I want to start an urban legend. I’ve read some of the UL books and have a pretty good idea what it takes for a story to take on a life of its own. First, it has got to be at least slightly believable. Second, it should have some kind of subtle moral to it. And finally, it should be interesting enough to make people want to pass it along.
I already know how to get the ball rolling. I still have plenty of connections in the religious community. If I can get a decent story put together and e-mail it to some of these people (passing it off as a “forward”), it will eventually find its way into the pulpits as a sermon illustration. After that, there’s no stopping it.
I once convinced several people that Franklin Roosevelt was assassinated by a government conspiracy.
It was back when the film JFK was out. I pointed out to some friends that if there actually was a conspiracy of the CIA/Military/Secret Service that wanted to kill the President they wouldn’t arrange to have him shot on a public street in front of several hundred witnesses. They would get him in an isolated location with the fewest possible witnesses and make his death look like natural causes. I then pointed out this was exactly how FDR died. I added in some bullshit about Smedley Butler, Yalta, and the OSS and I think I had everyone at least half convinced. I’m sure if I had had a little time to prepare I could have made it even better and really got an UL going.
One we started at work to annoy a Doors fan: Jim Morrison was assasinated by the French military. He went to France and caught AIDS from a homosexual male hooker, and the French gov’t. didn’t want him to come back to the US and let everybody know what he caught. So they had the military send guys to shoot him full of holes. That’s why they wouldn’t let anyone but his wife see the body, and they told her that she’d get the same thing if she talked. She believed their story because she already knew he was bisexual, and decided that there wasn’t anything else she could do but shut up. French soldiers later spread AIDS while on duty in Africa, which is why everybody thinks it started there. The guy said he knew we were full of it, but we countered with the observation that the French gov’t. had recently been found to have allowed AIDS tainted blood to be distributed and used, because they were still trying to hide AIDS from the public, and they couldn’t admit that it was any problem.
To top it all off, from then on we referred to Jim Morrison as “The Lizard Queen”. - MC
Ok, this isn’t exacly on topic, but I really wanted to share this wild TRUE story I heard.
See, this friend of mine knows this sick ocousin of his friend that was really kinky (The friend of my friend’s cousin is the kinky one).
Well, it seemed he had heard about how your muscles contract when you get an electric shock, so…he tapes some wires to his nuts and the other end of the wires to a power outlet that was controlled by a wall switch. He then stood by the switch and jerked off until he was right on the edge, then he threw the switch.
Appearently, the current caused the fluids in his testicles to superheat, because his balls exploded.
He claimes the orgasm was incredible, but he doesn’t recomend trying it.
How about, the recent series of shootings is really a satanic conspiracy of suicidal devotees, dedicating to furthering the extermination of Christians and the hounding of Christians from public forums through physical intimidation and threats? The Ft. Worth shooting, combined with the killing of the ‘God-believing’ girl at Columbine High,the controversy over teaching evolution, the posting of the 10 Commandments, etc., have all been put forward as evidence that Christians are being ‘discriminated against’. It should be only a small step from there to having them believe it’s a genuine plot.
Here’s another: Let’s start a UL about how Koko the gorilla has been wanting to worship God after becoming curious about a cross she saw a visitor (a minister, let’s say, and let’s put a name to the minister) wearing around his neck. Only, those ‘godless scientists’ at Yerkes (or wherever) won’t let her. . .
Once I noted that it seems kind of silly to point out that most wars take place in countries Americans have never heard of, since that includes pretty much every country except that one that Cancun is in. Somebody suggested, "Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to make up some fake country and cry about the terrible war there?
So we made up a fictitious country called Rachmanistan, somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Unfortunately, this country was beset by a bunch of nasty mercenaries supported by a (fictitious) giant corporation in Belgium. The gist of the urban legend was that you were supposed to boycott all the products supposedly owned by this corporate baddy. We were going to spread the rumor by email to our impressionable acquaintances (the crop-circle crowd), but we never got around to it.
Reading this thread got me thinking about all the nasty problems in Rachmanistan, and I’ve learned that cannibalism is included! That’s right. It has become a secret Hollywood fad to go on a strict vegetarian diet - that is, a diet consisting strictly of vegetarians. Since Rachmanistan has a large number of vegetarians, and since in wartime nobody is going to miss a few disappeared civilians, it was a natural choice.
So certain movie stars (fill in the names of your choice here), are importing “specialized foodstuffs” from the Rachmanistan region, which in reality are dead humans! Evil Freedonian and Paradoran mercenaries travel to the region, kill all the children and young women (valued for their flavor) in a village, and sell them to cooks in neighboring Mortistan, where they are prepared and preserved for sale to American celebrities. It is rumored that a complete side of person is valued at up to $15,000 in Beverly Hills, where it is consumed greedily by vegetarianarians at “long pork orgies”.
Pretty good Sealemon…
but why would anyone want their balls to contract?
And why would anyone tell you that they did something that dumb?
but its definatly the right idea! Maybe a bondage thing? Harvesting sperm maybe??
So tweak the story a little. Place the guy in the emergency room, telling your friend of a friend not to try this because look what happened to him. Or have a doctor relate the story, kind of like all those fake gerbiling stories. Perhaps you could make the injury a little less drastic…third degree burns, perhaps?
Man, have you ever heard the UL about the flaming gerbile? How about the deaths that REALLY happen because some moron decided to put a plastic bag over their head when they jerk off, because oxygen deprevation is supposed to make the orgasm better?
I would bet if I was irresponsible enough to post something like my Electric Masterbation story in a teen chat room, that at least one genius would TRY it.
Oh, BTW, MrKnowItAll, I think it really helps to have another poster chime in with a “It happened here, too” message.
Dr. Harold Winkler of the National Research Institute published important news in this month’s edition of Healthy Man’s Health magazine. Receiving fellatio from a woman who smokes has been proven to be a leading cause of penile cancer in college-age men.
“Where there is clarity, there is no choice. And where there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?”
Great ideas, guys! The Rachmanistan things sounds very promising, and considering my target audience, DIF’s Koko story also sounds very good, as does the tattoo scalping idea. All the masturbatory stories are good, but I don’t think they’ll fly in the pulpits of America. They might be good to start around the water cooler.
There’s already guys who hang themselves in search of a better orgasm. I’d say electrocution isn’t that impausible. And if they buy that, you can tell them how some friend of a friend tried being shot, inhaling poison gas, or receiving a lethal injection during masturbation.
Robert Silverberg wrote a novella The Pope of the Chimps about a group of chimps in a language experiment like Koko’s who begin to start their own religion. They worship the scientists who run the experiment and decide they will be reincarnated as humans when they die.
You got to think like a Urban Legend to make a Urban Legend
Take
one part modern horror (AIDS, shootings, teen violence) then mix with something preposterous (gang bangers in Asia prove their worth by sharing their HIV blood with other new recruits making them undead gangs) and then shoot to any newswire.
I remember seeing several of them that hit the headlines of some places (NY Post is the ultimate…when it makes it there you got a self invented urban legend)
Buck Henry created one about a coalition to clothe animals. He made important looking signs and such and sat in front of the white house for 2 days pacing out leaflets and preaching. He did not show up after the second day but by then others had taken the cause. The end result? Blurb in Washington Post talking about the demonstrators with a color photo of people waving signs saying “Clothe your Horse!” Several news medias made them sound serious. That was until Buck Henry admitted to the prank.
Try this one.
Iran seeks to buy some of Australian outback for testing of nuclear weaponry.
Now make up a document giving important sounding features. Make up one comment by a phony official. Quote sources but never say who they are and send it out to your local big city paper. 50% chance it will hit the wire and you can see it happening (caution though…never use actual names of people as sources…you could get libeled real fast)
