We're All Idiots

For my book source, I read The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Urban Legends. I absolutely love these of books. Despite the name, I honestly don’t think that these books dumb the topics down enough to really get through to an idiot; then again, I may be an idiot, so I guess I wouldn’t know. I chose this book because, opposed to the other books on urban legends, it did go into more than just a million different stories told across the universe. At first, I wasn’t really sure if it was going to help me answer my question, because of my experiences with other books on urban legends, but there were certain parts of the book that were helpful. The beginning of the book in particular is what I used. It explained urban legends in relation to people. The rest of the book was just like every other (with the exception of the conclusion), a collection of urban legend stories ranging from the disgusting, to the hilarious, to the terrifying.
Part one of the book was the most useful part in the book. Section two discusses "how we use urban legends to express subconscious issues and concerns". Section three answers common questions about urban legends that helps you understand why people have such a liking for them.
"One thing that the most persistent urban legends aren’t is boring. These stories stick around for a reason: They hold people’s attention, for that reason alone, they’re worth comparing and discussing. The process of working through fear and anxiety is constructive (and revealing) in and of itself. When we examine urban legends closely, we realize that some of them strike a nerve. We know that they’re bogus. We know that they don’t "matter" in the way that a news story on the front page of the New York Times "matters". But for some reason, a particular story keeps coming to mind again and again. Suddenly we realize that, even though the tale is "false" and has "nothing to do" with us, it contains important symbolic elements that we must need to examine on some deep level."
I think that this quote sums up exactly and entirely why people have such a lust for urban legends. I had to use the whole thing, because it did such a good job in answering my question, unlike any other book that I might have used.

Toropov, Brandon. The Complete Idiots Guide to Urban Legends. Alpha Books, 2001.
Print.