Kate Hackett
The AskReddit community recently answered a question u/Eichberg posed to it. It said:
“What is an annoying myth people still believe?”
We’ve compiled some of the best answers for you … which ones did YOU still believe?
1. Baby Bird
That if you touch a baby bird, its mother will abandon it because of the smell. Birds actually have a very crappy sense of smell.
2. Blind Baby
In my country people believe that if you’re pregnant and cut your hair, the baby will be born blind.
3. Fish brains
Fish only have a 5 second memory. My fish are fed automatically on a timer and they know dinner time better than my goddamn cat.
4. Bats
People think bats are blind. They aren’t.
5. Strangle Baby
If you lift your hands above your head while pregnant you will strangle the baby. I am sure it was started by smart women who didn’t want to do all the housework while pregnant and tired. I still hear it every now and again.
6. Knuckle cracks
Cracking your knuckles makes them bigger/gives you arthritis.
This is an ongoing battle between myself and my older coworkers.
7. Space pen
That myth about how NASA invented ballpoint pens for space while the USSR just used pencils… basically completely untrue.
8. Fired
That companies “can’t” say that you were fired, or why you were fired, “by law.”
9. Warts
That you get warts from frogs. Warts come from the human papilloma virus and come from contact with the virus through broken skin. It is a human specific virus and cannot be spread through different species.
10. Earth was flat
Scholars in the middle ages didn’t believe the Earth was flat. The ancient Greeks knew that shit was false. The myth of the flat earth was a post-Romanticism fancy in pop culture, not a serious scholarly movement.
11. 24 Hours
You have to wait 24 hours before filing a missing persons report
12. From SPACE!
The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from space. First of all, it’s not, and second, other ones are.
13. Tax Rates
The highest tax rate means your entire income is taxed at that rate
14. Hymens
Many people still believe hymens are like plastic food seals that cover up the hole and get popped when you have sex for the first time, and if a girl doesn’t bleed she’s not a virgin.
15. Toxin cleansing
You can “detox” your body from toxins and parasites by drinking certain teas or taking some weird medication.
Repeated diarrhea and frequent urination doesn’t indicate toxins leaving your body, your liver and kidneys do the job. If your liver is not functioning or you have a kidney disorder, obviously you need help but it won’t be teas that someone on Instagram is boasting about.
16. Animal parts
That certain animal ‘parts’ have healing/magical properties. Like tiger whiskers protect the wearer or rhino horn cures impotence and hangovers.
17. Thicker hair
That cutting your hair off makes it grow in thicker.
18. Armor
That historical armor was basically useless, only increasing the chance of maybe deflecting a blow if you were lucky. You still see it in movies, shows and games where a knife or sword or arrow will go through armor like it’s cardboard.
In reality armor was very useful. Very good armor, like a knight’s suit of plate, made the wearer virtually invincible. The best plate could stop even early firearms. A knight in full plate and wielding a shield was pretty much the tank of the medieval battlefield. Doubly so if on horseback. Specialized weapons and a concerted effort was needed to defeat one, although typically no one would try to kill a knight since you can’t ransom a corpse.
19. OCD
People with OCD just repeatedly wash their hands and like things clean and organized. This is how it presents in some people. There is so much more to this mental illness that people aren’t aware of that lead to people not getting diagnosed or help.
20. The McDonald’s Coffee Lawsuit
Not sure if this fits here exactly, but the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit being a frivolous case filed by a money hungry customer. That poor lady was a real victim who suffered legitimate injuries who only wanted her medical costs covered.
