How To Spot An Urban Legend
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The term "urban legend" describes untrue or no longer true stories which are presented as currently true. They generally provoke strong feelings and an urge to forward the email to friends. Popular urban legends have included:
- Andy Rooney wrote an essay praising older women . (untrue)
- Athiests are trying to ban all religious broadcasting. (untrue)
- Members of Congress don't pay into Social Security. (untrue)
Sound familiar? Chances are that, at some point, you've forwarded an urban legend on to your friends. Don't get embarrassed. Get educated!
An urban legend email will generally have already been forwarded several times. This will be obvious from the multiple quote levels, usually shown as blue bars to the left of the text. In addition, other readers may have added their own comments. These types of emails also tend to use large, colored fonts and to contain images.
Here's what to do the next time you receive what appears to be an urban legend email, and have the urge to forward it along:
- Find a unique phrase within the email and copy it.
- Go to Google and paste the phrase into the search field. Add quotation marks on either side. After the closing quotes, add the word "true". Click on the "Google Search" button. In the search results, you should find someone who's already looked into whether or not the claims in your email are true. No luck? Try the same search with "real" and "urban legend" instead of "true".
- If the email you received doesn't show up in the search results, your email is probably (but not definitely) safe to forward. However, see the Time Killers section to decide whether or not you want to send it even if the information is true.
