Talk:Urban legend

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Contradiction

"Urban legends are most often circulated orally"

"Urban legends are mostly spread on social media"

Urban legends do not involve the obviously impossible.

"Most urban legends will also include an element of something that is supernatural or paranormal." I disagree. In fact, not only do most urban legend not involve the supernatural (which is the same as the paranormal, isn't it?) but by definition an urban legend (besides some borderline cases perhaps) is believable by normal modern urban people, and therefore does not involve ghosts and the like. Otherwise what is the distinction between a legend and an urban legend? Are we to call legends about a haunted house in a city an urban legend, and one in the country a rural legend? And if the house is in the suburbs, is it a suburban legend? And if the house is in a green belt, is it a green belt legend? Of course not. So please let's not conflate urban legends with folklore, legends, myths and so on. To do so is the render the term urban legend useless or at least much less useful. We should say urban ghost story or urban folklore if that is what we mean. An 'urban legend' is a very useful term. Let's not damage it. The top definition at Urban Dictionary https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=urban%20legend gives makes no mention of ordinary folklore or the supernatural https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=urban%20legend and gives a thoroughly modern and secular example. No mention of the supernatural here: "An apocryphal story involving incidents of the recent past, often including elements of humor and horror, that spreads quickly and is popularly believed to be true." https://www.thefreedictionary.com/urban+legend. Note that it is 'apocryphal' which means believable (ghost stories are not, because there is no such thing as a ghost). Note that it is 'popularly believed to be true', that means the general population, not just the superstitious or gullible fraction believe it. It has to be plausible, or at least possible. Arctic Gazelle (talk) 17:21, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

@Arctic Gazelle: I agree that the statement "Most urban legends will also include an element of something that is supernatural or paranormal" is insufficiently supported by sources. That sentence appears to have since been removed from the article, with GenQuest having replaced it with "An urban legend may include elements of the supernatural or paranormal." I find this updated wording much preferable, and I hope this change eased your contentions. I will say, though, I disagree with your assertion that urban legends cannot "involve ghosts and the like."

First, Urban Dictionary is considered a generally unreliable source of information. The Free Dictionary source indeed makes no mention of the supernatural, but says nothing about urban legends being exclusively non-supernatural in nature. While I seem to agree with you on one point in the sense that I don't believe that ghosts exist, there are a significant number of people who do believe in ghosts—between 42% and 45% of people in the United States alone. Regardless, there are sources that indicate that urban legends can be supernatural in nature. These include Contemporary Legend: A Reader, edited by Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith, as well as the Encyclopedia of Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand, who helped popularize the concept of urban legends in the 1980s.

The closest thing I could find to support the view that urban legends cannot be supernatural in nature was in The Razor Blade in the Apple by Joel Best and Gerald T. Horiuchi, which features the following quote: "Whereas traditional legends often feature supernatural themes, most urban legends 'are grounded in human baseness...' (Fine, 1980:227)." Even this example, however, includes a qualifier: most urban legends, not all. Additionally, after re-reading your words, I notice that you used the same qualifier: "most urban legend not involve the supernatural". The statement that urban legends can include supernatural or paranormal elements, or even that most urban legends do not include such elements, can be supported by sources; the claim that urban legends outright cannot involve such elements, as far as I can tell, does not have such support. —Matthew - (talk) 05:36, 21 May 2021 (UTC)