It can be hard to track down where and why myths really get going, whether they spread worldwide or stay in small, concentrated pockets like local towns. They can catch on quickly, and like a game of telephone, it doesn’t matter whether or not the information is true in order for it to get passed on.
Myths can also be hard to pull out once they take root, but these 16 people have a few they would really, really like to eradicate for good.
16. Only a day or two.
Gum does not stay in your stomach for 7 years.
Sure, swallowing a lot of gum isn’t great and can cause problems in your digestive system, but it only takes a day or two to pass.
15. It’s so much more.
That OCD is liking things to be extremely neat, tidy or organized.
It’s almost kind of frustrating to me, because I have OCD and it’s manifested in multiple ways (scrupulosity, some counting type compulsions, having to do things in a certain order), but the most obvious outward sign is really typical of what people believe OCD to be. My apartment is spotless, everything in a specific place. I’m organized to an uncomfortable degree – my Spotify is curated to death, all my file systems on all my computers (work and personal) are impeccable, I keep lists of a lot of things that I’m always writing and rewriting, etc.
But it’s hard to explain to people why I do this. It’s not because I just like things tidy, it’s a pathological need to control my environment. My anxiety gets bad unless things around me are in the correct place, be that physical or virtual. As soon as a space becomes “mine” I have to own it fully. And that means deep cleaning and reorganizing.
14. No emotional liability.
That bipolar means you are “happy one minute and sad the next minute”. It’s a disorder where you have episodes of depression and episodes of mania/hypomania.
These episodes last weeks/months/years. There’s nothing about emotional lability at all. That’s an entirely different disorder
13. Sometimes three times – or more.
“Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.”
In fact, it does – and frequently.
12. They’re harmless.
That porcupines “shoot” their quills out. I’ve known (educated) people who have set live traps to catch nuisance raccoons near their chicken coop, only to catch a porcupine instead and then shoot it so it couldn’t shoot the quills at them vs. letting the poor thing out to freely walk away as it is harmless.
The same goes for skunks. They aren’t spiteful, and they do have to choose their battles wisely. They only have so much spray to use before having to wait more than a week to replenish.
11. Poor misunderstood lemmings.
That lemmings will follow each other off a cliff. That’s a myth perpetuated by a nature documentary which actually drove a herd off a cliff using their vehicles.
It was done for a Disney-produced film called White Wilderness.
10. At the same time…that bit is important.
We only use 10% of our brain.
9. Ask any parent of Irish twins.
You can’t get pregnant if you’re breastfeeding. It lowers your chances but not to zero.
Source: I, a mother of two children ages 7 and 8. Doesn’t matter if your baby hasn’t had anything but breastmilk. Doesn’t matter if you haven’t a normal cycle. All of those things they say. It doesn’t matter.
I promise you absolutely without a doubt CAN get pregnant while breastfeeding.
8. That poor lady.
That the spilled coffee lady made a bunch of money.
What everyone seems to miss about that story is the raw power large corporations have. I welcome any corrections to any details that I miss or get inaccurate. Here’s what happened:
An old lady spills coffee on herself. The car was parked outside a McDonalds, and she was in the passenger seat. The coffee was kept at near-boiling temperature because that keeps the coffee fresh the longest, thus saving McDonalds money.
She hired a lawyer, and was lucky enough to get a damn good one who did his research, and found plenty of cases similar to hers.
McDonalds was shown to be 100% in the wrong. The serving temperature was demonstrably unsafe to the point where it had caused severe third-degree burns and fused the woman’s labia together. Not only that, but the McDonald’s employee handbook listed a lower coffee temperature than what this cup was served at.
McDonalds was ordered to pay millions (I’d have to Google the exact number), but they appealed.
Meanwhile, this lady was elderly. She couldn’t be in and out of court all the time, and she still wasn’t getting paid. Her quality of life dropped considerably.
McDonald’s spent money on advertising and propaganda to make the case look absurd, completely fabricating the myth that this was a frivolous lawsuit. It was even in a Seinfeld episode. Edit, courtesy of u/Algur: This one is a bit more nefarious. McDonald’s didn’t just spend money on advertising to make this seem like a frivolous lawsuit. They actively colluded with just about every mainstream media outlet to accomplish this.
The case was appealed. A new jury was brought in. This jury had been primed to find the case frivolous, and they did. It got dismissed, and the woman died not seeing a penny of it.
Edit, courtesy of u/Algur: The judge reduced punitive damages to $480,000, three times the compensatory amount, for a total of $640,000. The decision was appealed by both McDonald’s and Liebeck in December 1994, but the parties settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
Think about it, McDonalds has so damn much money and power, that it was literally cheaper for them to move the entire culture than to pay for a lawsuit and risk potential loss of business.
7. Help the nekky bird.
That mother birds will reject a baby if you handle it because they can smell if you’ve touched it.
While you should leave fledgling (small but feathery) birds alone unless there’s immediate danger, putting a naked little hatchling back in the nest is totally fine. Birds don’t really have a sense of smell.
Help the nekky bird, save the duckling stuck in a grate, move the lost quail chicks stuck in the road due to a high curb. They’re gonna be fine.
6. There are so many symptoms.
ADHD-related: you can’t have ADHD, you’re so calm 🙂
5. Always refuse.
That lie detector tests are accurate. There’s a reason they aren’t admissable in court. They are completely unreliable. Even the creator made sure the public knew they weren’t fool proof. People still take them at face value all the time. That irks me.
Cops know this too. It’s just an interrogation tactic. If they’re having trouble getting their suspect to confess, well, hook them up to a high tech machine that they don’t understand and tell them it can tell when they are lying or not. That may grease out a confession.
This method does work, it cracked Chris Watts pretty well. But I’m sure many innocent people have been coerced into false confessions or have had their reputations ruined because they “failed” a polygraph.
4. Bull fighting is gross.
Bulls are angered by the color red.
I believed this nonsense as a child thanks to popular cartoons and never realized why people were so rightfully disgusted by bull ‘fighting’.
3. Don’t wait.
That you have to wait 24 hours to report a missing person.
It is a myth perpetuated TV and movies for the sake of drama, but not true in real like at all.
It is one of those things that everyone thinks is true because of movies but isn’t.
2. They’re just regular cats.
Leave the black cats alone, they did nothing wrong and are adorable void fuzzies.
1. They’re not trees.
“You can tell a ladybug’s age by counting it’s spots.” Even as a kid this didn’t make sense to me. Why tell your kid this? What’s the point?
Yes! These are all so annoying and easily disproved. Just stop it already.
What myths do you absolutely hate? If it’s not on this list, tell us about it in the comments!
