It’s no secret that it’s been getting increasingly hard to separate facts from fiction. With so much chaos, fake news, conspiracies and whatnot surfing around the media, it’s easy to lose your own standpoint.
But believing nonsense, aka myths, is part of (often flawed) human nature. In fact, people believed all kinds of crazy things a long time before the pandemic hit, and ridiculous beliefs, like that when you get a covid vaccine, you get injected with a microchip, started spreading much like the virus itself.
So when someone asked “what myth is still widely circulated as truth?” on r/AskReddit, the 33.2k responses came flowing in. We selected some of the most eye-opening ones that debunk so-called common knowledge that turns out to be anything but knowledge!
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A lot of people still believe a woman sued McDonald’s because her coffee was hot. In reality, the woman had 3rd-degree burns throughout her pelvic area and only asked that her medical bills be paid.
She only wanted that McDonalds paid her medical bills. McDonalds refused and that why she took them to court and got the $2.9 million awarded.
If you work hard at school and get good grades you'll get a good job and enjoy a stable life.
That diamonds are rare and therefore should be expensive, that is just a myth perpetrated by the de beers diamond cartel.
Many myths widely circulate as truth in our society, as this post has shown us all. And while some of them go about their ways for years and years after someone finally disproves them, other myths turn into full-blown fake news and conspiracies that can do a lot of harm.
Take anti-vaxxers, who vehemently avoid vaccines on the premise that they are dangerous and unhealthy. With the rise of the internet, they’ve organized into massive affirming echo chambers on forums like the Vaccine Resistance Movement. Researchers say that many conspiracies, just like covid denialism and anti-vaccination, are nothing new and they are all the result of fear and distrust. Think of 9/11 conspiracies surfing on the internet forums that were basically fueled by the lack of faith in the government.
That you have to wait for 24h before you can report a missing person. If someone is missing, go get help!
Bulls hate red. They are actually colour blind and are reacting to the movement of the cloth and the a**hole behind it.
The mystery of how the pyramids were built. They know how they were built. Ramps, pulleys, ropes, and labor.
So in order to find out how exactly conspiracy theories work and why some people are more prone to believing them than others, we spoke with Annika Rabo, a professor emeritus of the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University.
“Conspiracy theories can be understood as a response to the question: why are bad things happening to me (or my family, my ‘group,’ my country.) In conspiracy theories there is no room for chance but BAD THINGS happened because of the evil plotting of hidden actors out to harm,” the professor explained.
If an HIV-positive person has sex with another HIV-positive person, they don’t have to worry about protection. They do, because there are 140 different strains of the HIV/AIDS virus, and getting infected with another strain, especially a potentially deadlier one, could be dangerous. Also, pregnancy is still a very big risk for HIV-positive women. If you are considering a sexual relationship, get tested, and talk to your doctor about birth control.
people believe in the whole alpha and beta wolves thing
It’s not true. The “leaders” of the pack are the parents.
-in natural wolf packs, the alpha male or female are merely the breeding animals, the parents of the pack, and dominance contests with other wolves are rare if they exist at all.
Yes, the original theory was based on observations in a zoo, where a group of unrelated wolves had been artificially brought together. In the wild, packs are always family groups and don't show the same dynamic. Sadly, the incorrect theory had already spilled over into a lot of dog-training theories which are still used.
The Food Pyramid
A pyramid has three or four sides. I want to know what is on the other sides!
Prof. Rabo said that there may be a few reasons why people are prone to conspiracies. “Some researchers claim that people who are less able to handle uncertainties are more prone to embrace conspiracy theories. Other researchers claim that people embracing conspiracy theories are evenly distributed in the population.” Having said that, she added that “populations in stable democracies in North and West Europe have until now been less prone to embrace conspiracy theories of a political nature.”
The Bible.
I am Christian and I read the bible. But for heavens sake people it's far from a primary source, its been translated many times by people who are far from perfect, and the context of what its about, and it's translation should be taken into account. Words change meaning in less that centuries. It's far from a literal and perfect document.
That washing chicken gets it rid of bacteria. No. Cooking chicken gets rid of bacteria, given that you do it well. Washing chicken, on the other hand, can contaminate your whole kitchen with salmonella.
That goldfish have a 6 second memory. I mean it's still not great, I think like a couple of months. But still... Get your fish a bigger damn tank
When it comes to the conspiracy theories we notice now in the pandemic period, Prof. Rabo said that they are not really different from earlier ones. “They involve hidden agents who are either evil outsiders or insiders. The suspicion against vaccines and the pharmaceutical companies is not new. What is new is the fact that news and conspiracy theories are spread VERY quickly across vast distances today,” she explained.
“The basic elements—the theme—of conspiracy theories are fairly constant, but the elements differ and if they do not resonate with local conditions, they will disappear or evolve into new elements,” the professor concluded.
That you can tell if someone is a "virgin" by looking at their hymen to see if it is "intact."
That whole "you eat seven spiders a year" myth. It was created by some lady in the late 90s or early 2000s to prove that ridiculous things can be found on the internet, spread like wildfire, and believed by many.
That cold is caused by lower temperatures. The cold is a virus that transmits between people.
Edit: a lot of people are saying that cold temperatures weaken the immune system and thus indirectly make you more susceptible, and while it’s true, the direct cause for common colds is caused by human contact.
That the tongue has different regions for salty, sweet, bitter, and sour.
The Bermuda triangle. Turns out ships and planes disappear at the same rate all over the world's oceans.
Bermuda Triangle is just a highly active part of the ocean when it comes to sea trade
I was adamantly told by some seniors at work not to drink the water that boiled twice because it cooks the oxygen out of it.
That historical armour was useless, or just something you wore so you had a slight chance to turn a death blow into merely a serious injury.
Shows and movies still perpetuate this. Game of Thrones has "acclaimed" sword fights where guys casually shove swords through dudes in plate armour. Impossible. Metal is not cardboard.
Even the most basic iron or bronze chain mail armour will be barely scratched by a slash from the sharpest katana. Well-made plate armour is impervious to all damage short of a blow from a specialized armour-piercing weapon (lance, pole axe etc.). Even the earliest guns couldn't penetrate plate armour.
Armour was incredibly expensive. Common people couldn't afford it so made do without or, if lucky, with fabric armors (that were still very effective protection!). A suite of the custom-made plate would have cost a knight the equivalent of a modern high-end luxury car. Why would people pay that much for something useless?
Armour was very useful. That's why weapons continued to advanced over the centuries and why armour did as well. It was an arms race.
That the seeds are the spiciest part of hot pepper. The seeds are the only part of a pepper that isn't spicy. The white stuff near the seeds though, spice max.
Knuckle cracking doesn't lead to arthritis, it is just an old wives tale people use in place of simply telling you it's annoying them. Crack away!
Actually, as a lifelong knuckle cracker, it doesn't cause arthritis but can cause tendon/ligament damage in the fingers and hands.
That Corsets are a lethal torture item and every Victorian woman did tight-lacing.
The myth about harmful Corsets was started by Victorian men, in order to bring down women-owned businesses. And some feminists (looking at you, Emma Watson) swallowed that lie, hook, and sinker, thinking they are empowering somebody with it.
The truth is, Corsets are way better than bras. If you have back pains, which many women have because of their bras, switch to Corsets. There is a reason, why it was used that long.
Not every woman by any means, but there was certainly some form of competition as to who could have the smallest waist. Not entirely dissimilar to who can have the largest knockers with modern day plastic surgery.
Corsets were like anything else, the fashionable or tasteless took them to hideously uncomfortable extremes. Like modern shoes, where most of us just wear what's comfortable, and the fashionable and tasteless are teetering around in 5" heels that have to hurt more than a tight-laced corset.
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Working class women wore corsets comfortably for hundreds of years, they are excellent support when doing the kinds of repetitive tasks that make up housework. Bernadette Banner has some great, well-researched videos about historical costuming and corsets, go check it out if you're interested.
I love Bernadette Banner! Morgan Donner does great work too!
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yes...but tightly lacing it is NOT good.....it compresses ur ribs n so d organs there n so these organs have lil space to function.........n also only d upper class women had their corsets tightly laced where as d others dint have it tight enough to squeeze ur breath out
This "organ squeezing" thing is also another myth. Many myths like these have been debunked by Bernadette Banner, a fashion historian.
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Modern corsets maybe yes are better but all i remember is when i visited a museum with traditional dresses from other eras and they showed as a tiny purse that was attached to the dress and was for a tiny perfume! They told us that this perfume was used to help the lady recover after a faint because faints were very often while wearing a corset! So I'm not sure what to believe here
There is a difference between wearing a corset (used in the same way as a brassiere and for garment shaping) and tightlacing a waist trainer (a corset used for waist shaping). 99% of the time, even historically, you're looking at the former, which didn't lead to fainting or needing smelling salts or whathaveyou, it's just like a bra. Waist training wasn't anywhere near as common as fancy scare stories say.
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Oh yes. I would love some custom made everyday corsets for myself but they're so pricy!
Load More Replies... Corsets, stays, and similar garments are still not perfect and could cause health problems. Personally I'm still suspicious of what this says because it doesn't mention the existence of other similar garments with a range of purposes.
True. I take issue specifically with recommending corsets for back pain. While yes, stiffening the painful party of your spine may bring temporary relief, every physiotherapist will tell you that wearing corset-like anything for a long time results in weakening of the muscles along the spine. Hence even more back pain and problems. If your problem of back pain from heavy breasts, treat problem at its root! Consider breasts reduction or at least bras with better support (different fit, tighter band). Don't tinker with your spine on your own.
Load More Replies... For most corset history, the holes for lacing used (at most) extra stitching or a ring of thicker material (say, light leather) to keep string from tearing the fabric. The tied fabric provided the support and if it was too tight you needed a wider corset, same as shirt, dress, or pants. If you pulled too tightly on such strings you'd rip the fabric and ruin the corset. Later the addition of metal hoops to the corsets (like aglets for your shoelaces) allowed tighter binding, and fashions promoted this (because many "dangerous" things are actually just the consequences of human stupidity). 1/2
A great many men with back problems wear the equivalent of a "corset" today. Especially if they have long shifts of standing and lifting.
Those are not corsets, but trusses. And they have more to do with possible hernia than spine.
Load More Replies... Yeah. NO - Muscles. Wearing a corset for a very extended period of time can result in muscle atrophy and lower-back pain. The pectoral muscles also become weak after extensive tightlacing. These weakened muscles cause a greater reliance on the corset.
The top half of my wedding dress was a corset and it was amazing. So much support for front and back. Surprisingly comfy too.
My wedding dress also had a corset, and you're right it was surprisingly comfortable! And the best part about the corset style wedding dress is you don't have to go for multiple fittings or freak out if you lose or gain a pound.
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Normal corsets weren't harmful to internal organs, though over-use would make the back weaker in some cases. But there have been modern documented cases of excessively tightened corsets causing liver and stomach issues. Yeah they were exaggerated, no the corset makers weren't primarily women.
Yes! This drives me nuts! As a corset-maker, I tell everyone that a corset is only as uncomfortable as the way it was made! If it fits you properly, it’s amazingly comfortable. Up until the industrial revolution, corsets were made with stitched eyelets, not metal, and reed or whale bone (actually baleen, and quite flexible) stiffening so tightlacing wasn’t even possible. Us believing the BS about tightlacing is like people in the future believing every one of us from the invention of underpants wore spanks with butt padding.
If it's not safe for me to wear my binder for longer than 8 hours, how is a corset safer?
Because a corset isn't compressing anything, it's an older form of a brassiere. Corsets in most instances - this included - have nothing to do with waist trainers, and is the point of the post.
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Sure it wasn’t to stop the trend, in the 1840s I think, of men wearing corsets to look better and more solidly built in the men’s styles of the time?
Stays and eventually corsetry have been unisex undergarments for centuries, they have been worn by both men and women as basic clothing. They still are used by both, for fashion and medical purposes.
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I had torn muscles in my ribcage at work and there really isn't much to do about it except you can brave your side with a pillow when you are sitting down and it's important to make sure you keep taking deep breath even though it hurts doing it. I decided to wear my corset to work a couple nights back into the old job and it was so much better. I didn't have it to tight just snug and it was way better than wearing a bar!
I have chronic back pain from osteoarthritis, autoimmune arthritis, and fibromyalgia (which intensifies pain sensations). Using a tight back brace temporarily relieves quite a bit of the pain.
The problem with corsets is that they can prevent you using a variety of back and stomach muscles and relying on the corset for support. That is absolutely not a good idea. And of course, if it's really tight, you are displacing organs, and causing issues to your breathing and digestion. Corsets are not better than bras.
Equally fashionable and reprehensible, the addition if inflexible whalebone sewn in made it harder to breathe. These factors made corsets secure enough that they could cause organ shifting. But organs are gooey and can shift around without permanent long-term damage (it happens in literally every pregnancy). As for fainting, pressure on the abdomen can block the diaphragm, limiting a deep breath, and nothing exacerbates hyperventilation like anxiety from trouble breathing. But even if you did faint the very act of fainting relaxes your breathing and posture enough to quickly recover. 2/3
This post is not talking about waist trainers and is in fact trying to point out that corset /= waist trainer.
Load More Replies... Plus - not to in any way minimize women's medical experiences - there was a certain amount of fashionability in being "rescued" so some (though absolutely nowhere near all or even most) absolutely played this up. On the other end of the medical spectrum, lead makeup, gas stoves, polluted air, and arsenic wallpaper caused fainting that had nothing to do with outfits, but likely got conflated. TL/DR: Not to say that corsets, over-used and/or wrongly-applied, CAN'T be dangerous, but, yeah, Bridgerton played that s*** up. 3/3
You have to wait 30 min to swim after eating
When I was a kid, in Spain, it was said you had to wait 2 hours! :)
The European "Dark Ages"
People seem to love the idea that, between the fall of Rome and, like, DaVinci or something, everyone in Europe was just blowing spit bubbles and looking at the funny pictures in the Bible. Not only was there not a complete absence of classical learning in Europe during the dark ages but throughout the dark ages and medieval period, there actually was a fair amount of progress in fields like architecture, engineering, metallurgy, philosophy, theology, and yes, even science.
But then again, I suppose it all ties back to the notion that people in the past were somehow far stupider than we are.
Note: this post originally had 47 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
That you need to make at least 10k steps a day. While moving around and going for a walk is certainly healthy, that 10k number actually has no scientific backing. It was a clever marketing strategy of a Japanese pedometer manufacturer, Japanese symbol for 10k looks like a walking figure.
And people who believe you can accurately count steps by wearing a fitbit on your WRIST.
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This place has rapidly become RedditLite. What happened to all the non-recycled non-political fun??
Having an advanced degree in one thing making one an expert in all other fields. No it does not. I have met a few Master/PHD holders who were pretty clueless- except for their narrow speciality.
You'd hope though that everyone who has done some sort of proper scientific research has a grasp of what science is and how it works. Understanding how immensely huge the seemingly tiniest topics can be in the scientific world and hence have a better understanding of what to respect respect or be sceptic about published results.
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I think we all have learn that not everything posted online are the truth. So I will consider all things posted in this thread as such
I have learn That not everything posted online are the truth And that also what I think about these posts
I was thinking of Politicians being honourable and working for the people but does anyone ever believe that
Haha yes they do. This corona virus proves it. Everyones doing what the govt is telling them and noone is actually checking to see if they are wrong. Australia, March 2020: don't wear masks, they are not needed. 7 months later and they're telling us to wear masks cause it's airborne, subtle info that should have been made very clear from the onset, that would have saved possibly 1000 lives
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Please take away "The Bible" part. I don't believe that the Bible is a myth, and I find it very offensive for you to say so publicly that the Bible is fake. I think people should be allowed to have beliefs without being insulted and hated on. We should all work to respect and love each other.
How about: Guns are bad, and if the Gummint takes 'em all away, then there'll be no more crime. ?
Still waiting for the U.S. to prove they are good though. Crimes rates / murders / deaths involving firearms smash my country’s figures into the dust and weirdly we are pretty much unarmed as a nation. We are proving every year that firearms are best kept locked away and only used for sport. Protection by way of firearms leads to more of your own household being killed. Guns? A great tool. Humans? Also great tools, just a different kind of tool.
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Hate that people think that: All your body cells are replaced every 7 years. No, then tattoos would all go away. Thomas Crapper did NOT invent the flush toilet.
That skipping meals is bad for me. No it's not, I don't eat when I'm not hungry and that's far healthier than you stuffing your face with mcdonalds just because the clock tells you it's a certain time Karen!
OK, I don't know why you are angry at a "Karen" that clearly isn't here. Can it please be time to put "Karen" to rest now? It already feels reeeally passé.
Load More Replies... That you need to make at least 10k steps a day. While moving around and going for a walk is certainly healthy, that 10k number actually has no scientific backing. It was a clever marketing strategy of a Japanese pedometer manufacturer, Japanese symbol for 10k looks like a walking figure.
And people who believe you can accurately count steps by wearing a fitbit on your WRIST.
Load More Replies... This place has rapidly become RedditLite. What happened to all the non-recycled non-political fun??
Having an advanced degree in one thing making one an expert in all other fields. No it does not. I have met a few Master/PHD holders who were pretty clueless- except for their narrow speciality.
You'd hope though that everyone who has done some sort of proper scientific research has a grasp of what science is and how it works. Understanding how immensely huge the seemingly tiniest topics can be in the scientific world and hence have a better understanding of what to respect respect or be sceptic about published results.
Load More Replies... I think we all have learn that not everything posted online are the truth. So I will consider all things posted in this thread as such
I have learn That not everything posted online are the truth And that also what I think about these posts
I was thinking of Politicians being honourable and working for the people but does anyone ever believe that
Haha yes they do. This corona virus proves it. Everyones doing what the govt is telling them and noone is actually checking to see if they are wrong. Australia, March 2020: don't wear masks, they are not needed. 7 months later and they're telling us to wear masks cause it's airborne, subtle info that should have been made very clear from the onset, that would have saved possibly 1000 lives
Load More Replies... Please take away "The Bible" part. I don't believe that the Bible is a myth, and I find it very offensive for you to say so publicly that the Bible is fake. I think people should be allowed to have beliefs without being insulted and hated on. We should all work to respect and love each other.
How about: Guns are bad, and if the Gummint takes 'em all away, then there'll be no more crime. ?
Still waiting for the U.S. to prove they are good though. Crimes rates / murders / deaths involving firearms smash my country’s figures into the dust and weirdly we are pretty much unarmed as a nation. We are proving every year that firearms are best kept locked away and only used for sport. Protection by way of firearms leads to more of your own household being killed. Guns? A great tool. Humans? Also great tools, just a different kind of tool.
Load More Replies... Hate that people think that: All your body cells are replaced every 7 years. No, then tattoos would all go away. Thomas Crapper did NOT invent the flush toilet.
That skipping meals is bad for me. No it's not, I don't eat when I'm not hungry and that's far healthier than you stuffing your face with mcdonalds just because the clock tells you it's a certain time Karen!
OK, I don't know why you are angry at a "Karen" that clearly isn't here. Can it please be time to put "Karen" to rest now? It already feels reeeally passé.
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