Urban Legends essay

Urban legends; who doesn’t like them? They’re entertaining, and fun to listen to! Many think they’re true, but most are not. Mind you, life would be much more exciting if they were real, but it’s a good thing they are not. Urban legends are strange stories that are passed from person to person. Most involve danger, or something disgusting involving bugs, blood or things that are even worse! Urban legends start many ways. From word by mouth, to email, to mail, they get are heard by many people. All together, they pack a pretty big punch.
Take the legend where a girl gives birth to an octopus. Many a man has heard this one and grimaced. In the tale a girl goes swimming in the ocean, and not long after she begins to show signs of pregnancy. She tries to tell her mother she is not, but the evidence is undeniable. Eventually, when she goes to the doctor, they take x-rays and the doctor says it is a tumor, and she must have surgery, upon which they find a small living octopus inside her stomach. Though entertaining, this tale is of course, not true. It has been scientifically proven that humans cannot give birth to animals outside our species. Some origins are an article in the Boston Traveler, a different urban legend where someone has a snake in their body, and a true story where a woman in Iran gave birth to a frog. Variations of these stories are shown in the movie “Alien” and stories of a woman who coughs up a lizard, a man who swallows a fish egg, and a person with a snake inside of them.
A second example of an urban legend would be the legend where a new bride cooks her insides. In this story, a new bride wants to get a good tan before her wedding, and she decides this a week before the wedding. Each tanning salon she calls says she can only go in a booth for thirty minutes, twice a week, which would never get her a good tan. She decides to make appointments for each tanning salon near her. The day of the wedding, she has a good tan, but she smells like rotting meat. Soon after she dies, and when she is brought into the morgue, they find she has cooked her insides. This is also not true. No one really knows where this legend originated, though it was the biggest urban legend of 1987. Some variations say she was found with smoke coming out of her mouth or that she lives and loses her sight.
A last example would be the story of the woman whose cheek swells and explodes with little tiny spiders. This is once again, false. In this legend, a woman goes to Guatemala to explore the jungle, and gets some kind of bug bite. When she comes home she sees it has swollen, and soon it becomes even worse. At the end of the story she scratches it(for it is dry an itchy) and it bursts, with tons of tiny spiders coming out. It is believed one of the origins of this story come from a short story written by Jeremias Gotthelf, in 1842. A woman in the story makes a deal with the devil, and he kisses her on the cheek. At one point it turns into a boil, bursts, and spiders crawl out of it. Some variations of this story include the victim having a heart attack when she sees the spiders, her opening the wound purposely, or a doctor doing it for her.
In conclusion, urban legends usually aren’t real. The three stories mentioned here are of the disgusting ones, which most are. They are entertaining, and they are indeed epic. Just be glad they aren’t real, that would be horrible!

Media Violence

Media violence affects different people in different ways. The study of media violence has made me realize just how it can affect someone. For example, a young child could watch their favorite cartoon character get bonked in the head and come out just fine. This could cause them to think it is real, and imitate it at school, or with their friends. Violence in music can also influence people. Listening to violent lyrics has been proven to give you aggressive or violent thoughts. Violence in video games is so common, many don’t notice. Playing violent video games, and these could also cause increased aggression or violent thoughts. Those are only a few ways media violence can affect you.