Modern Lore: Urban Legend

This class of lore earns a special places out of around fifty other different kinds of folklore, because it shows our capacity to continue to share oral culture even in ages where mass technology is several times more valued than the stories. Even more interesting, is that technology seems to fuel urban legends; with stories about the exaggerated dangers of old technology, and rustic machinery, as well as horror stories and moral treatises on the dangers of new technology, such as the threat of becoming a ghost in your machine, –being sucked into your own iPod or computer, or the old stories about going blind from watching too much television. Exaggerating facts is something both children and adults can do very well.

There’s technological urban legend, which revolves around machines old and new, –such as that of the “Mangler”, a large laundry device with an evil spirit in it that squishes people. Some stories such as these, are old enough that it’s hard to determine whether it was first an urban legend, or if it was a novel, and then an urban legend. Then there are pet stories, –albino race of alligators living in the sewers of a metropolis city somewhere. Or coming home to find your dog choking on a finger, then discovering a burglar; all come from campfire stories, urban mythology that was either once fact, or purely fiction, that has been diluted over the years.

Many urban legends were started as moral stories, and circulated to show the irrationality, and stupidity of the fellow man; such as the famous story of the hippy babysitter, who, in a strung out acid delirium, accidentally roasts a baby. Or the story of the Coca-Cola company having invented Fanta to sell to the Nazis, which is actually mostly true. The morals are ways to communicate a certain repulsion of certain aspects of society, and also to communicate caution about certain groups, and archetypes, –don’t hire druggies to watch your kids, and big corporations are only loyal to their bank account.