REMAIN CALM. (Photo: Flickr.com/dpstyles)

Parts of New York and New Jersey are still without power from the last major news event and yet here we are, in the throes of election day. And with cleanup efforts still ongoing, there's really no excuse for anyone who forgets one of the lessons we just learned about the rapid speed at which misinformation courses through social media in general and Twitter in particular.

For the love of God, as you go about your day for the next several hours, please take almost everything you read on Twitter with a grain of salt. No, a barrel. Maybe an entire salt lick.

At the height of the hurricane hysteria, mixed in with the wisecracks and genuinely useful information were outright, bald-faced lies (meet @comfortablysmug, everybody). But perhaps even more pernicious were the rumors and false reports. Remember the Coney Island hospital fire that wasn't? The Con Ed workers supposedly trapped? The system-wide subway shutdown that would last through the end of the week? The Fire Department turning to Twitter, as an alternative to an overburdened 911 system?

Not a one of them was true, but you're not alone if you feel for at least one of them. Gawker's conclusion: Twitter is one big old lie generator. A dynamo of bullshit, if you will.

The next few hours are going to be, if anything, more insane. This is a nationwide event, of global interest, one that most people are constitutionally incapable of shutting up about. This is also a nation where, after four years,  there are a few holdouts who still don't believe President Obama was born in America.

So when videos like this start bubbling up from Reddit and onto your Twitter feed, please remember to take a deep breath and do a little Googling around before you conclude a voter fraud conspiracy is afoot.

Unfortunately, however, it appears that at least a few of these "vote white" tweets are for real.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LyIwJgQlsc&feature=player_embedded

The response has not been friendly. In fact, people are pretty much falling over themselves to mock the new ads. Hence, a collection of a few particularly withering quips:

1.  The Atlantic evokes the ghost of Steve Jobs, then calls them "boring riffs" on Best Buy's superior Geek Squad commercials, as well as "the marketing equivalent of Michael Phelps' fourth-place finish in the 400 IM." Ouch.

2. The Verge says, "They feel intellectually cheap."

3. Jean-Louis Gassée--a.k.a. the former head of Macintosh called them "cringe-inducing," adding, "First celebrity Siri ads, now this?" Our thoughts, exactly.

4. Ken Segall--another Apple vet--posted a lengthy takedown that opens with the salvo, "These ads are causing a widespread gagging response, and deservedly so." Brutal.

5. A Forbes contributor: "Viewers Give Apple's 'Genius' Olympic Ads A 'D' For Dumb."

6. In perhaps the most unintentionally devastating remark, redOrbit asks,"Are They To Apple What Flo Is To Progressive?" Poor Flo, she deserved so much better.

7. Ars Technica--even while defending the ads from the charge that they're Apple's absolute worst--calls the implementation "too cheesy, even for an Apple ad—and borderline smarmy in all cases."

8. IT World just asks whether anyone else wants to "punch the 'Apple Genius' guy in the face."

Maybe Apple might want to try... thinking different?