Urban Legends 101

For the past few days, I've been conducting certain experiments on the net how to make people blindly follow a concept, object, or belief as efficiently as possible. So after a few days of deliberation (translation: drinking lots of alcohol along with fatty foods) I've created a simple guide for just that. Submitted for the approval of the midnight society, I call this article:

The Tale of The Tale of Bullshit

Okay, so the title needs a bit of revising. Let's do that later.

*ahem*

The success of creating any following, urban legend, religion, cult, fan club or anything that requires a leap of faith or blind assumption will rely basically on a single premise:

People Are Gullible Toads.

Have that settled? Good. Now why did I say that? Easy. Because they are. I'll show you an example of creating an urban legend. This one, we created in Ragnarok Online.

Step 1: Look for a creative venue for the legend. Make sure everybody can relate to it.

For our case, it's Ragnarok Online (an online game). At the time my friend and I thought of messing with people, Philippine RO was just a few months old - people didn't know the game all too well. So that's 20 thousand plus potential believers then and there. The more people who will be able to relate, the more people who can believe. This gave us enough room to implement our plan.

Step 2: Think of a legend that is a step away from the truth. The more confirmable truths there is to a legend the better.

Just because people are gullible doesnt mean they wont make an effort to check the plausibility of something you shove down their throats. The presence of familiar, confirmed things can easily disarm the reasoning of any fool, and it doesnt even have to be directly related to your legend. You can make them think "There indeed water in the loch ness, therefore there must be a water monster inside it." You just have to be creative enough.

For our case, we created chatlogs as a form of medium. It's something players often encounter, generated by the Ragnarok Game to save conversations and actions ingame. While it's just plaintext and can be easily be edited, it was common assumption that it's always generated by a computer. Familiar, veritable (well, to idiots anyway) - easy.

Step 3: Make sure the lie is big/fantastic enough.

I dont know why but the bigger the prank, the easier it is to make people believe. Perhaps people think "This is too audacious to be a trick" or "Nobody would dare do this" instinctively and then take the bait and chow down hook, line, sinker, and fisherman's friend in a festival of fellatio.

Then there's the aspect of fantasy. Let's face it. We live boring lives. Unless you happen to live in a warzone, the robohooker factory, or a stripclub basement, life will be boring. And if it's not boring, chances are you are in so much danger, entertainment will be the last of your worries.

What's the point?

It's not people believe ridiculous things; It's that they WANT to believe in an attempt to break out of the doldrum cycle that is their shitty lives. Aside from being naive fools people are, they are also selfish bastards who want a fun life for themselves. And in trying to get that, they end up swallowing plastic apples - apples you yourself have made for them.

For our case, we created the idea of a ghost, a wraith of a dead player, still playing in Ragnarok Online. Sure, you say, people aren't asshats, they dont want to see ghosts. True, true. They're scared of the idea. But they want to believe that there are ghosts. They just dont want to see them, like the way people want to say one of the Spice Girls is a man, but they dont want to see her flaunting his wang inside an issue of PlayBoy.

A ghost in a game. It makes things interesting doesnt it? The fact that the game can be used from the other world? And the player you could be playing with could be a dead person. It's so fantastic when you think about it. It's perfect.

Remember, the world will never run out of believers if you know how to tug their strings - people who want to believe in anything but themselves.

Step 4: Spin The Origin

Every story has a beginning. For your case, it would be to the best of things if the origin doesnt exist. Either that or it's "from the friend of aunt of my father who used to date this surgeon general from the military".

You're smiling right now. That line sounds familiar eh? It's boilerplate already for legends. But you have to step it up a notch. This is the part where you have to lie your best. With origin lies credibility with credibility, believability, with believability the overall lifespan of the legend.

It's always better if you make it appear it came from a credible source. People tend to love that, not caring if it DID come from the credible source. So you make advantage of that.

For our case, we used the idea that the chatlogs of the ghost came from another friend who used to work for Level Up!, publishers of the game. While nobody for a second thought that that doesnt even give him any more right to be able to furnish such logs, the association with the publishers is enough to satisfy them.

Step 5: LAUNCH THAT BASTARD ONLINE

So there you have it. You have all the factors of the legend. All you have to do now is let it rip somewhere and watch it spread faster than AIDS in a group of homosexuals.

Remember, not all people will believe you. In fact, only the most zealous will cling on to your legend at first. But by the power of trust, people who trust the initial advocates will be have their doubts replaced by the fact that they are no longer alone in believing, even if their companions are the most gullible people on the planet. It'll be a ripple effect, and soon enough even the doubters will start doubting themselves because it's a fact that people refuse to believe that idiots outnumber rational thinkers and would often blame themselves instead for being different.

Thinking man: "Why am I the only one seeing this? Is there something wrong with me?"
Thinking man after a while: "Okay, I'll just pretend that I believe too, it's getting lonely here."

Thiking man renounces the "Thinking".

For our case, we placed the logs on a message board midnight and went to sleep. By noon the following day, the thread had grown 12 pages in less than 12 hours - the fastest growing thread at that time. People were starting to believe and there's still believers and potential believers up to now - a good three years after.

As a final remark I would say Charlatanism (what we are doing here) is a sin to one's self since no act of mass deception has ever been 100% successful, and will oftentimes spell doom for those who start such movements (since people easily get bored. Discontented people tend to think more rationally against things they dont want) I would advice that if you are to try this yourself, make sure you know what you're entering.

When we made the ghost logs, we made sure nobody would get offended or hurt, because it was all meant as a practical joke. Remember, if somebody goes broke, gets injured, dies, or gets pregnant - it' s no longer a joke.

It's a felany.

Ask for the moon. You'd be surprised how often you will get it.