'Millionaire' stupidity

From a board I'm on. I've already debunked it on there with the original picture, but thought you guys may want to see it.

is this for real? it was just mailed to me.

NEW YORK - Idaho resident Kathy Evans brought humiliation to her friends and
family Tuesday when she set a new standard for stupidity with her appearance
on the popular TV show, "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire."

It seems that Evans, a 32-year-old wife and mother of two, got stuck on the
first question, and proceeded to make what fans of the show are dubbing "the
absolute worst use of lifelines ever."

After being introduced to the show's host Meredith Vieira, Evans assured her
that she was ready to play, whereupon she was posed with an extremely easy
$100 question. The question was:

"Which of the following is the largest?"
A) A Peanut
B) An Elephant
C) The Moon
D) A Tennis Ball

Immediately Mrs. Evans was struck with an all consuming panic as she
realized that this was a question to which she did not readily know the
answer.

"Hmm, oh boy, that's a toughie," said Evans, as Vieira did her level best to
hide her disbelief and disgust. "I mean, I'm sure I've heard of some of
these things before, but I have no idea how large they would be."

Evans made the decision to use the first of her three lifelines, the 50/50.
Answers A and D were removed, leaving her to decide which was bigger, an
elephant or the moon. However, faced with an incredibly easy question, Evans
still remained unsure.

"Oh! It removed the two I was leaning towards!" exclaimed Evans. "Darn. I
think I better phone a friend."

Using the second of her two lifelines on the first question, Mrs. Evans
asked to be connected with her friend Betsy, who is an office assistant.

"Hi Betsy! How are you? This is Kathy! I'm on TV!" said Evans, wasting the
first seven seconds of her call. "Ok, I got an important question. Which of
the following is the largest? B, an elephant, or C, the moon. 15 seconds
hun."

Betsy quickly replied that the answer was C, the moon. Evans proceeded to
argue with her friend for the remaining ten seconds.

"Come on Betsy, are you sure?" said Evans. "How sure are you? Puh, that
can't be it."

To everyone's astonishment, the moronic Evans declined to take her friend's
advice and pick 'The Moon.'

"I just don't know if I can trust Betsy. She's not all that bright. So I
think I'd like to ask the audience," said Evans.

Asked to vote on the correct answer, the audience returned 98% in favor of
answer C, 'The Moon.' Having used up all her lifelines, Evans then made the
dumbest choice of her life.

"Wow, seems like everybody is against what I'm thinking," said the
too-stupid-to-live Evans. "But you know, sometimes you just got to go with
your gut. So, let's see. For which is larger, an elephant or the moon, I'm
going to have to go with B, an elephant. Final answer."
Evans sat before the dumbfounded audience, the only one waiting with bated
breath, and was told that she was wrong, and that the answer was in fact, C,
'The Moon.'

original pic.

Why make it up when overconfidence has led to some quick losses in reality?

I saw this one. I felt sorry for the guy.

I thought this one was also funny.

[Errata]

I liked the French one best, because he actually polled the audience, and the majority of the audience thought that sun orbited around the Earth. Its one thing for a single person to say it, but the audience as a whole should be smarter than its weakest links.

[MapleLeaf]

Is it just me, or does the woman have sideburns and a goatee? This can't be a real still...

Originally Posted by MapleLeaf

Is it just me, or does the woman have sideburns and a goatee? This can't be a real still...

It's just you.

[Morrigan]

Originally Posted by MapleLeaf

Is it just me, or does the woman have sideburns and a goatee? This can't be a real still...

No, she doesn't. What you're seeing is the bad image capture that's been done. It's actually just shadows.

Morrigan

[DarkFeline]

Originally Posted by Morrigan

No, she doesn't. What you're seeing is the bad image capture that's been done. It's actually just shadows.

Morrigan

And not to mention there's a double chin on her too. o_o

[Stoneage Dinosaur]

I remember the woman in the pic - she was on one of the early UK Millionaires, and was one of the more memorable contestants. IIRC she made it to £32,000 whilst getting more and more over-excited at each correct answer.

[videoguy]

Originally Posted by Errata

I liked the French one best, because he actually polled the audience, and the majority of the audience thought that sun orbited around the Earth. Its one thing for a single person to say it, but the audience as a whole should be smarter than its weakest links.

I don't know about France, but in some countries the audience members intentionally vote for wrong answers to decieve the contestants. It probably happens to some degree in every country. I could easily see myself voting for a wrong answer if I thought the contestant used a lifeline on an easy question, or if I didn't like the contestant.

[sneeze042]

Originally Posted by Errata

I liked the French one best, because he actually polled the audience, and the majority of the audience thought that sun orbited around the Earth. Its one thing for a single person to say it, but the audience as a whole should be smarter than its weakest links.

Snopes has a page on this, it said that it was suspected that the audience chose the wrong answer to get back at the guy for being dumb enough to not know the answer.

[Four Kitties]

millionaire-a-chow

[Artemis]

Originally Posted by sneeze042

Snopes has a page on this, it said that it was suspected that the audience chose the wrong answer to get back at the guy for being dumb enough to not know the answer.

But wouldn't tahat take a concerted effort? How would they all know to do that? I could see a bunch of them wanting to, but nearly 90% or more?

If that's true, then, wow, millionaire audiences are pretty snotty.

[sneeze042]

I don't know how they know how to do that, but I'm guessing that there is a pre-arranged agreement to do that. I don't really know.

Originally Posted by Four Kitties

millionaire-a-chow

Surely you can't chow something when the topic was there before the chow?

[Four Kitties]

Sure I can. I just did!

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Artemis

But wouldn't tahat take a concerted effort? How would they all know to do that? I could see a bunch of them wanting to, but nearly 90% or more?

But it wasn't "90% or more." The sun was selected as the "correct" answer by 56% of the audience -- given that a few percent of them probably thought it was the correct answer, that leaves maybe half the audience deciding to have one over on the sap by deliberately feeding him a wrong answer. And they knew from his previous comments that he was having a tough time deciding between "moon" and "sun" as his answer, hence no "concerted effort" was required for the audience to determine they could best fool him by selecting "sun" as their phony right answer rather than Mars or Venus.

- snopes

Originally Posted by sneeze042

Snopes has a page on this, it said that it was suspected that the audience chose the wrong answer to get back at the guy for being dumb enough to not know the answer.

I think it's possible. I have seen the audience get things wrong before. Sometimes I even expected the contestant to turn around and yell "WTF guys?!"

[Salamander]

Originally Posted by Artemis

If that's true, then, wow, millionaire audiences are pretty snotty.

C'mon... it was a French show... with French people. If that doesn't define "snotty", I don't know what does.

[vison]

I can't watch. The first one was enough. Jeez, I hate to see people make fools of themselves. It makes me feel like I'm HELPING them, somehow.

[One-Fang]

Question on the voting - is it compulsory? I so often see ones where the audience obviously has no clue, their votes are spread across all four answers. I think "why vote if you don't know?", but is it that the system won't give answers until all units have voted, so some are guesses? I would see this as a way to ensure the person doesn't receive a 100% every time by only those who know the answer voting.