Snopes
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"Rumor Has It"
—The Snopes.com tagline.
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Snopes is very nearly the definitive website for busting urban legends and chain emails. They really have Shown Their Work, and while some things can't be proven, they can be proven false.
If someone sends you some stupid email, or posts on Facebook saying "Bubble Yum is made of spider eggs!" you can point them to the right place to figure out that no, it isn't. Or that "Amanda Bundy needs your prayers!" (she recovered years ago). Or, what about Craig Shergold? You know, the boy that was collecting greeting cards years ago? Well....Snopes checked, and Mr. Shergold made a full recovery, is now a healthy young man and -- having collected upwards of 33 million greeting cards -- respectfully requests that people stop sending them.
Tropes used in Snopes include:
- Adult Fear : The "Parental Nightmares" section
- Chain Letter: The emails recorded on the site generally ask people to forward it to everyone they know. They don't specify a quota or threaten bad luck, but still push the urgency.
- Easy Road to Hell: A common urban legend about a paper made on whether hell is endothermic or exothermic states that hell must be really hot and getting worse because everyone has been cursed to go to hell by at least someone else in the world...and because he's not yet slept with a woman who said it'll be a cold day in Hell when she does.
- Fun with Acronyms: The Repository of Lost Legends
- Glurge: A whole section on it, in-universe (and they are the Trope Namer).
- Politically-Motivated Teacher: Quite a few Urban Legends archived and discussed here have such teachers, typically involving them teaching a lesson to their students or getting into a fracas with a student of a different political alignment. A few examples (of varying degrees of truth) include a professor giving his students a hands-on lesson about socialism, a teacher having veterans come into her class to impart patriotism to her students, and a Hollywood Atheist professor attempting to disprove the existence of God...by dropping a piece of chalk.
- The latter of these also mentions a similar Chick Tract.
- Schmuck Bait: The Repository of Lost Legends (T. R. O. L. L.), which purports to be just as true as the rest of the site. It isn't. Humorously, a TV series on urban legends fell for one of the joke entries.
- Yahoo!'s "Who Knew?" feature totally fell for the joke entry about how California's flag supposedly was meant to have a pear on it instead of a bear.
- Shown Their Work: Considering it's driven almost entirely by two people, those two people always make sure to cite their sources when proving or debunking an urban legend.
- Understatement: "Borneo is a fair distance from Palm Beach."
- Your Costume Needs Work: Charlie Chaplin lost a Chaplin look-alike contest. This one's actually marked as true.