sandbox urban legend/bogus news circulation thread

latest one that I'm amazed so many of my friends fell for -- a FB post indicating this generic stock picture of a child in the hospital, if shared 100 times, will result in a free heart transplant for the child.

this thread is to talk about current urban legends, or just to talk about your favorite classic ones (ie, the "Marilyn Manson removed his ribs to suck his own dick")

anal beads "lawnmowered" I'll let you google the rest

and now I'm suddenly sick to my stomach

(which means it was an A+ contribution to this thread!)

lot of people stupidly falling for this obv doctored vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdkNSXnFDc

About once every six months, my coworker sends me the email about how you need to call a number and register your cell number on a Do Not Call list or you'll start getting telemarketing calls. I explain to her that it's not real, and I send her a link to the Snopes page, and she tells me she doesn't believe me and that she's going to call and give them her number to be safe.

Thursday she asked me if I got a lot of text spam on my cell phone, and I don't, so I said I did not, and she said, "I called and gave my number to the Do Not Call registry I told you about, so I don't know why it doesn't work."

hahahahaha

I used to work in an office of intelligent but introverted people and would occasionally get fwded these emails of blatant nonsense, like the one about a guy approaching you in a car park to test a perfume but when he sprays it it's acid or rohypnol or something. My mum sent me that one regularly for about 2 years. Anyway I got on my high horse and took the three seconds it takes to google/Snopes it and sent that around. The colleague who'd sent it was absolutely flabbergasted that someone would send round something like that that wasn't real... and WHY??

http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/perfume.asp

the person I succeeded at work emailed around something similar about criminals who would stick a piece of paper in your trunk so that it wouldn't close all the way and the light would illuminate, so you would get out to close it, and they'd be lurking nearby and jump in the car, with the keys in it,and steal it, and now have your address and purse!

Like...doesn't that operate on way too many assumptions? The average person would just drive home without noticing.

i have been telling people that the only animals that get sunburnt are humans and pigs. no idea where i picked this up.

i checked this "fact" recently and it turns out to be untrue, whoops