Thursday, May 21, 2009

Urban Legend


Alright. You can try this if you like. My work friends and I have decided to see who can create the best urban legend. The idea is to make an original story that is not just bizarre enough to get people's attention around the water cooler, but also believable enough to be possible. Whoever can make the urban legend with enough legs to make it into the mainstream population wins. If you try it, you have to consider what your medium for getting it out will be: will you create a bulk mail or rely on word of mouth. Also, make sure it can't be traced back to a source to be disproven. For example, you must make sure you don't say, "my brother went to Mexico..."becasue that person may ask your brother, and the legend dies. You have to say, "this guy my brother works with." A couple degrees of separation adds to the mystery, but the brother or close friend adds to the credibility. I'll keep you all informed of the entries, and you can keep your eyes and ears posted and let me know if any of them pop up around the water cooler.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks Soder. Seriously. I hope that the guy hiding in your backseat while you're driving home from the scary movie you and your friends just saw finds a way to call you and let you know that he's outside the house and he'll be there "soon, very soon."

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  2. there is this guy my brother went to school with. the man was a genius, a visionary, his mind was as sharp and powerful like excaliber. Ironically, this man lost his mind and intellectual credibility when he proposed, and lost, a contest among his peers to create the best urban legend. It is said that this man would have won the contest hands down had he not spent the bulk of his mental faculties searching for the ultimate compliment for his then love-interest. Now, this empty shell of a man reads only the victoria secret catalogue, and writes the occassional vulgarity, in paint, on a wall, outside a cuban deli somewhere in the new york/new jersey area. sad.

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  3. @chad's brother. It's funny--I heard that story by the drinking water station at work. Only, when I worked out the lineage of connections, it was my high school buddy's brother's friend. And the ending was different. I heard he lives off of fish from the hudson, and walks aimlessly talking to himself about gambling monkeys.

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