The internet is full of all kinds of information, especially fun facts and urban legends. You can find them on any social platform, and you probably read a few of them every day. Ranging from creepy and disturbing ones to funny and uplifting ones, people really seem to enjoy them and share them online and in real life. Who doesn't love to liven up a party by surprising friends with some unique trivia? But how do we make sure that the information we're reading is real and not made up?
Well, this online user decided to find out just that by asking, "What urban legend needs to die?" and they got some surprising and informative answers that might show you why you shouldn't believe everything you read online. So before you tell fun facts to your friends, check out the answers below to make sure that they're not fake!
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That people only use 10 percent of your brain. That is only true for politicians
That you need to wait 24 hours to report someone as missing.
You can, and SHOULD, report someone as missing as soon as they go missing. It could be the difference between finding someone who had a bad fall at home or getting lost in the forest, and finding their body.
That vaccines cause autism.
Autism is something you are born with! How do idiots not get this!?
That the McDonald's hot coffee lady had a frivolous lawsuit. The coffee was so hot it fused parts of her genitals and she had to have several reconstructive surgeries.
The “welfare queen” trope that Americans constantly use to justify exploiting low wage workers and punishing the poor for being poor. It’s a straw man offered as proof that poor people are immoral and that any economic assistance system will only entice them to further immorality. It is false, repugnant, and damaging to not only the poor but the whole economy.
That vaginas get “loose” from having sex. There’s really Men out here that believe this
Two things that always struck me with the lack of critical thinking on this one 1) 1000 peens equals loose vagina but 1 peen a thousand times doesn't. 2) do they really think women are walking around with baby head sized vaginas?
Trickle down economics
Gay people made your child gay.
What 😶 We don't effect what gender your child likes, they like who they like and that's okay.
Detoxing treatments...... NO Sharon, "harmful chemicals" are not just going to ooze out of your face and feet if you use that mask... That's not how the human body works at all damn!
Your liver and kidneys do that just fine on their own (most of the time).
"Black cats are evil" No they're not
Edit: getting spammed with "all cats are evil". Guys, I'm referring to different urban myths around the world which states that a black cat a demonic possession or just pure evil, related to witch and stuff.
That MSG is toxic.
EDIT: As an Aussie it took me a minute to work out what all the replies about MTG meant but yes, seeing the full name I agree Margery Taylor Green is as toxic as cyanide. No urban legend there. F*****g lunatic. Especially as an Aussie it's like "WTF America?".
That there are hot women in my area waiting for me to "chat with them".
There could be. I mean there have been record temperatures lately so definitely hot women in alot of areas
Rich people work hard and are smart and deserve their money.
Edit: Since this turned into a discussion of how rich people get their money, let me elaborate. Under capitalism, rich people get their money by exploiting the labor of the worker, your labor.
You have nothing to sell but your time and your labor, and they take advantage of this, and give you back pennies on every dollar you have created for them, amount depend on how much exactly they can get away with without you taking your labor elsewhere. They can fire you anytime and use the threat of homelessness and starvation against you, for they are the ones who own the shop, the factory, the office, the land, the trade, and without those things, you cannot turn your time and labor into commodities you require and want in your daily life. This is the coercion of labor under capitalism. Always remember that.
This structure is designed to squeeze every bit of value out of you in the form of money, the form of profits. You are always closer to the homeless man on the street then the boss in an air conditioned office. Unionize. Organize.
If they offer a job making 50k a year, as a broad generality you're adding 500k a year to their bottom line. It's not true in all cases for all jobs at all companies but... yeah, car salesman, factory worker, etc etc it is true.
You don’t get sick because it’s “cold” outside or “you don’t have a jacket on”
That touching baby birds or rabbits will cause their mothers to reject them because they smell like human. They absolutely will not. Don't go messing with babies for kicks, but if you can put a baby (that you are 100% sure belongs there) back in it's nest, do so. If you aren't sure, call a wildlife rehabilitator so you're not putting fledgelings where they don't belong.
The problem is when they are handled TOO much. That is not good for baby animals and birds, no matter how cute they are.
Ostriches. Do not bury. Their heads. In the sand. If they’re afraid of something, they will run, kick, or bite. One of my biggest animal myth pet peeves.
"You can't get STDs from oral sex"
One of the clinics I work at is a free sexual health clinic. Too many women are in there for mouth/throat/other digestive problems stemming from unprotected oral sex and various STDs.
Vaccines cause autism, and the COVID vaccine was the Mark of the Beast.
The heel stick done on newborn babies to test for PKU and other genetic diseases is also not the implantation of a microchip.
The ten minutes they make you wait after you get your COVID vax is to charge up the microchip wirelessly. Or, you know, to make sure you don't have a bad reaction. But the first one is a lot funnier to me.
That your pullout game is strong. No, it isn't. Invest in an actual form of pregnancy prevention.
What do you call people who practice the rhythm (pullout) method? Parents.
The Bermuda f*****g Triangle. I live in Bermuda. The triangle is smack dab in the middle of hurricane territory so ships and planes back in the day (that didn’t have weather mapping) would get spanked by them frequently. It’s so irritating when you’re trying to introduce yourself, saying “I’m from Bermuda” and the response is “LiKe ThE tRiAnGle oMg hOw diD YoU sUraViVe”
Edit: Bermuda also has the highest cost of living in the world. More than NYC, Switzerland, or Dubai
Edit 2: methane from ‘volcanos’ in the triangle is just bogus. The only volcano that’s anywhere near the triangle is the DORMANT one that formed Bermuda.
Many a hurricane passes through the “triangle” every single year. Go back a couple hundred years and I’m sure you’d think that traveling through there was ‘cursed’ when realistically it was just a stupid time of year to travel that way
Edit #3: thank you for the upvotes! I just want people to see my little island x
Y’all are ridongculous! 4k+?? That’s over 5% of the population
Edit#4: we are now at over 10% of the population… lordamercy
P.s. Bermuda doesn’t have sharks like that. No one has ever been attacked. At most, a couple tiger sharks and nurse shakes have been seen (which is an island wide spectacle) but they aren’t on our radar like that. Same with tectonic plates. Nowhere near any of them
You don't eat spiders in your sleep.
Not unless you have some kind of spider-dispensing mechanism built into your CPAP mask
The idea that there are people in your neighborhood just waiting for the chance to poison your kids by giving them unwrapped Halloween candy.
The customer is always right
I recently learned the whole phrase is "The customer is always right in matters of taste". That actually makes sense. If the customer likes something they are right about what is to their own taste. That's far different for how the shortened version is used by some customers to insist they are right in any situation. Which of course is BS.
That you can target fat on a particular place on your body, like tummy fat. Fat doesn't know where it lives.
Edit: I am, believe it or not, aware of the existence of plastic surgery. You don't need to tell me about it.
You can suffocate if you leave a fan on while you sleep (you can't)
Urine is sterile (it's not)
Highways have straight segments so that airliners can land on them in emergencies (they don't)
You should drive at a normal speed in low-visibility weather so the car behind you doesn't hit you (you should slow down)
You can suck out the venom from snake bites (you can't)
Men think about sex every 7 seconds (they don't)
All the human traffickers that lurk in Target, Walmart, etc looking to snatch up random children and/or women.
People are more than likely to be trafficked by people they know than random strangers.
You say this, but years back we had a case in my local asda (Walmart), baby taken out of a trolley, mum had turned to get something on the shelf and poof, baby gone. Mum was smart and didn't run around to find her, just ran straight to security at the front doors. They pulled the shutters immediately and went over the tannoy to tell people description of baby missing and to be quiet. Followed the crying to the toilet where two women were found shaving the babies head and changing her clothes. Shutter didn't go back up till the police were there for them. I was in the car park when the shutters went down. My kids stay with me and I'm alert in every supermarket. It's not that those types of predators are there more than elsewhere, I take it that predators like that go about their day as normal and take opportunities that arise as and when spotted. Like an inattentive parent with their kids two aisles away.
That there’s litter boxes in high school classrooms. I’ve heard this about 3-4 different schools in my area.
Edit: I get there's litter to clean up vomit and for the active shooter stuff. I'm talking about the people who swear they "know someone" who says there's a litter box for a girl in a cat suit and b******g tail who makes all the students watch her poop in the corner.
It's an anti LGBTQIA+ dog whistle.
What sort of dystopian nightmare place needs a litter box for active shooter emergency's. Oh wait....
"Blood is blue inside your body & red when it comes out."
Nope.
That Dungeons and Dragons is satanic witchcraft, that's still a popular ideal in the bibble belt
I wish it was true tho. Would have made being a library nerd in middle school so much more profitable....
My dad coming back with the milk
That if you ask if someone’s a cop, they have to tell you if they are a cop
Bigfoot. It's 2023, if you can't get at least, a 720p video of him, Then give it up!
This is one of my favorites. I grew up in big foot country. so from time to time you would see somebody's blurry video of a supposed sighting. Then as soon as just about everybody has a HD Vidoe recorder in their hand (cell) and there are no more easy excuses for blurry film - suddenly the sightings go way down to basically zero. lol
Haha! I love all of the cryptids. I went to a bigfoot museum in Georgia and had a good time.👍
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What if Bigfoot really is just blurry? He's just a big, out of focus monster.
I'm not sure why, but that is one of the creepiest things I've ever heard. Yikes.
Load More Replies... To quote a viral Twitter post: "Bigfoot documentaries be like 'Cleetus had been up for three days drinking paint thinner, but he knows what he saw.' ".
Was driving through a very rural area recently and behind one house up on a hill they had a huge bigfoot silhouette on the edge of their woods. I thought that was hilarious.
The road that leads up to Pike's Peak in Colorado has a "Big Foot Crossing" sign by the road, complete with silhouette of walking big foot.
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They are real,they aren't this mysterious being everyone thinks,they're just gigantopithicus,videos can be hard when these things run,they're also masters of the woods,I have pictures,more than one or 2 even 3 of these things
Ummm, I saw him back in 1978, in a state park by Olympia. No, i didn't take a picture; No, no one else saw it; no, we didn't see any trace later (it was at the end of a trail we'd just finished re-building so there were lots of pine needles on the ground as well a large patch of salal). It was either Bigfoot or a very hairy or furry man. Very tall, fur or hair all over and i just turned around and booked out of there. No, I never went back.
I believe if they were real, there would be some definitive proof by now.
Use some common sense. For the number of purported sightings, there would have to be a quite large breeding population, so large that it couldn't possibly remain hidden. Yet no one has seen more than one at a time. No one has seen babies or children. No one has found remains, bones, fur, scat, tools, or anything else.
I don't know if some of the footage that's coming out these days is pretty compelling. Especially when the people filming then go to investigate the area. Cryptids are so fun because there isn't a ton of proof, but that doesn't mean they're not out there.
But there also isn't proof for ANY other wild creature that you could conjure up in your imagination right now. Big Foot and Nessie are just like that, they're just someone ELSE'S proof-less, imaginary creature.
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I've seen a lot of documentaries that show things really hard to explain otherwise though. Humans don't want to admit there could be creatures out there higher in the food chain and smarter than Humans, enough so to remain elusive
We have no problem admitting it, we just want to see substantial evidence first, which is a perfectly reasonable position to take.
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The idea that GMOs are bad for you. Seriously, we’ve been modifying plants and animals for years via breeding. Stuff like CRISPER is basically just a more precise version of that, the difference between doing surgery with an obsidian dagger and a sterilized scalpel.
That doctors will let you die if you are an organ donor to steal your organs.
That daddy long legs are the most venomous spiders in the world, but their fangs just aren’t big enough to spread enough venom. Edit: I’m referring to cellar spiders. Daddy long legs is vague term that describes several types of arachnids, none of them are venomous though.
I just imagine them as a cool lil friend with sunglasses flexing their legs
That it's a felony offense to rip the tag off of your Mattress.
There was a major scandal in the past, where a couple mattress manufacturers were recycling used mattresses, re-stuffing them, and subsequently reselling them. 🤢
It is ONLY illegal for stores and manufacturers to rip the tags off of new mattresses for sale. However, once you buy it, and your mattress warranty expires (usually after 1 year or less), feel free to rip that annoying tag off
I can't believe how many people do not understand this. The tag says "not to be removed EXCEPT by consumer. Sheesh.
Our seventh grade English teacher Miss Jackson was not in Playboy in the 1980s... It does not matter that your brother's cousin's neighbor has the actual issue and they are going to bring it in to school someday.
That it's super illegal to turn on your cars inside dome light while driving at night.
In my country, there's something called "Deochi or deochiat", which mainly translates to "evil eye" or "getting evel eyed".
It is believed that this happens when an older person admires a younger person too much. Aaaand no, not in a disturbing way, more like, a grandma admiring her grandson for how handsome he is and such. The grandson starts feeling sick, fatigued, nauseous, etc.
This is an actual, real phenomenon that happens because of the widespread belief in it.
I've experienced it a couple of times when I was young, and I've seen many others experience it.
The "cure" for this "deochi", is most of the times a prayer, or a charm that, get this, you can't be taught, you have to "steal" it from a gypsy.
It all of course is fake, just superstition, the power of belief. After I figured it out and stopped believing it at idk, 14-15, I've stopped experiencing it completely.
The people I managed to convince that this doesn't really exist, stopped experiencing it as well, confirming my theory.
Just goes to show how influential believing in stupid stuff can be.
That Marilyn Manson had a rib removed to suck his own member
People giving out free drugs to kids.
I am almost 40 and aside from the guy who wanted to sleep with me giving me weed as a teen, no stranger has ever given me free drugs; my friends never even wanted to share unless you ponied up something in return.
If somebody's having a seizure, stick an object in their mouth to prevent them from swallowing their tongue. Like wtf?
Coca-Cola did not invent Santa Claus/Christmas tradition of choice. All they did was standardize red and white as Santa Claus's definitive colors. Before that, it was common to see him depicted in green or purple or blue as well as red and white.
That Bill Nye is either dead or got busted for some drug-related thing. I hear it every year from my students and every year I have to tell them that no, the nerdy bow-tie scientist from the Disney channel did not get busted trying offload 3 pounds of meth on some undercover cops.
Alpha Males
I'm pretty sure that alpha males are men who are morbidly insecure and desperate to be powerful, intimidating and smart... because they know (or believe) that they are actually none of those things. Cowards and tough guy cosplayers, the lot of them.
The one about the boa constrictor measuring itself against a woman in her bed before eating her. Or just in general, any stupid story about snakes eating humans.
I have a boa constrictor who's 5 feet long. My coworker once tried to convince me that she can eat me. I couldn't figure out if this idiot doesn't understand *how* snakes eat, or doesn't understand that a human *absolutely cannot* fit inside a snake that small.
This is my DIL with a normal ball python; its name is Crazy 8. It belongs to Papa Jimbo Crazy-8-is...124afb.jpg 
Being afraid to flash lights at another car driving with their headlights off for fear that they’ll chase you down and murder you
According to the Highway Code, you should never flash your lights as anything other than a warning. Of course, you can try, but don't expect gratitude. I was driving on the motorway at night and a Range Rover comes up behind me with no lights on. I tried flashing, I tried turning my lights off and on again. Finally get back alongside and she gives me the fingers. Yeah, love, I not trying to get in your knickers, I'm trying to prevent you from causing a massive accident when someone doesn't see you and pulls out into your lane and gets slammed by your 2 tonne tank.
I would say the Megalodon. It's been extinct for millions of years and isn't sitting at the bottom of the f*****g ocean waiting for the comeback of the century. Its dead lets be thankful.
Then why haven't we explored the entirety of the oceans smartypants? It's either that or Cthulu and we'd have much better chances with megalodon so I'm rooting for ol toothy mctoothface
Phil Collins and the reason he wrote In The Air Tonight. It was about his divorce. There was an interview about it.
Edit: The urban legend I heard was that a friend of Phil’s drowned and a guy let him drown. Years later, the guy was at Phil’s concert so Phil put the spotlight on the guy and sang this song. That’s my version of what I heard.
Boiling frogs.
Frogs jump out of water when it gets too warm for them.
The story about a pet snake measuring you.
It’s utter horseshit and explaining it every time I tell someone “I have a snake” is annoying.
Loch ness monster... Its been here since the dinosaurs
All the ones about human trafficking that create a totally fictionalized idea of what human trafficking actually looks like.
I think they mean that a lot of scary stories go around about people from rich countries/backgrounds randomly being abducted and sold into slavery or something, which happens rarely at most, while the very real phenomenon of people from poor/desperate backgrounds being lured away from home with false promises to be held captive and exploited in a different country is not being talked about enough.
You’ll go blind.
I'm guessing this one started because someone had some force and distance and good/terrible aim; might I suggest some protective goggles? 😉
La Chupacabra. Enough is enough. Too many children have died wandering through the jungle, not to mention all the goats. We have to stop this thing once and for all.
Back in like 1994 or 95 this kid in my class, Noberto, told us all how his mom was a biologist who was in the Dominican Republic doing research and discovered this brand new animal called Chupacabra that was attacking goats. We, being New York suburban kids with no such thing a Google, completely bought his story. It wasn't until I learned about cryptids in like 2001, when I was like 18, that Noberto had us all believing his mom discovered this creature and that it was real (2001 was my freshman year in college and when I learned how to use internet search engine and made my discovery of Nobertos lies)
No, “sex traffickers” aren’t leaving flyers on your windshield or toothpicks in your door handles. Sex traffickers are literally pimps, that’s the legal term for them. When a woman is sex trafficked, she is being whored out, probably because she is addicted to drugs. You are not going to get followed home and kidnapped and sold to some Saudi prince because someone left a “I buy junk cars” on your 1998 Accord with peeling clear coat.
Definition of a sex trafficker: "noun, a person who is engaged in the illegal transportation of people from one country or area to another for the purpose of sexual exploitation." So it happens. The method by which the "chattel" are groomed or kidnapped may vary, but trafficking is a brutal reality.
you can't leave the class if the professor doesn't show for 15 minutes, nor can you pass by catastrophe
If you look under that one truck in Pokemon you can find a Mew.
That if you eat gluten your d**k shoots off of you like a rocket.
Even if you’re a woman? Or is that how you became a woman? Ohhhh….
I live close to a hub of human trafficking and people SHOULD be scared. Down vote me if you want, but donating to help the victims is one of my favorite charities.
As a kid in New York, we were convinced that it was illegal to kill praying mantises. It took to my 20's and being at an internship in the Environmental Sciences to learn that was false but to just let people keep thinking that because they're good pest control (I listened Dr Green until now and now the Pandas will know the truth)
Let me add one: you've never met someone who named their baby La-a, Abcde, Orangejello or Lemoncello. I see those thrown around anytime BP posts those dumb names lists
I've seen these at least twice before. Any, some common sense thinking works wonders on stuff like this.
I opened this thread expecting to disagree with half of it. I wasn't disappointed. Only read the top 40, and for about half of them, the thread got it wrong.
I live close to a hub of human trafficking and people SHOULD be scared. Down vote me if you want, but donating to help the victims is one of my favorite charities.
As a kid in New York, we were convinced that it was illegal to kill praying mantises. It took to my 20's and being at an internship in the Environmental Sciences to learn that was false but to just let people keep thinking that because they're good pest control (I listened Dr Green until now and now the Pandas will know the truth)
Let me add one: you've never met someone who named their baby La-a, Abcde, Orangejello or Lemoncello. I see those thrown around anytime BP posts those dumb names lists
I've seen these at least twice before. Any, some common sense thinking works wonders on stuff like this.
I opened this thread expecting to disagree with half of it. I wasn't disappointed. Only read the top 40, and for about half of them, the thread got it wrong.
