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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To get so irritated when people pretend things happened to them that clearly didn't?

257 replies

CalamityKate · 04/04/2012 13:01

I was watching This Morning earlier and they had an email from a woman who trotted out the whole "Dug Up Rabbit" story. Of course Colleen and Ruth and Eammon had a right old laugh about it.

Which is lovely, but it didn't happen. It's an urban myth that's been repeated and repeated and repeated - often by celebrities on chat shows.

Snopes

It REALLY irritates me when people do this. Why lie? What on earth is the point of emailing a programme, pretending that something happened to you when it didn't?

I've seen it on forums too - people tell a story that is either clearly a lie (as in the Snopes example) or it just doesn't ring true and you just KNOW it's either completely made up or VERY heavily embellished.

I was actually tempted to email This Morning Blush

OP posts:
LetsKateWin · 04/04/2012 13:26

I'm sure someone on here has posted that rabbit story. I've read it somewhere before...

Agincourt · 04/04/2012 13:27

ahh i see re. rabbit now!Blush

how is that funny though? It's pretty sick, sick in the old fashioned way not according to my 12 and 10 yo, and not at all funny!

Sandalwood · 04/04/2012 13:28

I don't know.
My grandad used to spin some yarns - many of them probably well known by other people (adults).
Like the one about sitting in the cafe and the man next to him eating his kitkat so he had a big bite of the man's doughnut before he got up to leave - then found his kitkat in his pocket etc.
But I used to love them.

Original poster
CalamityKate · 04/04/2012 13:28

According to Snopes, the "stamp" version of the story has been around since about 1963 Bonzo, so again, consider the most likely explanation: that the same unlikely event happened to lots of people including your friend, or she heard the story from sources other than the internet and nicked it for herself Wink

OP posts:
GreenEyesAndHam · 04/04/2012 13:29

I also heard about a friend's 'friend' having the stamp stuck waaay back- definitely before we were online

BonzoDooDah · 04/04/2012 13:29

Oh well - X-posts and just read the Stopes article - so she'd heard the Green Shield Stamps one before! Ah she told it well and was in there early so to speak Blush

5Foot5 · 04/04/2012 13:30

Sorry if I am being a bit dense but why is the Chlamydia story racist? I haven't heard the original so maybe it is obvious if you have but from info given here I can't work out why.

Dug up rabbit - heard it. In fact at the end of last year when the Fenton YouTube was all the rage, The Times asked people to send in their own stories of badly behaved pets and someone sent this one in claiming it had happened to them.

Smear story and its variations - no never heard that one!

Katienana · 04/04/2012 13:32

Back in the 90s I heard the 'Victoria and David Beckham gave someone a cheque for 100 grand to give up a suite at the Dorchester on their wedding night' from 3 seperate people. All swearing blind that it really had happened to a friend of a friend.

Pandemoniaa · 04/04/2012 13:32

The Dug Up Rabbit story is so elderly that it had its own ration card...

GooseyLoosey · 04/04/2012 13:33

Many years ago my mother recounted an anecdote that a friend had told her about a packet of biscuits on a table in a railway station.

A stranger sits down at the friend's table and starts to eat the biscuits. The friend cannot believe what is happening so eats one themselves to assert ownership. The stranger eats one, the friend eats another and so it goes on to the bottom of the packet with each looking increasingly annoyed. Stranger walks off in a huff and friend heaves a sigh of relief that biscuit stealing nutter has gone. Gets up to go and realises that their own packet of biscuits is in their handbag and they were eating the stranger's biccies the whole time.

10 years later was in a lecture by Douglas Adams and he told exactly the same story from the same perspective. I have often wondered if this was an urban myth they both borrowed or who borrowed the story from who.

BonzoDooDah · 04/04/2012 13:34

Yup Calamity - X-posts again!

Original poster
CalamityKate · 04/04/2012 13:35

I've heard the "I was in a lift and two burly men got in and one shouted "Hit the floor!" and I immediately lay down expecting a shooting and he only meant me to press the button and it turned out to be (insert popular brawny film star of the moment) and his minder and we all had a good laugh about it and he sent me some flowers later" story from about 3 different people over the years.

They ALL swear it happened to a friend of theirs Hmm

OP posts:
BusinessTrills · 04/04/2012 13:38

Douglas Adams is a storyteller, I doubt he expected anyone to really believe that the biscuit thing happened to him.

MorrisZapp · 04/04/2012 13:39

It's like real life trolling. Gets boring people attention and approval.

nickelhasababy · 04/04/2012 13:40

gOOSEY - i have been told that story, as an urban legend, by a priest, but it was 4 doughnuts, and the other passenger kept smiling and passing the bag over.
was supposed to demonstrate the kindness of the other man.

BonzoDooDah · 04/04/2012 13:41

Ha - reading that one about the lift - Back in the 90s I was InterRailing round Europe and I was walking down a darkish backstreet in Rome. A black limo swept past me full of suited up blokes who had odd looking things in their laps (glanced in as they swept past - imagined the worst). The car stopped just in front of me (about 15 feet away), ALL the doors opened at once and the men all jumped out. I completely freaked and leaped into a doorway and cowered - much to the surprise of my mate. The blokes just calmly walked into the restaurant they had stopped next to and the car zoomed off.
I tried to stop having the coronary I'd induced by an overactive imagination (and probably not enough sleep in snore-filled youth hostels). My friend just thought I was a fruit-loop Blush

WhaleOilBeefHookedIWill · 04/04/2012 13:41

Green eyes ive missed that PMSL if that ever did happen IRL though

BusinessTrills · 04/04/2012 13:44

"Hit the ground" makes more sense as they could have meant "ground floor" - only works for UK people though

MinnieBar · 04/04/2012 13:44

By far the most popular pre-internet urban myth story when I was a teenager was the bloke-at-uni one:

Bloke lives in a shared room in halls. He gets recurrent backache, so goes to the GP. GP says 'you've got to stop having anal sex.' Bloke says 'Huh???!' and would you believe it, it turns out his room mate was drugging and raping him every night. Hilarious!

After the first term at uni, when there was about six of us together, someone told that story and everyone went 'No, that happened at my university - oh, right' as the penny dropped.

Oh, and the 'bloke lives on the sixth floor of halls - friends move all his stuff to a first floor room while he's asleep and then chuck him out of the window so he thinks he's going to die ha ha HA!' one as well.

TwinkleTwinklyStars · 04/04/2012 13:47

I have a 'friend' who has always done everything/knows everyone/has been everywhere.

She has told the glittery lady party/MW story, the dead rabbit story, and the beckham 100k story in the past, swearing blind that they happened to her (the beckhams apparently paid her sister 100k for her hotel suit).

Talking to her winds me up, because she always has a story about everything.

She has also used to tell people that her relatives OWN the isle of man.

ThisIsANickname · 04/04/2012 13:49

ABitSnowyOutside - If it makes you feel any better, I gave my first performance aged 11 in a school play that was a parody of Snow White. I played a dwarf named Speedy.

Original poster
CalamityKate · 04/04/2012 13:50

See Twinkle I wouldn't be able to resist going "But, that didn't happen, did it? It's an urban legend that's been around for yonks. Why are you lying?"

OP posts:
BonzoDooDah · 04/04/2012 13:51

Oooh yes - I remember the 6th floor window one as well - definately happened to a friend's friend - not.

And the microwave at the side of the road? My friend's "mum" absolutely did find one and hand it in to the police only to be told it was a speed camera.

MummytoKatie · 04/04/2012 13:52

The stamp one happens in a Catherine Alliott book called "The Old Girl Network" to a character called Polly Esther!

I gues s the question is did she make it up or nick it off someone else?

BonzoDooDah · 04/04/2012 13:52

Isle of Man though?? Just why??