To not point out story is an urban legend?

[StingLikeA]

I was in a group earlier of parents of DC's friends at a party. We were chatting away and one of them told an urban legend story (stealing a penguin from the zoo if that's relevant). I just went 'oh really ha ha' and moved the subject on as it felt really awkward.

Would you have politely pointed out that the story was a crock of shit to avoid them repeating it again? AIBU to have ignored it and presumably let them keep on telling it?

Has anyone else been told one of these face to face?

Everyone was discussing different urban legends they'd heard?
Like, the whole thread?
I thought it was quite a fun thread actually and we were swapping stories.
Sorry you felt the need to be aggressive.

Oh my goodness - that's where I first read it too - probably in the 1970s!

I mean, literally everything. The entire thread is about stories like this example.

Thank you!

I don't know why she singled me out

It was purple in the water when you peed where I was!

I realised it couldn’t be true when I had babies in swim nappies and discovered they only contain the poo, anything liquid runs right out. Pools would be full of babies surrounded by clouds of purple (blue)!

I think in some places it was red too!

It must have started as one of those "ice cream van has run out of ice cream" stories perpetrated by parents who were trying to get their kids to behave! 😆

I remember a penguin being stolen from it's enclosure in Belfast zoo and thrown to the lions. Several others were assaulted.

THANK YOU!!!! That's bringing the memories back, now - off to re-read it!

Also, how may times have I heard about the young lad enjoying a distraction free wank with his headphones/airpods in and when he finishes he sees a fresh brew next to his bed that his mum must've left for him!

Wasn't there a TV advert based around that exact deeply embarrassing scenario? I'm thinking Irn Bru, possibly?

Guinea pig I read.
I got flung out of, well asked to leave, the Library as I laughed so much reading this story.

What happened at Edinburgh zoo ??
I used to know the Penguin Keeper .😃

I'm in Australia and we had all the same urban legends at school, nice to see they are worldwide.

Some Aus radio personalities (Hamish and Andy) had an episode where they tried to track down people who swore it the legends were true, in this case it was the one about the pet snake who laid down next to its owner to size them up. So they spoke to someone who said it really happened to their brothers friend, they rang the brother and got the number of the friend, then rang the friend who said it was their aunty who told them, rang the aunty who said it was her hairdressers cousin, rang the hairdresser who said it was whoever, etc etc etc. Obviously they never got to the bottom of it but all being interviewed swore it had really happened to that friend of a friend.

If you want to let someone know it's an urban legend, sometimes I've acted like they know it's an urban legend (when actually I'm not sure if they do know) and we are all in on the joke. You can reply something like "ahhh you almost had me", "oh yeah I've heard that one too, great story, imagine it really happened". That way you aren't calling them out for lying, more like congratulating them on an amusing story.

I got told I was repeating an urban legend on here when I recounted a story about a family members wedding. It very much happened but I wonder if it's been retold by so many guests nobody will ever believe it was true.

I think this is the right place to remind everyone that whatever the modern day internet says, EVERYONE knows McDonalds milkshakes contain no milk and are 90% potato.

Someone up thread mentioned zoo parking. That was Bristol zoo, which used to be in Clifton and faced an area of open land called the Downs. The story is that one day the guy who organised parking for the zoo didn't turn up and so, as the Downs is managed by the council and that's where he parked the cars, the zoo rang the council
"Your parking attendant hasn't turned up"
"Our attendant? We thought he worked for you. "
For 30 years the bloke had been rocking up, parking cars on the council's land and pocketing the money.

I actually think there's a grain of truth given how shite Bristol City Council are.

My dad once told me if you said the Lord’s Prayer backwards in a mirror the devil will appear. I think that was a popular one when he was at school in the 70’s.

I heard this too when I lived near Chester for uni early 2000. Apparently the Beckhams wanted a Saturday hotel wedding booking. So they paid off the couple's mortgage which was £167k ,cheque arrived from D and V Beckham. Young me believed it.

Chin wag. Chinny chin.

My friend’s nephew was in a bad way as he had them in his leg after going to South Africa and it got infected. She showed me pictures. 🤢

Hang the fuck on! This was in the paper last week, a racehorse eaten in Turkey!

No urban legend this

One single malteser is a hell of a job in itself.

Don't ask me how I know...but by all means thank me if you check 😉

Pleasr share the story

When people tell these sorts of stories they are just trying to make light, entertaining conversation. I’m not sure why it’s ’embarrassing’ or why you’d want to police it. Wouldn’t you come out much worse from the exchange by pulling them up on it than the person making amusing low key small talk?

The trouble with my XH was that he firmly believed his story (he'd been told by someone at work and he ALWAYS believed people in authority over him). It was hugely racist (semen being found in food in a local Indian take away). I plot-holed the story relentlessly, hoping that he would acknowledge that at least one of my points would negate the whole thing (how would they find semen in cooked food unless that's what they were looking for? Why would they even think to look? Why wouldn't they close the whole place down on health grounds BEFORE they even tested? Is it even possible to isolate semen in cooked food, would it not just be traces of DNA? etc).

He got angry instead of admitting that he'd been fooled. But, as I pointed out to him, stories like that can hit a small business' turnover very hard if they get round a neighbourhood, and would he have believed the tale so easily if it had been a fish and chip shop?

There can be implications. So it's not always good fun and entertaining conversation.

I don't know about that particular case - although it seems kind of implausible that he would come every single day for three decades without any days off or sick; but they had a similar thing in a car park featured on The Real Hustle.

Paul - in his regular character as the perfectly-named Rob Marks - wore a hi-viz jacket and carried a clipboard. As soon as somebody pulled up to park, he approached them, apologised that the payment machine wasn't working, so they had to pay him direct instead.

The vast majority of people instantly paid him - I think he might have offered them a (fake) receipt if required, but nobody bothered - just assuming that he was an authorised worker for the car park owner, and not some random chancer who just turned up to fleece them!

It would have been nasty for everybody dealing with all the penalty notices, had it been done as an actual scam, rather than just as a staged TV demonstration of the scam.