So it seems that aspiring soap opera writers have taken to the MMORPG medium to write their tales of woe. While reading an amusing story on WoW about a guy hooking up with some crazy girl he ganked, some posters responded that the particular story had been around the boards before. In fascinating urban-legend fasion, people have been passing these tales down, with the changing details being RL location and servers/factions.
Anybody else witness this type of phenomenon?
Are you implying that someone just made up the story wholecloth? That rarely happens with anything. As a writer, I take inspiration from anywhere and everywhere, but it has to come from somewhere.
With that sort of thing, I would put my chips on: Guy Hooks Up with Crazy Girl He Ganked, or Something Similar. Tells friends. Friends tell their friends, but don’t remember every detail so they make some things up. Et cetera ad infinitum. (holy crap, I just constructed an entire sentence in Latin. I should get a gold star)
Giving those specific details like RL locations and servers/factions lends authenticity to the story and anchors it in a way such that people can more readily visualize it happening, and possibly identify more closely with it. Even if the storyteller knows full well that he’s making those details up.
Bottom line - I doubt someone just “wrote” the story and spread it that way, because they’d have to be a really fantastic writer/storyteller to give it such a strong ripple effect. Somebody would demand some kind of verification from him, if it’s originating with him and there are no other concurring witnesses. Though, in the world of theoreticals, it’s possible. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll write a story now about a frustrated, out-of-work soap-opera writer who takes to fabricating illustrious tales of MMORPG romance & betrayal…
You haven’t been on the internet long, have you?
The story doesn’t have to be true to be believable. All you have to do is take easily-understood elements, and conveniently add some details and people will buy it. The story in question originally surfaced on somethingawful.com forums, and has been repeated in many reincarnations. I’ll give you the basic template for this story (won’t tell the whole thing, much too long for this mere post)
Pretty much anything in brackets can be changed. Maybe he goes to Cal State and she lives in Wyoming. Maybe he knew her from a friend’s roomate’s cousin’s ex-sister-in-law’s sorority sister. It isn’t that difficult to simply insert mundane details to make this scenario seem plausible. Think of all the people that get roped into beleiving urban legends! This isn’t that much different, in my opinion.
I hear Crocodiles live in the sewers under Worlds of Warcraft…