Talk:Urban legend
From Academic Kids
I personally would like to see a catalogue of classic urban legends stored somewhere in the 'pedia. I know there are any number of excellent sites out there (urbanlegends.com, snopes.com, etc) but frankly I'm still getting ridiculous emails about how "Mohammed Atta blew up a bus in 1986" and "Dunking Donuts employees burned the US Flag to celebrate Sept 11". We can't have too many page that dismiss this kind of insulting and often hurtful rubbish.
Before I proceed, I'm keen to get some other input. - User:MMGB
I certainly have no objection to coverage of specific legends here. Titling may be difficult. A few seem simple: "Blue star LSD", "Kidney theft". Legends about subjects with their own articles can be covered there--"Baghdad Betty" will certainly mention the "Bart Simpson" report. But others will have to have long, specific titles like "Urban legend of ..." Perhaps they might be grouped into large articles with collections of such legends? -- Lee Daniel Crocker
- How about "Kidney Theft (urban legend)", "JK Rowlings is a Satanist (urban legend)" etc? The Urban Legend page could then contain x-refs. User:MMGB
I have misgivings about adding lists of specific urban legends because any such list is bound to be a small subset of the excellent lists already available on the Web. A few examples to show the range of the hoaxes (I've added a wiki to Cow tipping) would, I think, suffice. What do others think? David 18:38 Oct 4, 2002 (UTC)
The Vmyths site is not really about "online urban legends". It's mostly about debunking (read: taking the piss out of) the antivirus industry. It does carry some stories of fictional or mythical viruses, but that is not its major focus. --FOo
What is the etymology of the term "urban legend"? These type of stories existed before we had modern megalopolises. --zandperl 02:47, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
On the etymology: At a guess (and I'm no expert) the term "urban legend" is used to describe a specific branch of folklore which grew up when people started to congregate in cities and towns. Just as the spread of biological viruses is made easier by large populations living in close proximity surely the spread of urban legends is helped by the same factors. Urban legends seem to mutate and spread much faster than more traditional folklore used to when society was mainly rural.
On lisitng urban legends: This is probably not the place for such an endeavour but if it were to be done surely they could be collected under their own category. My understanding of the categorization system is limited but an article's category and title give it a unique I.D. don't they? --Mandrill 22:16, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I removed
- One large source of urban legends is Sayville, Long Island. Urban legends originating from this village include the crazed fisherman legend.
I could find no reference to the "crazed fisherman legend" on snopes.com, or on the web, and I question why this is even here. The statement seems presumptuous.
dino 17:48, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
myth-busters
The TV show was already in the article; I removed a second reference. - DavidWBrooks 17:56, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC) ------
Can that cleanup tag be removed from the page? King Dedede 21:03, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
