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Pre-internet social contagions

Started by touchingcloth, August 07, 2019, 11:08:29 PM

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The Lurker

Quote from: touchingcloth on August 08, 2019, 04:37:46 AM
What method of suicide did he opt for when you heard that rumour?

Definitely something about shoving pencils up his nose which he pierced into his brain. Or something like that.

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on August 08, 2019, 02:12:14 AM
Talking of silly dances, in an episode of Derry Girls they all do a silly 'dance' (not a dance, they all sit in a line and do rowing motions) to the song "Rock The Boat".  Can anyone tell me if that was ever a real 'thing' or did the makers if the tv show invent it?


My mate from Derry said that it was a thing at family weddings when he was growing up.

But yeah "oops upside your head", surely? 

gib

Quote from: Jockice on August 08, 2019, 09:52:58 AM(Incidentally, my first proper wank happened in the middle of the night after a school trip to Alton Towers, when I woke up with a strange urge caused by a couple of girls I'd seen that day. Not really knowing what happened I just used part of the bed sheets.  I continued doing that until a friend pointed out that it would leave a stain.

It's lucky you had an advisor in bed with you during your first wank.

Jockice

Quote from: gib on August 08, 2019, 10:13:53 AM
It's lucky you had an advisor in bed with you during your first wank.

More a guide. A Girl Guide!

Icehaven

There was a Billy Corgan death rumour in the late 90s, but it turned out to be their keyboard player for gigs that had died. This was before the internet or mobiles so it was a frantic afternoon of everyone ringing each other going ''Have you heard? BILLY CORGAN'S DEAD!!!'' But he wasn't.

Jockice

Quote from: A Hat Like That on August 08, 2019, 09:56:10 AM
My mate from Derry said that it was a thing at family weddings when he was growing up.

But yeah "oops upside your head", surely?

Wonder why that particular song was used for that particular dance though. Does anyone know? I was in my mid-teens when it came out and even then no-one seemed to know the reason. It was just something you did. Although I didn't.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Rizla on August 08, 2019, 12:18:45 AM
Well back in the olden days when jokes about things like the Zeebrugge ferry disaster or the space shuttle Challenger (Need Another Seven Astronauts!)  went pre-internet-viral, it was cos of lorry drivers swapping funnies at the services. FACT

As I type this, I am conscious it will sound like a joke, but I swear I remember seeing some home-drawn cartoons depicting 'sick' jokes about the First Gulf War which had been circulated by fax (seemingly, from the multiple date stamps at the head and foot of the pages, many, many times). The receptionist at the place I worked told me that she sent and received quite a few similar 'funny' faxes among her friends who worked as receptionists at other companies.

Meanwhile, at Reading Festival in 1990 or 1991, on the Sunday night someone I was with started pondering what could have happened in the world over the weekend without us knowing. Somehow we went from there to deciding to start a rumour of Cliff Richard dying in a car crash, and then seeing if the next day anyone would tell us the news.

Jockice

Quote from: Jockice on August 08, 2019, 09:52:58 AM

(Incidentally, my first proper wank happened in the middle of the night after a school trip to Alton Towers, when I woke up with a strange urge caused by a couple of girls I'd seen that day. Not really knowing what happened I just used part of the bed sheets.  I continued doing that until a friend pointed out that it would leave a stain. Or in the case of my bed multiple stains. I'd never even considered it until that point. I genuinely thought it was just like water. My poor mum having to clean and change my bedsheets.)

Incidentally, I didn't usually talk masturbation with friends. For a start I was almost 16 before I had my first proper one (we've discussed this on here before. Apparently I'm the only male on earth who didn't start shooting off in all directions the day he turned 13) and if the subject did come up after that I'd just totally deny ever having done it. Not that I was ashamed or anything, I was just being all enigmatic. Or trying to be. I soon discovered that while it may have been my USP it didn't make me attractive to women. But then not much did.

Someone just happened to mention stained bedsheets one day and I went home later, looked and thought, 'OH NO!'

Jockice

Quote from: gilbertharding on August 08, 2019, 10:18:49 AM

Meanwhile, at Reading Festival in 1990 or 1991, on the Sunday night someone I was with started pondering what could have happened in the world over the weekend without us knowing. Somehow we went from there to deciding to start a rumour of Cliff Richard dying in a car crash, and then seeing if the next day anyone would tell us the news.

I was there in 1990 and can't remember any rumours of that sort. However, wasn't there one in 1991 that Edwyn Collins' set had overrun and he'd been dragged off stage and kicked to death by the bouncers? I wasn't even there and I heard that.

Quote from: Jockice on August 08, 2019, 10:18:14 AM
Wonder why that particular song was used for that particular dance though. Does anyone know? I was in my mid-teens when it came out and even then no-one seemed to know the reason. It was just something you did. Although I didn't.

Probably came from the 80s soul scene based around Essex/Kent - they had tons of shit like that.

Glebe

I still believe Bob Holness played the saxophone on 'Baker Street'. I still believe that.

Blue Jam

At my school there was a rumour that Jared Leto had died. A few weeks later I was reading the letters page in some teenage girls magazine and was surprised to see a little box with the header "JARED LETO IS ALIVE!" and "This month we've had a lot of letters from worried Jared Leto fans- stop worrying, we've spoken to his people and he is alive and well!" Evidently that rumour wasn't confined to my school and was a nationwide thing...

This would have been around 1994, when My So-Called Life had just started airing. I just tried looking up the rumour of Jared Leto's 1994 death, and learned that he also died in 2012 and 2013, and he died again only this month. Why Jared Leto, of all people, and why has he been regularly dying for nearly a quarter of a century now?

dr beat

A suspiciously high number of British universities seem to have one halls of residence which was based on the same design as a Swedish women's prison.  And were haunted.

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: non capisco on August 08, 2019, 08:37:35 AM
The other one was that he was already suffering from a terminal illness and his dying wish was to star in a Frosties advert. The bit at the end where there's a rising camera angle was supposed to represent him ascending to heaven. I think he was supposed to have written the song as well, "that's why it's so shit."

I always thought the song was just a bad rip-off of Ian Dury's 'I Wanna Be Straight':
https://youtu.be/O395ZHZbGhA?t=32

Here's the ad for comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S6N_gQPYIM

Quote from: dr beat on August 08, 2019, 10:41:59 AM
A suspiciously high number of British universities seem to have one halls of residence which was based on the same design as a Swedish women's prison.  And were haunted.

Reminds me of the oft-cited fact (in the Midlands, anyway) that Meadowhall shopping centre was designed to be easily converted to a prison in the event of national crisis/civic riots. And have a large supply of body bags. Many folk swearing to know someone who works for council/planning authority and can affirm that this is Totally True.

Blue Jam

How many people here had a schoolfriend whose mum's friend's aunt's cousin went on holiday and got bitten by a spider, and after she came back the wound burst open and loads of tiny baby spiders came running out?

Blue Jam

Quote from: touchingcloth on August 07, 2019, 11:50:24 PM
I get the phones thing, but the Kel one has always struck me as odd because it's hard to imagine the crossover between the people who would know or care who he was enough to want to tell someone else on the one hand and the people who have any need to make phone calls - much less long distance ones - on the other.

"Hello, grandad. How are things over there 100 miles away? By the way, Kel's dead. Kel. Car crash. Kel. Ask the next child my age you see."

I can't see it.

Could this one be partly explained by the way Good Burger has become a bit of a cult film, and has been watched by lots of people who wouldn't have been in Kenan and Kel's target audience?

Dex Sawash

The rowing thing is Billy Squire's The Stroke1



1. And probably something from each decade back to the invention of the rowing motion

Jockice

Quote from: rectorofstiffkey on August 08, 2019, 10:52:31 AM
Reminds me of the oft-cited fact (in the Midlands, anyway) that Meadowhall shopping centre was designed to be easily converted to a prison in the event of national crisis/civic riots. And have a large supply of body bags. Many folk swearing to know someone who works for council/planning authority and can affirm that this is Totally True.

I've lived in Sheffield for most of my life. And actually covered the opening of Meadowhall for the local paper. But have never heard that one before.

It is probably true though.

popcorn

Apparently there was a bloke who started wanking off and his cock actually thought it was having sex so actual semen came out of his cock and he had to go to hospital.

gilbertharding

Quote from: rectorofstiffkey on August 08, 2019, 10:52:31 AM
Reminds me of the oft-cited fact (in the Midlands, anyway) that Meadowhall shopping centre was designed to be easily converted to a prison in the event of national crisis/civic riots. And have a large supply of body bags. Many folk swearing to know someone who works for council/planning authority and can affirm that this is Totally True.

There always used to be rumours of tunnels under stuff, too - the whole of Maidstone, for instance. And nuclear bunkers (there was supposed to be one under the canteen at the old Kent County Council offices where I worked until they sold the site and demolished everything).

Twit 2

Quote from: dr beat on August 08, 2019, 10:41:59 AM
A suspiciously high number of British universities seem to have one halls of residence which was based on the same design as a Swedish women's prison.  And were haunted.

In the case of UEA's 'Waveney Terrace' (demolished a while ago now) it was very easy to believe.

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: Blue Jam on August 08, 2019, 10:55:46 AM
How many people here had a schoolfriend whose mum's friend's aunt's cousin went on holiday and got bitten by a spider, and after she came back the wound burst open and loads of tiny baby spiders came running out?

Also a schoolfriend whose relative's friend went on holiday & bought cocaine only for it to turn out to be finely-ground glass after they snorted it - which I've just figured out comes purely from a confusion over scientific terminology ('ground glass opacity') used in studying scans of lungs & how that's been used in various research on coke's effects.

Quote from: Blue Jam on August 08, 2019, 11:02:18 AM
Could this one be partly explained by the way Good Burger has become a bit of a cult film, and has been watched by lots of people who wouldn't have been in Kenan and Kel's target audience?

I was in the early-teens demographic for Kenan & Kel but I don't recall hearing the car crash rumour until long after the show had ended & I was either in college or had already left, at which point it spread amongst everyone I knew who used to watch the show in their early teens but was now approaching 20.

Endicott

Although the title here is Rowing Boat Song it's still Oops upside your head by the Gap Band that these revellers are rowing to. I first saw this being done in 1981, at the 6th form disco.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ2qUXlLL-s


Wiki claims this one as well but I don't recall seeing it. Rock the Boat by The Hues Corporation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfBwsG8ubFw

Quote from: Jockice on August 08, 2019, 11:14:13 AM
I've lived in Sheffield for most of my life. And actually covered the opening of Meadowhall for the local paper. But have never heard that one before.

It is probably true though.

Well, that's strange. When I lived in Nottingham we arranged trips there each year for real estate students and every year students from that region would mention it (or occasionally, present it as fact). They'd be from Nottingham/Leicester though, not  Sheffield- maybe people actually from Sheffield were more likely to recognise it as bollocks.

Quote from: gilbertharding on August 08, 2019, 11:17:36 AM
There always used to be rumours of tunnels under stuff, too - the whole of Maidstone, for instance. And nuclear bunkers (there was supposed to be one under the canteen at the old Kent County Council offices where I worked until they sold the site and demolished everything).

There were tunnels underneath my old school. About five years after I left, a bunch of students went back in the summer and had a decent go at exploring them.

Other than finding you could get up into one of the chimneys, they turned out to be rather dusty tunnels.



50:50 chance one of those kids has an industrial disease now.

Jockice

Quote from: rectorofstiffkey on August 08, 2019, 11:23:49 AM
Well, that's strange. When I lived in Nottingham we arranged trips there each year for real estate students and every year students from that region would mention it (or occasionally, present it as fact). They'd be from Nottingham/Leicester though, not  Sheffield- maybe people actually from Sheffield were more likely to recognise it as bollocks.

Maybe everyone was just keeping it secret from me.

Quote from: Jockice on August 08, 2019, 11:43:33 AM
Maybe everyone was just keeping it secret from me.

It's probably more due to the fact that when you actually go to Meadowhall, it's apparent that it would be massively unsuited to a prison. I suspect that most of the people spreading the tale had never been there.  I just asked Mr Rector, who studied in Sheffield, and to my surprise he'd never heard it.

It's interesting if we're thinking about these rumours in general - are they actually more likely to spread about other places, not your own locality? I guess that stories about people/places really close are much easier to instantly debunk.

The Lurker

Quote from: rectorofstiffkey on August 08, 2019, 10:52:31 AM
Reminds me of the oft-cited fact (in the Midlands, anyway) that Meadowhall shopping centre was designed to be easily converted to a prison in the event of national crisis/civic riots. And have a large supply of body bags. Many folk swearing to know someone who works for council/planning authority and can affirm that this is Totally True.

Or that someone returned someone's wallet in Meadowhall/Metrocentre/Bluewater and in return for their honesty, they're warned not to return to the shopping centre within the next day or two due to an upcoming terrorist attack on the place.

Sebastian Cobb

I'm a locum kebab shop worker, they employ me to make a kebab out of a rat, I've done a shift in a kebab shop in every town in this land.