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Pre-internet social contagions

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

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EOLAN

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?

Reminds me of the time I was on holiday and didn't see the news all week and a few days after I got back someone said to me "Do you want to hear a joke about the Martianess" and I say "Ok" and I'd had some beers and had a silly grin on my face and they just said "You sick bastard" and walked away.  That left me confused.  I was expecting a joke about a female martian.  Weeks or even months later I learned of the Marchioness disaster.  I never did find out what the joke was, or even if there was a joke.

I think this was done at my (or the girls school) Graduation ceremony I was at in 2002. Having watched Men Behaving Badly I was upset that they didn't do Rod Stewart's 'Sailing' with their choreography instead.

zomgmouse

MARILYN MANSON RIB REMOVAL SUCKING OWN PENIS

Endicott

Have we done Marc Almond's stomach of cum yet?

robhug

I remember strong rumours about the death of the lead singer of German happy hardcore band Scooter. Google tells me this wasn't the case at all, solace for all fans of hyper! hyper!

Blue Jam

Quote from: The Lurker on August 08, 2019, 12:02:51 PM
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.

That's also that old joke where someone is warned not to go to Luton/Dunstable/Scunthorpe in the next two days:

"Why? Will there be a bombing?"
"No- it's just because it's a shithole..."

Blue Jam

Quote from: zomgmouse on August 08, 2019, 12:20:23 PM
MARILYN MANSON RIB REMOVAL SUCKING OWN PENIS

...and the same rumour 15 years earlier, but about Prince

The Lurker

I remember a rumour at our school that Dr Pepper kills your sperm. I thought that was just the stupid kids at our school who thought that but I've done a Twitter search for "Dr Pepper sperm" and it appears it wasn't just at my school that believed that. Mind you, I don't like Dr Pepper so it never affected me - life is good.

Jockice

Quote from: Endicott on August 08, 2019, 12:22:00 PM
Have we done Marc Almond's stomach of cum yet?

I refer you to my comment on page one of this thread.

Mick Jagger sticking a Mars bar up a fifteen year old Marianne Faithful.

Did anybody else have a friend of a friend who had a wedding booked at a posh hotel, were asked to give up their booking, said no and were then told that the Beckhams wanted the room for wedding/christening and would pay off their mortgage? That seemed to happen to an astonishing number of people. Mr and Mrs Beckham might take note that planning celebrations earlier would result in them not having to hand over 250k to people's aunties friends.

Icehaven

Quote from: The Lurker on August 08, 2019, 12:34:24 PM
I remember a rumour at our school that Dr Pepper kills your sperm.

Menthol cigarettes were accused of this too. Why menthol were singled out when surely all fags affect sperm though I don't know, maybe the rumour was started by the non-menthol fag industry?

object-lesson

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

Mr_Simnock

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on August 08, 2019, 12:39:41 PM
Mick Jagger sticking a Mars bar up a fifteen year old Marianne Faithful.

The version I heard it was a toblerone. All these things just spread by word of mouth in pubs, schools and work places etc, simple.

nw83

In high school, I remember regularly hearing the one about a crazy rock-n-roll kid from the nearby school stealing a penguin from Flamingo Land (our nearest theme park) and taking it home. Weirdly I heard it two years ago, for the first time in decades, from a 50+ year-old uncle who said a workmate did it. It doesn't really work in the smartphone era.

There's one about a conservative old British woman, who hasn't seen a black person before, going to the US for the first time, going in a lift, and anxiously dropping to the floor when a black man enters and says "down" (assuming he means "get down!" because all black people are criminals). The black man, rather than being insulted, laughs his head off at the misunderstanding, explains he just meant "going down?" and, the following week, it turns out the man has paid the woman's hotel bill - he was Eddie Murphy / Denzil Washington / Fatman Scoop, and he hadn't laughed like that in ages.

Didn't make sense the first time I heard it, from an Irish woman, who said the old woman was from Leeds - a big city with a massive annual West Indian Carnival. I've heard it a few times since then, mind.

I think what keeps them going is the teller heard it from a friend, who said it happened to their friend, but instead of saying to the next person "I heard it from a friend of a friend" (which sounds suspicious to begin with), they say it just happened to their friend. Then the receiver thinks "that person's close friend surely wouldn't lie to them" and (semi)believes it, and on it goes.

Quote from: The Lurker on August 08, 2019, 12:34:24 PM
I remember a rumour at our school that Dr Pepper kills your sperm. I thought that was just the stupid kids at our school who thought that but I've done a Twitter search for "Dr Pepper sperm" and it appears it wasn't just at my school that believed that. Mind you, I don't like Dr Pepper so it never affected me - life is good.

Coca Cola was used as a virginal douche for contraceptive purposes, maybe it came from that

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Coca%20Cola%20douche

nw83

Not sure if this is the same thing, but I was always puzzled when certain clothing, not advertised anywhere, suddenly became fashionable across a large area, like 'Eclipse Spliffy' jackets and that. I suppose this is like the "why did the original chavs all suddenly start dressing in that way?" cliche observation, but I'm genuinely interested in how.

Jockice

Quote from: nw83 on August 08, 2019, 01:42:59 PM
In high school, I remember regularly hearing the one about a crazy rock-n-roll kid from the nearby school stealing a penguin from Flamingo Land (our nearest theme park) and taking it home.

Or there's the one about the equally crazy rock n roll kid who was in the bus station when he saw a driver had left his keys in the ignition and so took the vehicle for a drive round town without being noticed - although he did take it past passengers sticking out their hands at stops - and then left the bus back where it had originally been.

Someone at my school claimed it was actually him who did this. It wasn't.

Blue Jam

Quote from: nw83 on August 08, 2019, 01:42:59 PM
In high school, I remember regularly hearing the one about a crazy rock-n-roll kid from the nearby school stealing a penguin from Flamingo Land (our nearest theme park) and taking it home. Weirdly I heard it two years ago, for the first time in decades, from a 50+ year-old uncle who said a workmate did it. It doesn't really work in the smartphone era.

I heard that one from someone in a pub about ten years ago, she claimed she'd seen it on the news, and the penguin-thief was a seven-year-old who somehow managed to get a big heavy flapping animal into the boot of a car.

I don't think she really stopped to think about the practical aspects there.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Jockice on August 08, 2019, 02:06:52 PM
Or there's the one about the equally crazy rock n roll kid who was in the bus station when he saw a driver had left his keys in the ignition and so took the vehicle for a drive round town without being noticed - although he did take it past passengers sticking out their hands at stops - and then left the bus back where it had originally been.

Someone at my school claimed it was actually him who did this. It wasn't.

Stealing buses is a thing though, and not just by Uncle Nugget in This Country:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-34085323

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/crime/man-steals-bus-after-night-out-in-edinburgh-while-high-on-drugs-1-4949937

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-gloucestershire-45025042/cctv-shows-joyriders-crashing-stolen-bus

That last one actually is the bus from This Country.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-45056461

Icehaven

Quote from: nw83 on August 08, 2019, 01:42:59 PM
In high school, I remember regularly hearing the one about a crazy rock-n-roll kid from the nearby school stealing a penguin from Flamingo Land (our nearest theme park) and taking it home. Weirdly I heard it two years ago, for the first time in decades, from a 50+ year-old uncle who said a workmate did it. It doesn't really work in the smartphone era.


Quote from: Blue Jam on August 08, 2019, 02:10:05 PM
I heard that one from someone in a pub about ten years ago, she claimed she'd seen it on the news, and the penguin-thief was a seven-year-old who somehow managed to get a big heavy flapping animal into the boot of a car.

I don't think she really stopped to think about the practical aspects there.

Well a variation of this did actually happen, but in Australia and only 6 years ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17919847

Has anybody experienced being told something via this 'news channel' that subsequently turned out to be true? A drunk man in a pub in Bradford told me a hyper-lurid version of what all came out about Jimmy Saville sometime around 2005 (though he also had Ted Heath in the mix).

baptist

I remember a story from school where one of the rough lads had shot at an aeroplane going overhead with his air rifle, and reckoned he had hit it because he heard a 'ping'.

I live about 20 miles away now and about 35 years later a friend from my new area told the same tale about a lad who had gone to his school.

Another that went round at the time was of a woman who went to an Indian for a curry, saw the waiters looking in er directions and laughing, took her curry to be tested (presumably Trading Standards though I don't think there was that level of detail at the time) and the cum of 4 separate males was found in the sauce. that seems to have been the South Wales variation of the story.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Mr_Simnock on August 08, 2019, 01:41:21 PM
The version I heard it was a toblerone. All these things just spread by word of mouth in pubs, schools and work places etc, simple.

The Mars Bar was (I might be wrong) mentioned in the fucking shit Norman Philips book 'The Stones' (as well as in the trial which followed the bust) - and it had to be a Mars Bar because the advertising slogan at the time was 'it fills that gap'. Apparently Private Fucking Eye even put that joke on its cover (though there's no evidence of this on PE's cover archive... another legend).

Oh - and Marianne Faithfull was 21 in 1967, and entire THREE YEARS younger than Mick Jagger.

Blue Jam

Quote from: icehaven on August 08, 2019, 02:16:43 PM
Well a variation of this did actually happen, but in Australia and only 6 years ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17919847

...and there were two thieves, and they were both grown adults who were both presumably bigger and stronger than a penguin... and yes, the version I heard was definitely at a zoo in the UK, not Australia...

QuoteTwo Welsh tourists who stole a penguin named Dirk from a theme park following a night out have each been fined 1,000 Australian dollars (£637).

Rhys Owen Jones, 21, and Keri Mules, 20, admitted the theft when they appeared before Brisbane magistrates.

The friends, from south Wales, broke into Sea World on Queensland's Gold Coast, swam with dolphins and let off a fire extinguisher in a shark enclosure.

That's a damn cheap way of crossing several things off the ol' bucket list, fair play to them.

gilbertharding

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on August 08, 2019, 02:18:16 PM
Has anybody experienced being told something via this 'news channel' that subsequently turned out to be true? A drunk man in a pub in Bradford told me a hyper-lurid version of what all came out about Jimmy Saville sometime around 2005 (though he also had Ted Heath in the mix).

Was it The Reverend Goatboy (aka Paul Hawden)?

We talked about him here: https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=43079.60

Quote from: gilbertharding on August 08, 2019, 02:21:35 PM
The Mars Bar was (I might be wrong) mentioned in the fucking shit Norman Philips book 'The Stones' (as well as in the trial which followed the bust) - and it had to be a Mars Bar because the advertising slogan at the time was 'it fills that gap'. Apparently Private Fucking Eye even put that joke on its cover (though there's no evidence of this on PE's cover archive... another legend).

Oh - and Marianne Faithfull was 21 in 1967, and entire THREE YEARS younger than Mick Jagger.

They're all three years younger and full of caramel by the time Mick's finished with them.

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on August 08, 2019, 12:39:41 PM
Mick Jagger sticking a Mars bar up a fifteen year old Marianne Faithful.

Already done posh schools in Berkshire on this thread, no?

Quote from: nw83 on August 08, 2019, 01:42:59 PM
There's one about a conservative old British woman, who hasn't seen a black person before, going to the US for the first time, going in a lift, and anxiously dropping to the floor when a black man enters and says "down" (assuming he means "get down!" because all black people are criminals). The black man, rather than being insulted, laughs his head off at the misunderstanding, explains he just meant "going down?" and, the following week, it turns out the man has paid the woman's hotel bill - he was Eddie Murphy / Denzil Washington / Fatman Scoop, and he hadn't laughed like that in ages.

Didn't make sense the first time I heard it, from an Irish woman, who said the old woman was from Leeds - a big city with a massive annual West Indian Carnival. I've heard it a few times since then, mind.

Heard something similar, but the punchline was Turner Brown.

No.

Me neither.

There was one which went round a few times when I was a kid in the 80s.  It said that 'microdots' containing LSD were being given to kids in the neighbourhood, warning that now they were using rub-on tattoos of cartoon characters to appeal to young children.  This was an actual photocopied bit of paper distributed by the local police, not just a word-of-mouth thing.  Great bit of scaremongering, but of course no one had ever witnessed these said kids tripping their nuts off to Disney LSD, nor was it ever really explained what motivation these people would ever have for doing it in the first place.

zomgmouse

Quote from: nw83 on August 08, 2019, 01:52:22 PM
Not sure if this is the same thing, but I was always puzzled when certain clothing, not advertised anywhere, suddenly became fashionable across a large area, like 'Eclipse Spliffy' jackets and that. I suppose this is like the "why did the original chavs all suddenly start dressing in that way?" cliche observation, but I'm genuinely interested in how.

Why does anything become fashionable? Places sell it en masse, often for cheap, people start wearing it, other people see it and want to belong to a group so they start wearing it too.