business operations to a screeching halt.
What I'm saying is, this is not so phenomenal.
🙃😏Memes: Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
= This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That's just how the human brain works. Combine logic with photographic memory and, voila, there you are.
🙃😏Memes: Azanmig huh?
= Amazing huh?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hardly.
🙃😏Memes: yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
🙃😏Memes: = Yeah and I always thought spelling was important!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: spelling is important,, you dope.
🙃😏Memes: If you can
😏Meme2: raed tihs
🙃Meme1:: read this
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's obvious, isn't it?
🙃Meme1:: forwrad
= forward
😏Meme2: lkie and rpsoet
= like and repost
🙃😏Memes: it
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No. I'm not buying into your "You're among the very special few strange and great minds and you can prove it by spreading this chain letter" scheme…
No reposts, and definitely no likes!
🙃Meme1:: FORWARD ONLY IF YOU CAN READ IT Forward it & put 'YES' in the Subject Line
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* I don't need to try proving anything to myself or others by forwarding some viral. More to the point, the only thing you would actually prove by forwarding this chain, is that you spread chain letters and this particular one snagged you right in the "are you smart or stupid?" section of your ego.
Urgh. My spellchecker had a fit.
Now, you got to see the result of my "great mind" at work.
So, there! Take that!
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