Cynthia Boedihardjo

Urban Legends

Overview

Urban legends have been passed along from person to person by oral or written communication to fool people into believing they are true. They come in many different forms such as, chain letters, requests, warnings and threats. To differentiate between an urban legend and other types of narratives, we must examine where legends come from and how they are spread. Urban legends are told so that other people will spread the story around and cause confusion, fearfulness, and wonderment in the minds of the readers. If people take these stories to be true, implications such as clogging up the networks in the Internet will surface.

Urban Legends Defined

Urban legends are tales of contemporary folklore that purports to be true and is often designed to elicit an emotional response from the audience. Legends are typically good, mind-boggling, fascinating, engrossing, and/or miraculous stories that capture a wide audience. A legend often revolves around a strong central character or social issue of contemporary interest. On the Internet, urban legends are spread and survive over time through repeated e-mail forwardings and website postings. Legends usually start from nowhere and primarily are spread from person to person. They are generally not traceable to one source, such as a book or a newspaper clipping. This is the reason why no two legends are always alike. Contrary to popular belief legends aren’t always false, but they are always told as if they are true with no real supporting evidence to back up the story.

Why Urban Legends Are Told

Only the person starting the legend knows the real reason, but here are some rationales:

To see how far a letter will spread
To harass another person by e-mailing spam to everyone’s mailbox
To get money from people using a pyramid scheme
To damage a person’s or organization’s reputation

How to Spot an Urban Legend

An urban legend often starts with statements, "this is a true story," "this really happened to a friend of a friend," or "my sister’s co-worker."
Consider the form of the information passed along to you. Is it a story with a beginning, middle, and ending? Does is have a punch line similar to a joke? If so, it may be an urban legend.
The first thing you should notice about the letter is the request to "send this to everyone you know," or some variation of this statement.
If the message seems geared more to persuade than to inform, its probably a form of an urban legend.
If you’ve heard the story before from a different source, with different characters and details, it’s most likely to be an urban legend.
If the story seems too good to be true, horrific, too hilarious, be suspicious.
Consider and see if there’s any evidence to indicate the story you’ve heard is false or if there’s some common sense reason to not believe it.
Check for references to outside sources. Legends will not typically give out names, or websites that support the story.

Types of Urban Legends

Chain Letters

Most chain letters send have a similar pattern. They share three recognizable parts:

A hook – a way to catch your interest and get you to read the rest of the letter, "don’t throw this out," "danger," "help this poor girl," or "listen carefully."
A threat – once you are hooked, you read on to the threat. Most threats are used to warn you about the terrible things that will happen if you do not maintain the chain.
A request – simply asks you to distribute the letter to everyone you know or care about.

These letters never mention how sending large amounts of e-mail to others will clog the Internet or the fact that the message is false. Chain letters usually do not have the name or contact information of the original sender, so it’s impossible to check on its authenticity. And the ones that list a name and number usually give out fake sources.

Warnings

An urban legend usually tells a horrific story of some sort and usually warns the reader it could happen to them. It then asks the reader to pass along the story to their friends and warn them of the situation. These warnings are typically scare alerts started by malicious people – and passed on by innocent users who think they are helping the community by spreading the warning.

What to do When Receiving an Urban Legend

There are many websites on the Internet that can verify whether the narrative you just heard is an urban legend or not. If you cannot find a credible source, or any evidence that proves the story to be true, head to one of the following sites:

When you know for sure the letter you received is an urban legend, just delete it and save yourself the embarrassment of sending it to your friends who will think you’re a fool for believing such a story. The worse thing you can do is to forward it to everyone in your address book because not only will it clog up the Internet network, you will also be helping the hoaxer achieve his task of distributing an urban legend. The U.S. Department of Energy has suggested,

"If you receive a chain letter in your e-mail, either delete it or send it on to one person. That one person is your local security officer or system administrator, thereby allowing them to investigate and warn their users not to pass on the letter. Do not send it to your friends and relatives because you will be clogging up the network. In addition, you lend your and your company's reputation to the message, making it appear to be authentic even when that is not the case. Hit the delete button instead and put that message where it belongs."

Social Ramifications of Urban Legends

The biggest risk for sending out false urban legends is their ability to multiply. When someone sends a hoax message to everyone in his or her address book, other people in that address book will pass along the message to their friends and in turn clog up the Internet. There have been cases where e-mail systems have collapsed after dozens of users forwarded a false warning to everybody in the company. The cost and risks associated with hoaxes may not seem to be that high, and isn't when you consider the cost of handling one hoax on one machine. However, if you consider everyone that receives a hoax, that small cost gets multiplied into some pretty significant costs. For example, if everyone on the Internet were to receive one hoax message and spend one minute reading and discarding it, the cost would be something like:

1,689,066,939 people * 1/60 hour * $50/hour = $1,407,555,726