Stupid rumors/stories/"facts" you heard at school - And which you were naive enough to believe

I had a "friend" who told me purchasing a turbo controller would have your whole family lynched. My other friend told me that was the stupidest thing he ever heard because he has one and he's fine. Why didn't I listen to him?

I also believed that the Y2K bug would kill us all not realizing that the TV shows that made episodes about it were satirizing how unlikely it is. In my defense, I was at least 10 when it happened so I have an excuse. Not sure about everyone else who were legal adults.
 
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This is a weird one; when I was in 1st grade, I overheard two teachers talking about a relative they knew who had their TV destroyed by a power surge during a thunderstorm. The idea that my TV could blow up during a thunderstorm was already distressing enough to a little kid, but it got even worse when one of them mentioned to the other that a TV blowing up could cause a fire. I spent the rest of the school day stressed out and afraid my house could burn down every time it rained.

Oddly enough, at no point did it occur to the teachers to explain to me what a fuse or breaker was, or the fact that they exist for the exact purpose of preventing destructive power surges from doing what was described. Obviously there's only so much you can explain to a little kid about how electricity works, but I was pretty inconsolable so you'd think they'd have at least put in an effort. They were both quite old though; in retrospect maybe neither of them were actually aware of how fuses worked at all.

Somewhat related, but the "don't shower in a thunderstorm" advice popped up on a regular basis. Its one of those things that everyone knows is highly unlikely to happen to you, but nobody dares dismiss because they don't want to be responsible for some idiot getting eletrocuted if it actually happens.
 
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When I was in kindergarten some of the older kids actually convinced me that some of the teachers were actually robots who could freeze you in place with their eyes if you misbehaved. One day after lunch I was walking around the school grounds at recess and I saw some girl who was pretending to be frozen in place with her friends so that seemed to add validity to that claim, so for a little while I would tell my friends to be careful and not act out at recess unless they wanted to get frozen in timeout by the robot teachers.

I already posted this in the other school thread but when I was in middle school during the Monday Night Wars, there was a really dumb rumor that went around my school that our guidance counselor was related to Mark Henry because they were both big, heavy set black guys who looked really similar to each other, so naturally everyone was saying that he was Mark's brother or his cousin.

Another rumor that went around my school was that our principal, who was a 500lb obese blob of a woman, supposedly put out a personal ad for lesbian sex on some late night radio station.
 
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L50LasPak said:
This is a weird one; when I was in 1st grade, I overheard two teachers talking about a relative they knew who had their TV destroyed by a power surge during a thunderstorm. The idea that my TV could blow up during a thunderstorm was already distressing enough to a little kid, but it got even worse when one of them mentioned to the other that a TV blowing up could cause a fire. I spent the rest of the school day stressed out and afraid my house could burn down every time it rained.

Oddly enough, at no point did it occur to the teachers to explain to me what a fuse or breaker was, or the fact that they exist for the exact purpose of preventing destructive power surges from doing what was described. Obviously there's only so much you can explain to a little kid about how electricity works, but I was pretty inconsolable so you'd think they'd have at least put in an effort. They were both quite old though; in retrospect maybe neither of them were actually aware of how fuses worked at all.

Somewhat related, but the "don't shower in a thunderstorm" advice popped up on a regular basis. Its one of those things that everyone knows is highly unlikely to happen to you, but nobody dares dismiss because they don't want to be responsible for some idiot getting eletrocuted if it actually happens.
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When I was in 1st grade one day there was a thunderstorm, the kind that just steadily last all day. This black girl who hated me told me that lightning only strikes white people so I better watch out or I'd get struck. I thought that was stupid and even told her so, but she kept telling me I'd get struck the rest of the day and it made me feel uncomfortable after a while. The teacher bitched at me when I complained about it, though.
 
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BootlegPopeye said:
A lot of the stupid rumors I heard in high school related to Tom Green, really popular then. The rumor was that Tom Green got his show canceled because he dressed as Hitler to a bar mitzvah. Would have been hilarious but sadly did not actually happen
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That was the same reason I heard back then too but Tom has sworn up and down that it never happened 🤔
 
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So the pikablu rumor hit my school and, no surprised there, us kids believed it. One rumor, however, was that a teacher actually had hidden cameras installed in the classroom. I believed that.

And this feels like a ghost story more than a rumor, but if you drive near a specific school in the town, you may run into the ghost of a young girl who got hit by a car. It's said that if you look into your back mirror, you could see her. And if you, or shotgun, look to your back seat, you'd get into a car accident. Surprise! The majority of car crashes reported in the town's newspaper reported car crashes near a school to this day.
 
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Picking up a feather of an eagle was illegal. Kids would run around on the playground telling people that if someone ever found a feather.

Mage of Conquest said:
So the pikablu rumor hit my school and, no surprised there, us kids believed it.
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Same here. We bought gamesharks to try the codes on geocities sites. Same with the golden field to the right of pallet town and the S.S. Anne truck.
 
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I had a friend who was always the one to tell me the high school rumors, i guess he was very in the loop with people and most turned out to be true. Like an english teacher making out with a student during graduation party and the same teacher smoking pot with a couple stoners from my grade, she was in her early 20s. One of the scene girls turning lesbo and started dating some almost 30 yr old woman, apparently the class whore slept with the math teacher for the grades, she is now married to a famous sportsball player
 
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horrorfan89 said:
there was a rumor among the girls at my high school that if they used coke as a douce after sex the acidity in the coke would kill sperm and keep you from getting pregnant. And people wonder why pregnancy rates in niggo schools are so high
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In junior high the girls talked about how if they had sex and had an orgasm their boobs would become bigger. Guess how that turned out.

Same class, same girls, Sweden joins the EU. Between classes the turbo-nerd with top grades suddenly stood up and expertly informed the girls that now that we are part of the EU 40% of their backpack volume will be made up of a water bladder to counter balance the breasts. It's a safety measure and it will avoid back problems. Then he walked away. They believed it and were in distress.

When the coast was clear he returned with shit eating grin. Turbo-nerd was good people.
 
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MysticMisty said:
For what it's worth, the rumor that the actor who played Steve from Blues Clues died of a drug OD has it's origins in a Law and Order episode he had a very brief guest appearance in. His character dies in the opening minutes in the precinct cell of what is initially believed to be a drug OD*, which young kids might've accidentally seen or glimpsed, and took that to mean he was really dead. Or gave older kids the idea to upset their younger sibling(s) with the idea.

*The detectives discover the guy was actually autistic (trending toward the severe end of the scale), and medical examiner later reveals he died from a brain injury from electric stimulation from a questionable autism behavior treatment.
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What fucking episode was that? I'm curious
 
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A lot of people were convinced that one English teacher ran a secret lesbian Buddhist cult and that almost every white girl (this was an Inner London secondary school, so they were a small minority) was a member of this cult.

At the time I was good friends with one of these girls, so I asked her what she thought of this theory, and she basically got into a screaming match with the guy who came up with it.
 
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Smaug's Smokey Hole said:
In junior high the girls talked about how if they had sex and had an orgasm their boobs would become bigger. Guess how that turned out.

Same class, same girls, Sweden joins the EU. Between classes the turbo-nerd with top grades suddenly stood up and expertly informed the girls that now that we are part of the EU 40% of their backpack volume will be made up of a water bladder to counter balance the breasts. It's a safety measure and it will avoid back problems. Then he walked away. They believed it and were in distress.

When the coast was clear he returned with shit eating grin. Turbo-nerd was good people.
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Now that you mentioned Sweden joining the EU, around that time there was a official EU information telephone line that we used to prank call. One kid asked if it was illegal in the EU to carbonate syrup in a soda streamer.

There was also this guy in school, called "Greaser" because he looked like a fat 1970's John Travolta with bad acne, who tried to argue against the EU, and the only argument he came up with was that the EU was a "fucken load of wank".

Strangely prophetic.
 
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When I was at school, there were constant rumours over the years that I was a nerd who had a thing for Asians, had gay sex with another guy, and had a gay lover. I didn't really give a shit though because I wasn't really well-liked or popula during my high school years.
 
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