Urban Legend Essay

Urban Legend Essay



Mountain Dew lowers your sperm count, the mixture of coca-cola and pop rocks explode your stomach, and a six year old act’s out the birth process, just three urban legends that many are skeptical about. An urban legend is a story a popular story alleged to be true which is spread from person to person verbally or through e-mail. Urban legends typically tell about, humiliating, humorous, terrifying, or supernatural events and have an implied message. Seeing as these stories are told person to person no two versions of an urban legend are exactly the same. Some people believe that urban legends are true and others believe that they are false.
An urban legend about the color of Mountain Dew lowering a male’s sperm count was going around, in turn causing teenage boys to stop drinking Mountain Dew. One reason people are skeptical of this urban legend is that the Food and Drug Administration has claimed that the yellow 5 dye that everyone thinks is causing this sperm count to be low it is safe. Also the fact that this dye has been in use since 1916 and we would most likely know by now if something was up with this dye. Another reason people are skeptical is because many other foods use this yellow 5 dye so more people then just those who drink mountain dew would notice these effects.
Another urban legend about mixing coca-cola and pop rocks causing and explosive effect in your stomach that will cause your stomach to explode went around at one point in time. It started with the inventions of pop rocks and parents getting concerned about the slight explosion in the mouths of the people eating this candy. The Food and Drug Administration opened a hotline to reassure everyone that the candy was safe, even though the FDA did this children continued spreading these rumors. What makes people skeptical about this legend is that the pop rocks contained less gas then half a can of soda and wouldn’t do much more then cause a harmless belch in those who consume them. The company that made pop rocks stopped marketing them in 1983 and most people took them doing this as further evidence to the idea that pop rocks were dangerous, but, the truth is that Kraft bought the rights to the product from General Foods in 1985 and then sold it as “Actions Candy.”
The last urban legend is about a second grade girl who acted out the process of giving birth as her show and tell one day because her mother had recently given birth to her baby brother. Some of skeptical of this event because they believe that even if the child did witness the fact, a child of six years old would be highly unlikely to act out everything that happens in the exact order. On the other hand, though, some believe that kids do some pretty crazy things that maybe this could have happened. Another thing that makes people so skeptical of this event is that the child referred to the baby being fed through an umbrella cord in contrast to the umbilical cord, or the middle wife in contrast to the midwife, and last the yucky stuff the baby came out covered in after playing the in center or the placenta.
Mountain Dew lowers your sperm count, the mixture of coca-cola and pop rocks explode your stomach, and a six year old act’s out the birth process, the three urban legends I researched. People should always be skeptical of what they hear or read, with the internet and people being able to access things so much easier these days it’s also a lot easier for false information to be spread around. And when this happens sometimes it hurts more people then it helps.