Urban Legends

Leah MacIver
11/11/08
6th hour
Urban Legends

An Urban Legend is a story that is made from obscure origin with little or no evidence that makes it true, and it spreads through various forms of email, text, or story telling. They get started by being passed on through word of mouth or emails, once people hear it they forward it to someone or tell them what they heard.

One Urban legend is called Bruce Delberg. This story is about a 2 month old baby who is said to have lung cancer. It’s said that if you forward or send the message about him, every time you do a certain company said they would donate a dollar for him each time, so he could get enough money for medical bills. This story is false they made it up. And whoever started it was probably a prankster to see how many people they prank and see who will actually be gullible and sympathetic enough to continue forwarding the message.

Another Urban Legend story is called Posthumous Roses. Its About a man Jack Benny, who has died. He loved his wife so much that he arranged to send her a rose everday for the rest of her life to show his love for her, because when he was alive he used to send her roses allt he time because he knew those were her favorite. This story is True or at least is said to be True, and people have learned about it because it gets passed around and a poem was made out of it.


Other Urban Legends like death hoaxes are also common urban legends you’ll run into. One specific one was a false accusation of having a famous celebrity “Travis Barker” found dead in his garage. Whoever started the false story even quoted something his wife said about his so called “death.” It wasn’t true and he didn’t die there was never a public announcement and there wasn’t any media mention.

So As you can see Urban Legends are started randomly, they can be about anything. And sometimes people believe them and sometimes they don’t. Whether it be a legend about a celebrity, a ridiculous story threatening that your going to die if you don’t send the message to someone else, or a story trying to touch your heart urban legends are everywhere.

Media Violence

Media Violence effects different people in different ways. The study of media violence has made me realize that Violence in the media impacts peoples lives. Children who watch violence get desensitized and its no longer an issue to look at someone and see them get hurt and really see how badly it is in real life. It in general creates more violence in the world, people reinact it in movies and shows and no one gets the big picture that it really isnt right to encourage violence.