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It’s wild to think about how the human brain works sometimes. Once we hear something enough times, from enough sources or people we trust, we believe that it’s true – and then it’s super hard to convince us later that it’s not.
If you think that phenomenon is wild, too, then there’s a good chance some of these oft-believed hoaxes are going to blow your mind.
17. No dog owner ever really believed this.
That dogs mouths are cleaner than humans!
Guy in my town’s dog was having a violent seizure and the owner tried to help and got nipped.
Got capnocytophaga infection and died. So sad. But ya, dog mouths are full of nasty bacteria. I mean they lick their own buttholes! Cmon people!
16. I knew it!
That cracking your knuckles gives you arthritis.
I think there was a doctor who only cracked his knuckles on one hand for years just to prove to his mum that it’s an old wives tale.
15. I will tell my kids the same thing.
It’s illegal to keep the light on in the car while driving.
Now that I’m older and drive regularly, I realized my parents said that just because it’s annoying to have the light on while driving at night.
14. Best to not take chances.
If you pull out a grey hair three more grow in its place, my sister still believes this one.
It’s not logical but it is sort of on the right path for the wrong reason. If you pull out a gray hair, that gray hair will grow back and likely more gray hairs will grow too.
But this isn’t causal. It’s just how time and aging work. You’d have had the one gray hair and the other gray hairs would have shown up regardless.
13. They’re not admissible in court, so…
Lie detectors.
I have to take a polygraph every 5 years for my job. If I “fail” I’m in jeopardy of losing my job. Sadly, lie detectors are in fact a very real part of my continued financial well-being. Taking one is extremely stressful and the anxiety of being in the situation is enough to create false positives which causes further anxiety and increases the chance of “failing”.
They’re still bulls*%t though which makes the whole ordeal frustrating as f**k.
12. This is still a thing people say!
We only use 10% or our brain.
I get pissed off every time I think of that freaking movie “what if we used 100% of our brain?”
I just explain that they would have to make their own heart beat, lungs breath and every other function of the body that is autonomous like standing up!
11. Did this ever really happen?
People putting needles or poison in Halloween candy.
Now it’s people giving out ‘weed candy’/edibles, NOBODY is giving away edibles to your kids!
10. Don’t just leave it there!
Touching a baby bird will make its parents reject it.
Edited to add: Any baby animal. When in doubt, reach out to your local wildlife rehabilitation network/individual.
9. It’s all red!
Blood in your veins is blue and red in your arteries. Literally every elementary school teacher I had kept this lie going.
Or I always heard this one as your blood is blue until it leaves your body. After it escapes your blood is exposed to oxygen which turns it red.
8. Poor little guys.
That you swallow 8 spiders a year in your sleep.
“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy (sic) just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
7. Your organs already do that.
Detox. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. What do you think your liver and kidneys are doing all day?
If they weren’t working you would be on a form of detox called dialysis.
6. People just keep falling for it, too.
MLMs, Boss babes, “be your own boss” scams.
I’m not sure how many documentaries need to be put on YouTube before people will stop buying into these companies and wasting their money.
5. Creativity is for everyone.
That people are “right” or “left” brain thinkers and that it has any bearing on her personality and level of logic or creativity.
We still get this all the time in education! So annoying!
4. You will not convince some people otherwise.
Shaving making hair grow in thicker.
My mum and grandma still believe this despite me explaining how it works. It’s crazy how many people still believe this!
3. This made me laugh.
Professional fighters don’t actually have to register their hands as weapons. No body part can be registered as a weapon.
Wow thank y’all for the upvotes this is main answer I could think of and I’m upset with myself for actually believing it for years.
2. I’ll take all of the bread, though.
The food pyramid.
Learned that in school. To eat a lot of bread, pasta, potatoes and rice. Now I am fat.
Edit: Don´t take it too serious. It was more about how our nutrition behaviours are changing over time. Yes, the old food pyramid was also made by the food industry. Now we know that it is better to eat low carb and a lot of vegetables.
Also if you eat bread, it is better to eat whole grain bread, because you get a longer saturation, through more complex carbohydrates. The most important part, is the calorie intake vs. the calorie outtake.
1. Poor guy.
Wolf hierarchy with alpha on top and omega at the bottom.
The author of the original paper has been on a thirty-year crusade to make people forget he ever wrote it. The following year he published a correction. Essentially, he’d been following a single pack of recently released (into Yellowstone) wolves and observed their behavior. When he redid the study, he followed multiple packs, both new and legacy, and realized that the pack structure basically followed the family structure.
TL;DR: Original author redid the study and realized there were no “alphas”, just parents.
I still remember finding out that the people behind the Amityville Horror story had made the entire thing up. Crazy!
What’s something you believed for a long time only to find out later it was a hoax? Confess in the comments!
