I knew it! Good lord, I remember reading that Mr. Ed article at least 6 or 7 years ago and wondering how the heck a zebra’s stripes could disappear when filmed in black and white. To this day I thought about it oh, probably every few months or so. The way the article was written made it sound so obvious I was afraid to ask anyone about it.
Glad to get that insurmountable barrier to my achieving full self-esteem out of the way.
Lesson of the day: everything from the TROLL section of Snopes are fake, continue worshiping the rest of the site as absolute, irrefutable facts.
Check.
To be honest though, my greatest discomfort after reading the “false authority” page is not the feeling of being “duped” (although that’s certainly a large part of it), but the feeling of, how shall I describe it, “information paranoia”.
I mean, we live in such an age where we pride ourselves for accumulating countless amount of information - practical or trivial… in order for me to consume enough information everyday to fill my appetite, I can’t help but favor “processed food” - presumably verified sources of information from all over the internet. Most of them are true - at least I think they are, there’s occasionally something here and there where I get flat out proved wrong, but just because there’s a chance that something is not right, does that mean I have to go through every cite that I see?
Here comes the paranoia part - so how far back do I have to trace each verifiable fact until I’m satisfied? For all I know, a cite can link to an article that is also complete BS, does that mean I have to search even further back? If I feel a “kink” about the theory of special relativity (and yes I do, the whole “Twin Paradox” thing never made sense to me) what can I really do, by myself, to prove whether it is true or false? I certainly can’t ask anyone who had been to space - I don’t know any of those guy, for all I know the entire NASA building is just smoke and mirrors - I’ve never been there, how should I know?
Where do I cross the line where I say “this is mildly unbelievable to me, but since you are a reputable source and you have made a convincing argument, I will trust you until your answer is flat out falsified by another source?”
Well yeah but, isn’t that what they’re doing? For the most part providing facts, but making the point that “Even us you can’t always trust. We could be wrong. Look at the universe. Think when you read something.”
Or course it’s a dangerous ploy. As the very people who need to think might read the snopes hoaxes and believe them. But it does make a worthwhile point.
What do you know, coke causes worms to crawl out of pork chops!
(check out the final picture) 
Yeah, I laughed out loud at that final pic when I saw it a few days ago. It also made me hungry for gummy worms.
jamus_se - Yep, that’s it. Glad you got that figured out. 
Which, I suppose, brings me to my point…
everyone - From where I see it, the lesson is a pretty simple one: Get with the damn program.
How long have those “lost legends” been there? How long? How many times have they been debunked? You should know by now that they’re not the real thing.
Just like there was never any knife fight between Pom Pom and Coach Z. Just like nobody at DC Comics intended for one second to leave Superman dead. Just like Bart Simpson isn’t really an underachiever, Kenny McCormick doesn’t get killed anymore, Ginger Jordan finished her dissertation ages ago, Jay Sherman got laid numerous times, Southtown wasn’t destroyed, the Mortal Kombat fighters’ gibberish doesn’t mean anything, and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is too goddam long to mean LSD. Stop looking like a sap by continuing to believe stuff that everyone else knows isn’t true anymore.
Y’know what…I think I’m onto something here. A short list of implausible legends. All the same colored button, meaning “false”, and it’s never updated. Not a single new item, ever, not a single change to an existing item. After even a few weeks of this, shouldn’t you be suspicious? If it’s all old stuff and never anything new, there’s a chance that it could be stale and out of date…right? And when you think about it…isn’t that how most urban legends come to be? Think about it…just think about it. 
P.S.: That “KFC” thing…simplicity, marketing, what everyone calls it anyway, am I right? (I swear, there must’ve been friggin’ 10 blind alleys on this…)
Try reading Descartes -‘Meditations on First Philosophy’. He questions everything until he gets to something he thinks cannot be questioned - ‘Cogito, ergo sum’.
Link
That doesn’t sound like a very plausible argument to me. “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is 24 characters long (not counting spaces), and “Lysergic acid diethylamide” is also exactly 24 characters long. Unless you think that one is too long to mean LSD too.
Snopes has done their research and drawn certain conclusions, and they provide references whenever possible to strengthen their arguments.
Just as one would review a thesis paper or critique a research project, a Snopes’ project should be reviewed as well. For the casual observer, looking Snopes over is sufficient.
Howeve, if one is going to lean on Snopes’ body of work as part of their greater body of work, references should be checked! A news outlet, a student doing research, a journalist and anybody else leaning on Snopes should go beyond mere acceptance of their argument and check their references!
Come on, people! Snopes is great casual reading, but when used for academia, reporting and journalism, one is falling WAYYYY short of good research if they just skim through the site!!!
Rigamarole - Look…it’s LitSWD. Possibly LSWD. Not LSD. I know of no system where a flippin’ preposition gets excluded from the acronym.
And as far as “too long” goes, we’re talking a six word code for a three letter acronym? “Lucy Shining Diamonds” or “Lucy’s String of Diamonds” would be plausible. Hell, BASIC (Beginner’s Allpurpose Standardized something-beginning-with-I Code), as clunky as it is, is only minus one letter. Six becoming three…nope, no way, uh uh. Occam’s Razor, my friend. Anyway, it’s been convincingly debunked on the Snopes site. See for yourself.
Philster - Good point. For the record, I think Wikipedia’s a tremendous resource as well (unlike pretty much everyone on this board), but I certainly wouldn’t ever rely solely on it either. You can’t trust everything you read on the Internet…that much should be clear by now.
But it is true! My dad was Mr. Ed! Why doesn’t anybody believe me?