Urban Legends

Horror, Humor, Caution, Morals and Riches
Urban legends can provide horror, humor, caution, moral lessons, the opportunity for riches and more. We humans (yes, I’m one of them) love a good story that almost seems too good to be true. Occasionally there is just enough substance to the story to make it believable. If the story is told by someone the recipient knows, a certain level of credibility is established. Adding that the story involved someone known to the story teller increases the level of credibility because the recipient thinks that he or she are no more than two degrees of separation from the source of the story.

We have adopted brevity in our informal communication due to post-Internet methods and tools including but not limited to:

• Email
• Twitter
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Text Messaging via cell phones

Due to this, communication has become quick, sometimes obscure and void of substantiating facts which serves urban legends very well. Combine this style of communication with the Internet as the source of the legend or story, and the original source is difficult to verify especially if the sender wishes to obscure that source.

Value Added
Some of these stories provide a useful service by helping us navigate through a life of potential hazards and helping us to live a moral life. A few examples are:

• slashers hiding under cars in parking lots at malls (safety tip)
• waking up without our kidneys after drinking in bars with prostitutes (moral guide)
• being killed by an escaped lunatic with a hook for a hand if you are underage and necking in a car out in the woods (moral guide)

Your Luck is About to Change

On the low end of the ”credibility scale” are the emails from important sounding people with a very important message to the recipient. These people are trying to settle an estate for a deceased client and you (the recipient of the email) are the lucky heir. The only catch is that the "heir" pays the "attorney" for the inheritance. This defies logic and common sense but people continue to believe and answer these emails sometimes to the detriment of their financial state.

Unquestionable Faith
Why do we want to believe unbelievable stories? Is there something in our makeup as humans that make us believe without question? Certainly people practice religions without questioning the proof of existence of what and/or who they are worshiping. They just believe. Has this been training over the centuries for believing “authority” without questioning?

Veritas
Information should be analyzed no matter what media it is delivered through. A critical thinker will try to determine the original source and presence of bias (agenda, funding source). In short, a critical thinker will get as close to the truth as possible.