The Urban Legends Reference Pages (also known as snopes.com) is a website dedicated to determining the truth about many urban legends, modern-day myths, and other stories floating around of uncertain or questionable origin. Snopes is run by Barbara and David Mikkelson, who met (on the newsgroup alt.folklore.urban) and married due to their common interest in urban folklore. They research their topics heavily and provide references. The site is organized according to topic and includes a message board to post questionable stories and pictures.
The Mikkelsons' work has been extremely effective in debunking widely spread urban legends. As an example, many of the top listings on Google for a legend involving a list Bill Gates was mistakenly believed to have authored now mention snopes, giving credit to the real author.
The site should not be confused with The AFU and Urban Legends Archive[1], a similar site run by the denizens of alt.folklore.urban, which houses that newsgroup's FAQ.
The creators, in an attempt to demonstrate the perils of overreliance on authority, created a series of made-up urban folklore which they termed The Repository Of Lost Legends, whose acronym signalled that they were trolling. One fictional legend averred that the children's nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence was really a coded reference used by pirates to recruit members. (This parodied a real false legend surrounding Ring Around the Rosie's links to the bubonic plague.) Although the creators were sure that no one could believe a tale so ridiculous (and had added a link at the bottom of the page to another page explaining the hoax), eventually the legend was featured as true on an urban legends board game and TV show. Whether this meant their plan backfired or succeeded is in the eye of the beholder.
The name snopes comes from the name of a family in the works of writer William Faulkner.
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Last updated: 10-26-2005 06:43:01
