Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

The article “Modern Folklore: Cybermythology in Western Culture” by Darrell Joyce, is about the evolution of urban legends. It mentions that people often “embellished a story to make it more interesting, or passed on a story that they have heard secondhand, as if it was their own experience” (Joyce). Stories are embellished, therefore modified, and propagated. The author also talks about where the legends started, their progression through history.
“Folklore has probably existed for as long as we have had language” (Joyce). This article says that urban legends began at the turn of the twentieth century. They were originally told as a sort of heed or warning to certain groups of people to keep them from doing something that would actually have lesser consequences than the ones told in urban legends. They often had moral messages that would also have less dire consequences. Now, I do not think that urban legends serve these purposes anymore. I believe that they are passed on now solely for entertainment. There may have been a time when these types of legends were effective in keeping people for perhaps doing something that they weren’t supposed to do, (for example, as a child my mother told me that I can’t drink mountain dew, because it would make me jump out of my skin) but now such stories have gotten too ludicrous for anyone to think plausible. There are some cases when the legends are real, however most people have good enough judgment to distinguish between the two.

Joyce, Darrell. "Modern Folklore: Cybermythology in Western Culture." Antrhoglobe Journal 25 Oct. 2003 3 Apr 2009 .