To not point out story is an urban legend?

Can only speak for one branch but when I was 18 I had a Saturday job at kfc and they were scrupulously clean! Everything was cleaned to within an inch if its life every night.

I have never eaten KFC. Many many years ago (50 to be precise) we had a KFC open locally and my mum told us about the fried mouse being found in a friend’s KFC. It took me years to realise that she told us the story to put us off buying unhealthy processed food rather than recounting the story. It did the trick because I’ve never been able to eat the stuff.

My own urban legend that I started 🙈 was that Max Bygraves was Rick Astleys dad 🤦🏽‍♀️ I 100% believed it until my mid 30s when I scanned biographies in WHSmith and realised someone had been having me on 🤣 I had told so many people! Tbf they had the same hair 🤣

One I heard in sixth form was about an A-level biology lesson where people took cheek swabs and looked at them under a microscope.
Apparently one girl did this, and there was sperm in her cheek sample.

Think I heard one today, for the first time. A friend sent it via WhatsApp as a recording uploaded to Instagram of a salon owner from Liverpool telling it as though it was told to her by a client. I got the feeling it was 'updated' to make it sound more now/credible, and I admit I was taken in by it until the sort of 'punchline' came, but then the woman telling it used a word that sounded a bit archaic to me, which made the implausibility of the whole story then sound really obvious. But she told it well, I was definitely feeling the suspense!

🤣

Ours was that someone bit into a McChicken burger and thought it was mayonnaise but it was an abscess on the chicken that burst 🙈 Fell for so much shit when I was younger 🤣

And Marilyn Manson was in The Wonder Years.

Oh i remember this one

What, thats not true.. ??? 45yrs old ffs.....

The Marilyn Manson one depends how old you are, when I was at school it was Prince (before he was a squiggle) 😂

Ooh wasn’t there one about a snake that laid up next to its owner to check it could eat it? Think I believed that one as a teen too 🤦🏽‍♀️

How could you tell them they are telling untrue tales without 1) being boring / sanctimonious 2) making them hate you forever?

I think the answer is you can't. And this is such a problem for our age.

I feel there needs to be a stronger disincentive for spreading things that aren't true so people take more ownership of what they are saying. Like a Credibility Rating - so you could report someone for presenting someting as true when it wasn't and their rating would suffer as a result.

We got told the one about the dog protecting the baby from the snake (or wolf I think depending on which version it is) in primary school and I don't know if they missed off the bit about it being an urban legend or I didn't realise but that story genuinely upset me for about a week, I thought it was true!

I have a whole book full of Urban Legends now but I still hate that one.

I wouldn't say anything. People make themselves look silly all the time.

I love a good urban legend, although they have somewhat lost their charm since the Internet. I did actually worry that chewing gum stayed in your stomach for 7 years if you swallowed it. And the one about Marilyn Manson having ribs removed was a playground favourite.

Every thread on here about terrible baby names always has a poster claiming they know a friend of a friends, sister who has a baby named L-a.

Urban legend = The Mandela effect.

I repeated an urban legend at work that I genuinely thought was true. I’d been on a first aid course and the guy told us about a colleague who had been volunteering at a rugby match and a player dislocated his hip. The first aider popped it back in and accidentally trapped the guy’s testicle in the hip joint. I was so sure in my retelling of this story that I was pretty embarrassed to be told it was an urban legend. But I was still grateful to be told so I could stop repeating it like an idiot 🙈

Ha ha I remember that one too! As teens my friends and I were convinced it was true 🙈

I'm sure I read about the penguin being stolen on a MN thread many years ago.

Most urban legends probably don't make that much difference whether or not they're actually true. How many tour guides at attractions across the world tell hundreds of eager tourists every day tall stories about the place - presented as fact - that almost certainly never happened?!

Urban legends are those things that can or not can be true. The fun is in sharing them and making people go "ooooh".
Let her get on with it. Unless you are a penguin, you have nothing to worry about 😉

I love urban legends. I have had people tell
me about them and I nod and smile along. Apprently two people I know, know the person who went to a&e cause the couldn’t get their contact lenses out! And two people completely unrelated where at the Scottish wedding where the men in kilts left skid marks on the brides dress

It's fun to call out bullshitters?

Most people do it because they are good stories and know and expect other people to know they aren't real

I remember that one! Did you have the spider one too, where the woman was bitten on the arm by a spider on holiday, and a lump appeared later, and hundreds of baby spiders ran out?

I find urban legends fascinating, particularly pre internet. DP and I grew up about 200 miles apart but both heard the same urban legends. It’s a real example of the passing on of stories!

I wouldn’t say anything, unless you know them very well indeed. Even though people repeating urban legends with apparently no capacity for critical thinking drives me insane.