For a while I’ve been noticing an interesting phenomenon. Back in the the early days of the Web when there were a lot of new users on the web getting “those” emails for the first time they would run around repeating it as gospel.
After being riduculed by friends,(who read SD and snopes.com and other) most people developed intense skepticisim. But now people are far to gullible the other direction. You can tell people that almost any fact or story is not true, and they will get a knowing expression in their eyes and say something like “yeah I always assumed it was BS”. No real point to this comment I guess but it just amazes me that after being burned that many times by stupid stories, people didn’t learn anything and will now accept anything that involves something being proven false, no matter how obviously true it is.
That all depends on what you mean by “obviously true.”
I see what you mean by saying that believing a debunking too readily is also a kind of gullibility, but a claim like this really requires examples on point.
But if my life depended on knowing whether a given story was true or not, I’d bet it wasn’t. The odds are a lot better.
And I just want it known, for the record, that I was a skeptic way before it was cool.
I’m just happy there are resources online to help me with my skepticism. I like access to info showing why those things are false.
I remember my first encounter (identified encounter) with an urban legend, pre-email. I was in college, and there was a story on the news about a tornado. Several people in cars pulled over and hid under a bridge overpass. One guy had a videocam running. He filmed the tornado passing across them. It was a small one, but still impressive, and caught on film. Afterwards I remarked on this to someone else because of how amazing it was. He responded back with a story about a lady who’s car crashed in a ditch full of snakes.
I really didn’t want to believe him on that one. A couple years later I overheard someone talking about the waterskiing into a bunch of mating water moccasins story. A lightbulb went off.
One more reason to want to slap that jerk.
There was a time when I never even thought to question certain stories. I’m glad that I have the disposition and the mental tools to sort the wheat from the chaff. I feel that I’ve grown as a person because of it.
But of course, everybody thinks they’ve got superfly bullshit meters, and many of us are probably more vulnerable to apocrypha because we think the shit bounces right off of our mighty I.Q.'s.
I wasn’t convinced that the story in “Botched Tubal Ligation” was true. No offense to the author of the OP, but I would appreciate a link.
I think this ties in with one of the reasons ULs get spread so easily. Many ULs are upsetting, and the people who hear them want to be told that they’re not true, so they tell it to someone else, adding “Can you believe that?” Eventually, they get to someone who says, “I believed it the first time I heard it,” and boy is their face red. Conversely, when I hear a story like BTL, I ease my mind by saying, “Ah, it’s probably an urban legend.”
If life were always like this…if they took your guns and left this stuff…we’d live a lot better.
For the record, the OP is obviously a fraud.
Coldfire
Voted Poster Most Likely To Post Drunk
"You know how complex women are"
- Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
FTR, the story of the people hiding under an overpass while a tornado went over them, the event being taped by a cameraman, is true. I’ve seen the footage several times. They didn’t just get under the overpass though. They crawled up into the opening under the underside of the bridge and held on to tightly.
Right Johnny. I know it’s true - that’s what I said. Sorry if it wasn’t clear. And yes, it wasn’t just sitting under the overpass, but crawling way up under the deck and holding on to the supports. It was in Kansas circa 1991, IIRC. April '91 comes to mind, though it could have been '90 and could have been a different month. There was a patch of tornados in Kansas that night, including the small one caught on tape. Thus the weather stories hitting the news, and the UL about the ditch of snakes.