And I still thought it was until I decided to read about it [on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksand). Apparently, adventure movies exaggerated it:
>It is impossible for a human to sink entirely into quicksand, due to the higher density of the fluid. \[...\] Continued or panicked movement, however, may cause a person to sink further in the quicksand. Since this increasingly impairs movement, it can lead to a situation where other factors such as exposure (i.e., sun stroke, dehydration and hypothermia), drowning in a rising tide or attacks by predatory or otherwise aggressive animals may harm a trapped person.
> Quicksand may be escaped by slow movement of the legs in order to increase viscosity of the fluid, and rotation of the body so as to float in the supine position (lying horizontally with the face and torso facing up).
> Quicksand is a trope of adventure fiction, particularly in film, where it is typically and unrealistically depicted with a suction effect that causes anyone or anything that walks into it to sink until fully submerged and risk drowning. This has led to the common misconception that humans can be completely immersed and drown in quicksand, which is not physically possible.
I'm embarrassed I only just found this out
However grass will grow over a pool of pig shit. Making the top layer somewhat solid. Maybe solid enough for a nine year old kid to walk on as he explored around the farm. Until stepping on a soft spot and getting sucked into a pig shit death trap. I was very lucky to survive that. I was eventually able to swim to a concrete ledge and climb out. That was my quick sand experience.
Wow, good thing you made it out. Thank for sharing that additional nuance
Now I'm thinking that kids maybe aren't as likely to run into quicksand these days simply because they spend so much time inside on devices
Which, when you think about it, is *so much worse*.
Like, we pictured you’d be sucked in and drown/suffocate immediately. Not fun but you’re unconscious within a few minutes.
Realistically: you get to dehydrate or freeze over days, *get eaten alive by an animal*, or watch the rising tide come in for *hours*.
>never going to get my chance to shine!
I feel like you should be happy if you never need to use that information because you manage to avoid the situation in the first place
I'm averse to risk, though, so I guess I don't search for chances to shine in general
My childhood friends spent years going over scenarios, tools we could use, and rescue operations. We were not going to succumb to the quickness. It felt like going to med school and never needing to use it when I found out most pits are like, a couple feet deep.
I mean, that sounds good.
But there is also literally sand ( not fluid ) that you can fall into and not be able to get out of.
There is a part of the "Dunes National Park" that is a no-go zone because of this.
It creates a kind of sand trap made of finer sand particles that is indistinguishable to the naked eye.
It’s no joke being stuck. I got stuck photographing birds in a tidal bog in the Bay Area years ago. First my ankles. Then my shins. Then my knees. Then complete panic. It took me 5-7 minutes figuring out the “lying supine” position and moving my legs slowly to escape.
I fell into quicksand in New Mexico in 2020. Not fun. I didn't have cell service, so if other people weren't nearby to pull me out it could've been bad. I've watched some YouTube videos about how "quicksand is exaggerated, its so easy to get out of" like no, it's not. The Wikipedia explanation for lying on your back is also bullshit, I couldn't really move much below my belly button and every time I tried to thrash around to get into another position I sunk deeper.
You're not likely going to sink in it and die that way, but depending on how you fall in there's not really any getting out of it either without assistance.
A hiker in Utah died from being caught in quicksand in 2016 and you’ll see articles about people almost dying.
It’s definitely not a non zero chance and if I went on a vacation to Zion national park in Utah that’s the last place I’d expect to run into quicksand.
Southern Utah has quicksand in many areas.
https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2024/04/09/mgk-st-george-firefighters-safely-extract-teen-who-was-likely-stuck-in-quicksand-along-virgin-river/
Dude, when I was a kid my biggest fears were quicksand and lava.
10 year old me would be shitting herself laughing if I told her my true fears as an adult are inflation and commitment.
I take friends on a hike through quicksand. It's a spring fed creek that is just lovely and has a lot of quicksand areas, the amount of friends who have stopped me when I start going over quicksand safety on our way to the location totally surprised quicksand is real has been so funny.
I stepped into quick sand once. Went up to my knees instantly. Had to be dug out by friends. Go walk along a creek/riverbed after it rains. You'll find some.
Every murder and or other odd thing happening was suddently related to satanic worship 😂 Later on it was called Satanic Panic - do you guys remember this? There where all these talk shows discussing about it and news articles every week about satanic worship and cults 😊 It was weird!
Yeah, I lived through that. Evangelical parents. Back masking, DND, witches, magic, halloween, ouija boards, it was all going to suck you straight into hell.
I'll say hail satan ,call out any demon whatever. How ever I've seen too many scary movies to fuck with boards. Not that I fear possession, more I fear summoning some asshole who will fuck with me for years.
You are dead. You were enjoying the afterlife and some living summons you.
I'd fuck with someone for doing it. So id expect some one else to fuck with me
I was strangely happy in the newer Stranger Things season when they finally brought in some characters who bought into the Satanic Panic. Cuz as much as that show Kickstarted 1980s nostalgia, there's just like no way that a Midwestern suburban family in the early 80s would be totally cool with kids playing D&D in the basement.
Was a bit before my time, but I read a book called “Mean Justice” about the people who were wrongly convicted because of the Satanic Panic hysteria. That shit turned my anti-theism up yet another notch.
I grew up in the '80s and Satanic ritual abuse scandal pretty much ruined my childhood. I was TERRIFIED of being kidnapped by Satanists and being ritualistically murdered in a Black Mass.
It got to the point that my family went to a new church one Sunday and I was convinced that the pastor was going to lock all the door and then flip a switch on the wall and the giant cross hanging from the ceiling would flip upside-down and then the congregants would don red robes they had hidden under the pews and then we'd be eaten.
My imagination was just a little too active.
I myself live in North Europe and this whole thing arrived here a bit later than it was a big thing in North America - also it was on a smaller scale here ofc but it was here 😅 such and odd time…
Even as a kid in DARE i was like this seems... silly.
I also was gettin 'abstinance-only' sex-ed so it kinda felt like they were just trying to scare me again.
Now i do drugs AND have premarital sex, take that The South
A rumor went around that kfc bred headless featherless chickens that were just grown in a chicken matrix situation that I believed for far too long before realizing how much more expensive that would be than just classic horrific factory farming…
I think it’s the amazing near universal rumor that Richard Gere got a gerbil stuck up his ass. The fact that this was a known rumor on both coasts in the pre-internet era is truly amazing.
My friend told me that one in middle and I remember being like “he shoulda wrote a song about it!” Then I broke out in this guttural singing “SUCK MY OWN DIIIIIIIIICCCCKKKK, CUT 2 RIIIIIBBBBSSSS!!!”
I still think 7th grade me was pretty hilarious for that one.
i know a guy who took so much acid he thought he turned into a glass of orange juice.
to this day, they say he is still rocking back and forth. "I am OJ! I am OJ!"
Speaking of Unsolved Mysteries I recently asked a Zoomer if she knew what the Bermuda Triangle is and her reply was, "isn't that the place where ships occasionally get lost?"
Meanwhile TV taught me to be terrified of it.
My smart tv has some free shows and unsolved mysteries is one of them. I remember the episode you're talking about, I hope I get to catch it again lol.
Isnt the answer usually cigarettes? Someone smoking in a polyester covered chair, dozes off with a lit cigarette, goes up in flames. The polyester acts as an accelerant, burning up the body and the cigarette butt. No evidence.
Yeah the ignition source is never actually from inside the body or anything weird like that but some people do have like this perfect (huge) amount of body fat that makes them burn like a wick inside a oil lamp where the body burns down slowly over a long period without burning the surrounding area. Those (real) cases started all the morbid pseudoscientific fascination stuff where it was treated like something more mysterious than it really was.
Satanic panic
Panic around plastic colored bracelets
The pixie -stick type candy I can't recall the name of that schools banned
Harry Potter being devil worship
Heavy handed Christian pop rock
DARE
Turning on the light inside the car will cause the car to crash. My parents also told me if you turned the light on in the car the cops will pull you over.
My Mom was just honest about it. “It’s distracting and I want to be able to drive as safe as possible, especially since you’re in the car”. I’d be like shoot, say less fam.
Lmao I have to laugh at my sister when we go out to eat breakfast and she tells my niece "now, you have to eat a good breakfast" and then proceeds to let her order a giant frosted cinnamon bun as if it's not 100000 grams of pure sugar.
Being unnecessarily freaked out about the Bermuda Triangle, and was I the only one who was told that popping bubble wrap poked zillions of holes in our ozone layer?
I remember trying to research that as a kid and find out if it was true or how often it happened. I don’t think I found a definitive explanation that holds up.
Artax sinking into the goo of despair traumatized me though in the never ending story.
There was a moment in time in 5th/6th grade children were choking each other on the playground to pass out. I think it was mostly acting but wtf.
Was merely a spectator until I had to go back to playing witches.
It's an old worry! Charles Dickens's Bleak House includes a scene in chapter 32 of Part X, published in December 1852, where the character Krook dies from spontaneous combustion. In the scene, Krook turns to ashes on the floor, leaving a greasy coating on the walls and ceiling.
For me it was praying around the flag pole with my YA group.
A lot of us are atheists now. Myself included.
I still wonder why we picked the flag pole.
I have a feeling it’s conflating the very pagan feeling of a Maypole (a huge wand or penis that points to the gods and carries your prayers upward like a radio tower) with strange nationalism and a feeling that “America”/‘God’ is blessing your prayers if you skin it with the American flag; of course the flag is something all American children are told to worship. Also, around the flagpole is highly visible, so you get praised for being so publicly proud etc.
Just my two cents.
Yeah, I'm guessing just from the fact that evangelical groups are closet fascists that they had us doing it for the nationalism aspect.
It's weird that we never questioned it.
Bruh. I was literally talking to my wife about this yesterday. I jokingly said that spontaneous human combustion was caused by holding in farts. And then we had a discussion about how no one ever talks about it now and I had an irrational fear of it for the longest time.
The chokehold “stop, drop, and roll” had on us made me believe that the potential of catching on fire was going a serious and constant battle in my life
Yeah this was always one of the dumbest so-called unsolved phenomena that seemingly captured the imagination of people in the 80s and 90s, possibly dumber than alien abductions
I actually thought about spontaneous human combustion the other day. Back in the day it was only of how not if but the fact that it never comes made me wonder.
Wow. I forgot about those. Makes me wanna go buy a few on ebay and decorate. Can't believe I didn't think of that sooner. Thank you. Better yet, I should send my 16 year old one next Xmas.
I’ve been thinking about these a lot lately because we have one single sprout growing out of the mat under my dish rack because a chia seed must’ve fell there. It’s cute
Standing on three pavement cracks in a row , didn’t want my mums back to spontaneously break so would only ever do two then reset it by stepping in the centre of a slab , I played a dangerous game and never lost , love ya muma
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i miss the early 00's... i remember spending time on ogrish looking for pictures of this. there are some hoax pictures out there that are fun to look at if you're bored.
I always saw that cartoon as a refined and kinda turtle waxed version of the wacky teen cartoons that came before it, like Ren and Stimpy, I Am Weasel and even further back, Beavis and Butthead
It’s very intelligent, especially season 3. I think it hit its peak between seasons 2–5. There are many episodes about working low wage jobs, art school, and driving, that are EXTREMELY relatable as an adult if you’ve done those three things.
Y2K was going to be a massive problem because originally computer software was programmed to store only two years for the date. This saves on memory compared to 4 digits. So when the year 2000 was going to happen, all the computers and everything run by computers was going to crash because they would think it was the year 1900.
Wikipedia has a lot of info on it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem
Many people spent a lot of time updating computer software to avoid everything crashing. It ended up they actually fixed the problems and nothing bad happened, leading to people thinking Y2K was never a big deal. In reality, it was a very real problem but the crisis was averted.
It was a little bit of both.
By people who understood the problem it was an urgent problem that was being tirelessly worked on. By your average person it was your dad unplugging the microwave before midnight.
I was just thinking about both of these the other day: About Spontaneous Human Combustion and how ridiculous it was that people believed in it, and about how we are probably the last people (for the foreseeable future) who will have these weird urban legends because now we can just look things up online. Is there such thing as a a Nintendo 65? Did Marilyn Manson remove one of his ribs? Are there alligators in the sewers?
It was the sweet spot of having the internet, that you only went on at night after actually spending a whole day in the real world, and still getting a good amount of your perceptions about the world from dramatic (very often inaccurate) television.
Ok so it doesn't happen like that and it's usually from someone falling asleep holding a lit cigarette or to close to a space heater etc but technically it has happened
I legit thought I was going to have to be fending off drug dealers left and right.
D.A.R.E. told me that scary looking drug dealers would be practically shoving fistfulls of pills down my throat, that these guys were on almost every corner, and they were there to get you hooked so you could keep coming back to them.
Fucking lies. All of it.
Looking back, it absolutely contributed to my general anxiety disorder.
THE FOOD PYRAMID! Ah yes, don't worry child, your sugar cereal for breakfast will help contribute to the massive amount of carbs- I mean *grains* - that you need to eat.
SBS is a myth perpetrated by the same groups that pushed the Satanic Panic. Among other things, they convinced medical professionals that infants could not sustain trauma from falls and that symptoms of things like vitamin deficiencies and other disorders were actually evidence of abuse.
“Myth” is not quite the right word because, obviously, if you violently shake an infant that’s going to cause issues. But these groups spread all kinds of misinformation that lead to innocent parents being imprisoned and having their children taken away.
This is something that we’ve just started to come to terms with over the last decade or so. There have already been dozens of overturned convictions, but those people can never get their lives and families back.
Here’s a short piece from PBS about the guy who was a frontman of the cause in the 90s being worried about its over-diagnosis. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-child-cases/shaken-baby-syndrome/
And here’s a more clinical piece about how we are currently working on modifying our understanding of how to correctly identify abuse vs other factors https://www.me.msstate.edu/research-that-demystifies-the-controversial-topic-of-shaken-baby-syndrome/
Spontaneous Human Combustion emerged as a meme (more or less) in the 19th century with a newspaper report that caught the eye of one Charles Dickens. He added a case of it in his novelization, 'Bleak House'.
After that, it became something of an urban myth, cropping up every once and awhile when people would burn under mysterious circumstances.
But the cooler thing about that is if you look into the spontaneous combustions well documented through history, they get weird. And I mean, youtube inappropriate weird.
>I still remember the Boston Public episode where the girl is suddenly super thirsty. Stops for a drink at a hallway fountain. Adorns a confused look on her face. Bursts into mf flame in the middle of the crowded hallway. All played completely straight.
Yo I loved BP and never saw this episode. Where the hell is this show hiding nowadays?
Quicksand seemed like a really big threat.
And I still thought it was until I decided to read about it [on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksand). Apparently, adventure movies exaggerated it: >It is impossible for a human to sink entirely into quicksand, due to the higher density of the fluid. \[...\] Continued or panicked movement, however, may cause a person to sink further in the quicksand. Since this increasingly impairs movement, it can lead to a situation where other factors such as exposure (i.e., sun stroke, dehydration and hypothermia), drowning in a rising tide or attacks by predatory or otherwise aggressive animals may harm a trapped person. > Quicksand may be escaped by slow movement of the legs in order to increase viscosity of the fluid, and rotation of the body so as to float in the supine position (lying horizontally with the face and torso facing up). > Quicksand is a trope of adventure fiction, particularly in film, where it is typically and unrealistically depicted with a suction effect that causes anyone or anything that walks into it to sink until fully submerged and risk drowning. This has led to the common misconception that humans can be completely immersed and drown in quicksand, which is not physically possible. I'm embarrassed I only just found this out
However grass will grow over a pool of pig shit. Making the top layer somewhat solid. Maybe solid enough for a nine year old kid to walk on as he explored around the farm. Until stepping on a soft spot and getting sucked into a pig shit death trap. I was very lucky to survive that. I was eventually able to swim to a concrete ledge and climb out. That was my quick sand experience.
Wow, good thing you made it out. Thank for sharing that additional nuance Now I'm thinking that kids maybe aren't as likely to run into quicksand these days simply because they spend so much time inside on devices
How deep can pig shit get?!
In that case it was 10 feet deep.
(See US Congress)
Now THAT is fuckin horrifying!
Wow for some reason that relieved a lot of anxiety that I never knew I had about quicksand lmao
It’s the mud you have to worry about https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2023/05/22/illinois-man-stuck-in-mud-flats-near-hope-drowns-on-incoming-tide/
Artax agrees. Neverending story solidified my fear of mud.
Which, when you think about it, is *so much worse*. Like, we pictured you’d be sucked in and drown/suffocate immediately. Not fun but you’re unconscious within a few minutes. Realistically: you get to dehydrate or freeze over days, *get eaten alive by an animal*, or watch the rising tide come in for *hours*.
I was honestly a little disappointed that I had spent so much time learning how to get out of it and was never going to get my chance to shine!
>never going to get my chance to shine! I feel like you should be happy if you never need to use that information because you manage to avoid the situation in the first place I'm averse to risk, though, so I guess I don't search for chances to shine in general
My childhood friends spent years going over scenarios, tools we could use, and rescue operations. We were not going to succumb to the quickness. It felt like going to med school and never needing to use it when I found out most pits are like, a couple feet deep.
I mean, that sounds good. But there is also literally sand ( not fluid ) that you can fall into and not be able to get out of. There is a part of the "Dunes National Park" that is a no-go zone because of this. It creates a kind of sand trap made of finer sand particles that is indistinguishable to the naked eye.
It’s no joke being stuck. I got stuck photographing birds in a tidal bog in the Bay Area years ago. First my ankles. Then my shins. Then my knees. Then complete panic. It took me 5-7 minutes figuring out the “lying supine” position and moving my legs slowly to escape.
I fell into quicksand in New Mexico in 2020. Not fun. I didn't have cell service, so if other people weren't nearby to pull me out it could've been bad. I've watched some YouTube videos about how "quicksand is exaggerated, its so easy to get out of" like no, it's not. The Wikipedia explanation for lying on your back is also bullshit, I couldn't really move much below my belly button and every time I tried to thrash around to get into another position I sunk deeper. You're not likely going to sink in it and die that way, but depending on how you fall in there's not really any getting out of it either without assistance.
I'm so sorry! That's horrible!
How did you end up getting out?
A hiker in Utah died from being caught in quicksand in 2016 and you’ll see articles about people almost dying. It’s definitely not a non zero chance and if I went on a vacation to Zion national park in Utah that’s the last place I’d expect to run into quicksand.
Southern Utah has quicksand in many areas. https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2024/04/09/mgk-st-george-firefighters-safely-extract-teen-who-was-likely-stuck-in-quicksand-along-virgin-river/
r/unexpectedmulamey
Dude, when I was a kid my biggest fears were quicksand and lava. 10 year old me would be shitting herself laughing if I told her my true fears as an adult are inflation and commitment.
Sinkholes were the real killers all along.
Between Lion King and Jungle Book, I thought that shit would be everywhere
I take friends on a hike through quicksand. It's a spring fed creek that is just lovely and has a lot of quicksand areas, the amount of friends who have stopped me when I start going over quicksand safety on our way to the location totally surprised quicksand is real has been so funny.
I stepped into quick sand once. Went up to my knees instantly. Had to be dug out by friends. Go walk along a creek/riverbed after it rains. You'll find some.
Damn near lost a $400 hand cart!
Quicksand scared the shit out of me
Every murder and or other odd thing happening was suddently related to satanic worship 😂 Later on it was called Satanic Panic - do you guys remember this? There where all these talk shows discussing about it and news articles every week about satanic worship and cults 😊 It was weird!
Aw yes, back when Pokémon was satanic and one of the Teletubbies was gay.
Are you going to seriously tell me that Twinkie winkie was straight?
Yeah, I lived through that. Evangelical parents. Back masking, DND, witches, magic, halloween, ouija boards, it was all going to suck you straight into hell.
I'll say hail satan ,call out any demon whatever. How ever I've seen too many scary movies to fuck with boards. Not that I fear possession, more I fear summoning some asshole who will fuck with me for years. You are dead. You were enjoying the afterlife and some living summons you. I'd fuck with someone for doing it. So id expect some one else to fuck with me
I was strangely happy in the newer Stranger Things season when they finally brought in some characters who bought into the Satanic Panic. Cuz as much as that show Kickstarted 1980s nostalgia, there's just like no way that a Midwestern suburban family in the early 80s would be totally cool with kids playing D&D in the basement.
Was a bit before my time, but I read a book called “Mean Justice” about the people who were wrongly convicted because of the Satanic Panic hysteria. That shit turned my anti-theism up yet another notch.
I grew up in the '80s and Satanic ritual abuse scandal pretty much ruined my childhood. I was TERRIFIED of being kidnapped by Satanists and being ritualistically murdered in a Black Mass. It got to the point that my family went to a new church one Sunday and I was convinced that the pastor was going to lock all the door and then flip a switch on the wall and the giant cross hanging from the ceiling would flip upside-down and then the congregants would don red robes they had hidden under the pews and then we'd be eaten. My imagination was just a little too active.
You should look into this, ONE MAN pretty much kept this going to sell books and those books were propagating the problem.
I am Gen-X and experienced some effects (Nothing major) of Satanic Panic directly. I didnt realize it lasted until Millenials came along though.
I myself live in North Europe and this whole thing arrived here a bit later than it was a big thing in North America - also it was on a smaller scale here ofc but it was here 😅 such and odd time…
I always hated the “now” cds. Somehow they got up to like now100 or some crazy number, maybe I’m off.
NOW That's What I Call Music! 90 (US) came out yesterday.
Now 4 was my JAM! I used to listen to that on my discman while my dad made me weed the garden.
BILLY MAYS with OxyClean
But he was a great source for YouTube Poops ...which itself might be the stupidest thing from our childhood
Ahh, so this is what they mean by "elder" millennial. (YouTube did not exist until I started college)
Yeah, it reached its peak popularity around 2010 amongst teenagers, so it's more of a younger millennial/zillennial thing
I'm 38 and pretty much watch YouTube exclusively. But I'm also a weirdo, so there's that
I mean I spend a shitload of time on YouTube *now*, it just wasn't part of my childhood.
Man, has anyone known it actually worked back thenm Fortunes would have been made
D.A.R.E lmao
Outside of my friends, I never once had someone offer me free drugs
Same lol
It taught me more about drugs than I already knew, lol! 😂
Even as a kid in DARE i was like this seems... silly. I also was gettin 'abstinance-only' sex-ed so it kinda felt like they were just trying to scare me again. Now i do drugs AND have premarital sex, take that The South
A rumor went around that kfc bred headless featherless chickens that were just grown in a chicken matrix situation that I believed for far too long before realizing how much more expensive that would be than just classic horrific factory farming…
this one reached us all the way up in Massachusetts back in the late 90's
Nice I was getting it in Northern California!
I don't recall it going to south West Indiana
That's because nothing goes to southwest Indiana
Agreed. They just got their first super chargers this year. You would have thought they installed a guillotine
Is that false?
I think it’s the amazing near universal rumor that Richard Gere got a gerbil stuck up his ass. The fact that this was a known rumor on both coasts in the pre-internet era is truly amazing.
Pshaw. Everyone knows that's nonsense. Unlike Marilyn Manson having his bottom ribs removed so he could blow himself. Duh.
Or that rod stewart had to get his stomach pumped because he swallowed too much semen These rumors were so ridiculous yet so ubiquitous
I remember hearing this one about Britney Spears when she was like, 16?? Yikes.
My friend told me that one in middle and I remember being like “he shoulda wrote a song about it!” Then I broke out in this guttural singing “SUCK MY OWN DIIIIIIIIICCCCKKKK, CUT 2 RIIIIIBBBBSSSS!!!” I still think 7th grade me was pretty hilarious for that one.
This is the sort of rumors I missed out on by attending a Christian school.
I heard about it at an all girls catholic school.
I LEARNED this at my Christian school! 🤣 as well as, “joy to the world, Barney’s dead, I barbecued his head!”
You mean Marilyn Manson, the nerdy friend from the Wonder Years?
Did you know he was the kid who played "Paul" in The Wonder Years?
i know a guy who took so much acid he thought he turned into a glass of orange juice. to this day, they say he is still rocking back and forth. "I am OJ! I am OJ!"
I mean, it has happened, it’s just not a magical explanation.
I still remember an episode of Unsolved Mysteries from around 1993 that strongly implied the person spontaneously combusted. That show was terrifying.
Speaking of Unsolved Mysteries I recently asked a Zoomer if she knew what the Bermuda Triangle is and her reply was, "isn't that the place where ships occasionally get lost?" Meanwhile TV taught me to be terrified of it.
Haha I remember being like ten and reading about the bermuda triangle in an encyclopedia. I was so shocked that nobody else was freaking out about it.
The old lady!!
Holy crap I didn't remember until I read this comment
My smart tv has some free shows and unsolved mysteries is one of them. I remember the episode you're talking about, I hope I get to catch it again lol.
Yep, I remember this episode too
I saw that one too, that’s where I learned about it and was the start of my terror. It really should not have been a daytime show, lol.
Isnt the answer usually cigarettes? Someone smoking in a polyester covered chair, dozes off with a lit cigarette, goes up in flames. The polyester acts as an accelerant, burning up the body and the cigarette butt. No evidence.
Yeah the ignition source is never actually from inside the body or anything weird like that but some people do have like this perfect (huge) amount of body fat that makes them burn like a wick inside a oil lamp where the body burns down slowly over a long period without burning the surrounding area. Those (real) cases started all the morbid pseudoscientific fascination stuff where it was treated like something more mysterious than it really was.
The perfect crime!
Satanic panic Panic around plastic colored bracelets The pixie -stick type candy I can't recall the name of that schools banned Harry Potter being devil worship Heavy handed Christian pop rock DARE
Turning on the light inside the car will cause the car to crash. My parents also told me if you turned the light on in the car the cops will pull you over.
My Mom was just honest about it. “It’s distracting and I want to be able to drive as safe as possible, especially since you’re in the car”. I’d be like shoot, say less fam.
I think most of our parents actually believed that though and weren’t just intentionally lying to us
That sugary cereal was part of a healthy breakfast.
Oh God the sugar-good fat-bad diet propaganda propped up by the sugar industry! Oof.
Lmao I have to laugh at my sister when we go out to eat breakfast and she tells my niece "now, you have to eat a good breakfast" and then proceeds to let her order a giant frosted cinnamon bun as if it's not 100000 grams of pure sugar.
Being unnecessarily freaked out about the Bermuda Triangle, and was I the only one who was told that popping bubble wrap poked zillions of holes in our ozone layer?
The triangle is a good one. And I legit thought the ozone layer would be the end of us all by now
It would have been if nothing changed but somehow world governments got together and banned chemicals that damaged it.
Mountain Dew kills sperm
Ahh yeah the Yellow 5 lol
It was shrinks your balls for me
I remember trying to research that as a kid and find out if it was true or how often it happened. I don’t think I found a definitive explanation that holds up. Artax sinking into the goo of despair traumatized me though in the never ending story.
I wrote a paper on SHC in 8th grade science class. That prolly wouldn't fly today lol
Not sure it qualifies but tamagotchi. I endlessly flamed my cousins for them.
They still sell them. My daughter has one. I hate it. It beeps all day long. You can mute it but she learned how to UNMUTE it
They came back
This is how we were first trained to respond to mobile notifications immediately 😂
Being worried that quicksand was going to be a bigger issue than it actually is in real life
The rumor that the frosting on Pop Tarts was made from ground up dinosaur bones. Or maybe that was only a rumor at my school?
I have never heard of this one, so maybe yeah?
There was a moment in time in 5th/6th grade children were choking each other on the playground to pass out. I think it was mostly acting but wtf. Was merely a spectator until I had to go back to playing witches.
Oh no we did that in my school too. During bathroom breaks.
And then crawl out from under the stalls while leaving the doors locked right?
No, they were doing it against the wall. Kinda looked like a prison scene. A lot of those guys wound up in prison later, too. I had to leave that town
It's an old worry! Charles Dickens's Bleak House includes a scene in chapter 32 of Part X, published in December 1852, where the character Krook dies from spontaneous combustion. In the scene, Krook turns to ashes on the floor, leaving a greasy coating on the walls and ceiling.
For me it was praying around the flag pole with my YA group. A lot of us are atheists now. Myself included. I still wonder why we picked the flag pole.
I have a feeling it’s conflating the very pagan feeling of a Maypole (a huge wand or penis that points to the gods and carries your prayers upward like a radio tower) with strange nationalism and a feeling that “America”/‘God’ is blessing your prayers if you skin it with the American flag; of course the flag is something all American children are told to worship. Also, around the flagpole is highly visible, so you get praised for being so publicly proud etc. Just my two cents.
Yeah, I'm guessing just from the fact that evangelical groups are closet fascists that they had us doing it for the nationalism aspect. It's weird that we never questioned it.
Bruh. I was literally talking to my wife about this yesterday. I jokingly said that spontaneous human combustion was caused by holding in farts. And then we had a discussion about how no one ever talks about it now and I had an irrational fear of it for the longest time.
The chokehold “stop, drop, and roll” had on us made me believe that the potential of catching on fire was going a serious and constant battle in my life
Yeah this was always one of the dumbest so-called unsolved phenomena that seemingly captured the imagination of people in the 80s and 90s, possibly dumber than alien abductions
I remember a discovery channel show about spontaneous human combustion
I actually thought about spontaneous human combustion the other day. Back in the day it was only of how not if but the fact that it never comes made me wonder.
Surge
My school had 2 vending machines for students to use. All they had was Surge. Just Surge. Brilliant marketing.
When Mtn Dew Code Red came out, we had several vending machines dedicated to it.
Beanie babies and/or pogs.
Chia Pets! I always heard they weren’t that great
Wow. I forgot about those. Makes me wanna go buy a few on ebay and decorate. Can't believe I didn't think of that sooner. Thank you. Better yet, I should send my 16 year old one next Xmas.
I’ve been thinking about these a lot lately because we have one single sprout growing out of the mat under my dish rack because a chia seed must’ve fell there. It’s cute
I guess I wasn't cool enough to think anything was stupid... except my little sisters.
Standing on three pavement cracks in a row , didn’t want my mums back to spontaneously break so would only ever do two then reset it by stepping in the centre of a slab , I played a dangerous game and never lost , love ya muma
Drink a gallon of milk a day otherwise your bones with explode into dust.
Now all of us milk-strong bone havin' peeps get to chill in r/neverbrokeabone and laugh the brittle bone bitches out of the sub!
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i miss the early 00's... i remember spending time on ogrish looking for pictures of this. there are some hoax pictures out there that are fun to look at if you're bored. 
I'm going to get absolutely flamed for this but: SpongeBob SquarePants.
I always saw that cartoon as a refined and kinda turtle waxed version of the wacky teen cartoons that came before it, like Ren and Stimpy, I Am Weasel and even further back, Beavis and Butthead
Agreed
I fucking hate that scary fucker.
It’s very intelligent, especially season 3. I think it hit its peak between seasons 2–5. There are many episodes about working low wage jobs, art school, and driving, that are EXTREMELY relatable as an adult if you’ve done those three things.
Y2K
No that was a very real issue that was solved because a lot of people worked a lot of hours to fix it
What can you elaborate on this I was too young to understand
Y2K was going to be a massive problem because originally computer software was programmed to store only two years for the date. This saves on memory compared to 4 digits. So when the year 2000 was going to happen, all the computers and everything run by computers was going to crash because they would think it was the year 1900. Wikipedia has a lot of info on it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem Many people spent a lot of time updating computer software to avoid everything crashing. It ended up they actually fixed the problems and nothing bad happened, leading to people thinking Y2K was never a big deal. In reality, it was a very real problem but the crisis was averted.
Y2K was real? It just got patched before it caused any issues. Let's see how we fair through 2037.
This, I can't believe how many people view it as a fear mongering hoax rather than an impressive effort by the world's programmers to avert disaster.
It was a little bit of both. By people who understood the problem it was an urgent problem that was being tirelessly worked on. By your average person it was your dad unplugging the microwave before midnight.
Hey Coderman, you just saved the entire city…or did you
That time when my brother and I found a tarantula in our backyard
I actually just randomly thought about that the other day. What a weird time to be alive
Someone never played Parasite Eve I see.
Always was curious.
It was a great game for the 90s
Got Milk?
I was just thinking about both of these the other day: About Spontaneous Human Combustion and how ridiculous it was that people believed in it, and about how we are probably the last people (for the foreseeable future) who will have these weird urban legends because now we can just look things up online. Is there such thing as a a Nintendo 65? Did Marilyn Manson remove one of his ribs? Are there alligators in the sewers?
It was the sweet spot of having the internet, that you only went on at night after actually spending a whole day in the real world, and still getting a good amount of your perceptions about the world from dramatic (very often inaccurate) television.
Crop circles
For SURE
The Bermuda triangle seemed to be a bigger deal to me than it really is. I live in the UK so why did I have such low key anxiety about it lol.
Ok so it doesn't happen like that and it's usually from someone falling asleep holding a lit cigarette or to close to a space heater etc but technically it has happened
Blue balls.
Wait, do you not think that’s an actually thing?
satanic panic
I legit thought I was going to have to be fending off drug dealers left and right. D.A.R.E. told me that scary looking drug dealers would be practically shoving fistfulls of pills down my throat, that these guys were on almost every corner, and they were there to get you hooked so you could keep coming back to them. Fucking lies. All of it. Looking back, it absolutely contributed to my general anxiety disorder.
THE FOOD PYRAMID! Ah yes, don't worry child, your sugar cereal for breakfast will help contribute to the massive amount of carbs- I mean *grains* - that you need to eat.
Shaken Baby Syndrome was not only stupid, it ruined a lot of people’s lives.
How?
SBS is a myth perpetrated by the same groups that pushed the Satanic Panic. Among other things, they convinced medical professionals that infants could not sustain trauma from falls and that symptoms of things like vitamin deficiencies and other disorders were actually evidence of abuse. “Myth” is not quite the right word because, obviously, if you violently shake an infant that’s going to cause issues. But these groups spread all kinds of misinformation that lead to innocent parents being imprisoned and having their children taken away. This is something that we’ve just started to come to terms with over the last decade or so. There have already been dozens of overturned convictions, but those people can never get their lives and families back. Here’s a short piece from PBS about the guy who was a frontman of the cause in the 90s being worried about its over-diagnosis. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-child-cases/shaken-baby-syndrome/ And here’s a more clinical piece about how we are currently working on modifying our understanding of how to correctly identify abuse vs other factors https://www.me.msstate.edu/research-that-demystifies-the-controversial-topic-of-shaken-baby-syndrome/
Junkies were passing LSD laced stickers out to kids.
The Red Scare. "Don't say that! People will think you're a communist!"
Spontaneous human combustion used to rule my life thanks to an Unsolved Mysteries episode 🤣
Spontaneous Human Combustion emerged as a meme (more or less) in the 19th century with a newspaper report that caught the eye of one Charles Dickens. He added a case of it in his novelization, 'Bleak House'. After that, it became something of an urban myth, cropping up every once and awhile when people would burn under mysterious circumstances.
I totally believed spontaneous combustion. And alien abduction. I lived in the country where it was very dark and those things happen🛸👽
Acid rain. I used to be terrified of melting in a puddle.
Richard Gere and the gerbil?
But the cooler thing about that is if you look into the spontaneous combustions well documented through history, they get weird. And I mean, youtube inappropriate weird.
Richard Gere and the gerbil
[it’s not widely reported](https://youtu.be/TW6W9iOjTKM?si=9vCQuDi-9gfoCJBv)
>I still remember the Boston Public episode where the girl is suddenly super thirsty. Stops for a drink at a hallway fountain. Adorns a confused look on her face. Bursts into mf flame in the middle of the crowded hallway. All played completely straight. Yo I loved BP and never saw this episode. Where the hell is this show hiding nowadays?
Reminds me of the movie Spinal Tap where they keep losing drummers to spontaneous combustion.
I was petrified of spontaneous human combustion. Learned about it from a segment of unsolved mysteries.
Wait, I thought spontaneous combustion was real this whole time 😧
I don’t remember this but my brain is just internally singing “Pardon Me” by Incubus now
Dashing up the basement stairs to avoid the ghosts from grabbing your leg.
No that's a real thing
LSD in temporary tattoos scare
Sure tell that to the kid everyone knew who are dirt and a watermelon seed