Snopes

The article “Urban legends spin tales of history, fiction and strange facts” by Marcelo Duran, is about urban legends and their validity. The author talks about how urban legends are most popular amongst college students, and that they have evolved throughout history to match with the era. The biggest topic of this article, however is snopes.com, a website that debunks many of the urban legends passed my mouth, written word or email. It goes over some popular legends such as the munchkin hanging in “The Wizard of Oz” and other legends revolving around certain popular movies.
When I started on this project, I wondered if I was going to be able to write about snopes.com; it didn’t seem to fit well with the question I was trying to answer. Now that I’ve read this article, I see that snopes.com is, in fact very important to figuring out why people are so in love with urban legends. In my opinion, people like to be scared. Or at least the vast majority of us do. We thrive on fear, anxiety, the unknown, and the rush that comes with that. However, we never want the fear to be too realistic. People want to jump out of airplanes, but only with a parachute. In his article, Duran says that “fiction-alized stories are easily passed from one person to another because of the belief in reliable sources” (Duran). I disagree with this statement, because, I believe that people are interested until they truly become frightened that something as horrible as some of the urban legends could actually happen. People thrive on the pretense of fear, not the reality. Snopes.com is a valid source to find out if such legends are true, therefore, either awarding comfort or terror to those who have sought after it.

Duran, Marcelo. "Urban legends spin tales of history, fiction and strange facts." 01 Nov. 2000 3 Apr 2009 .