These are stories that can confuse, frighten, or make you smile. They are usually transmitted by friends, colleagues, or family circles, but no one really knows their origins, we just know that they happened to “friends of friends”. Urban legends have always fueled our collective imagination, for better or for worse. “Urban legends express in a narrative and symbolic form the anxieties and desires of individuals in society”, summarizes the sociologist Jean-Bruno Renard, in his book Rumeurs et legends urbaines (PUF, 1999).
Urban legends often share the same characteristics: they are usually anonymous and brief. Their content is surprising, even unusual, but the stories are told as believable although their “historicity [is] questionable or untrue,” recalls Mr. Renard. And to clarify: “For a story to interest us (…), the story has an implicit message, a hidden moral to which we adhere. »
Previously transmitted by word of mouth, urban legends have found a second life with the Internet, and in particular social networks. But the stories may vary, the legends are not as modern as they seem. Four examples of stories that have given themselves a new lease of life on the most popular social networks.
It is a great classic of urban legends, one of those relayed massively at the beginning of the Internet era and which reappear regularly. In the early 2000s, a rumor originating in North America claimed that syringes contaminated with HIV, the AIDS virus, were deliberately placed in public places. The story, relayed in passing by a member of the Institut Pasteur, had spread in France by a chain of emails, forcing, in 2001, a municipality victim of the rumor and the Institut Pasteur to publicly deny these allegations.
More recently, in 2022, when wild needle stick attacks were reported in France, the legend of deliberately concealed syringes in public places reappeared.
Variations: When syringes aren’t hidden in movie theaters, they’re dropped off in phone booths, near ATMs, on the beach, on trains, even in gas pumps. Another variant of this urban legend even claims that malicious people would inject HIV-contaminated blood into fruit.
Why is the rumor so tenacious?
Since its discovery in the 1980s, the HIV virus – against which there is still no vaccine – has never ceased to fuel fears and fantasies.
“The appearance of AIDS has resulted in popular stories through rumors and legends of contamination”, confirms Jean-Bruno Renard in his book. Stories, he continues, that question “the lack of hygiene or morality: from unwrapped sweets made available to patrons in public places to a night spent with a stranger who leaves a note in the morning on which is written: “Welcome to the AIDS club”.
However, despite the multiple denials of the authorities, the lack of direct testimony, and the fact that AIDS contamination in such conditions is highly unlikely, AIDS continues to carry its share of untruths and rumours. A persistence of these urban myths which illustrates the collective psychoses that epidemics generally cause. The recent crisis linked to Covid-19 has been an instructive example of this.
Kidnappings, especially those of children in white vans, are ubiquitous in urban legends. These are sometimes relayed in a joking tone as evidenced by several recent videos on TikTok, but can have much more dramatic consequences.
Several attacks on Roma, for example, occurred in France in the spring of 2019, after publications on social networks suggesting that drivers of white vans were abducting children in order to prostitute them or sell their organs. Racist rumors totally unfounded and denied by the authorities, but which provoked serious violence.
The variants: in 2022, a rumor circulated on social networks suggested a supposed organ trafficking near French train stations. The culprits were, again, people from Eastern countries (Romania, Kosovo, etc.). Fifteen years earlier, three Romanians had been victims of this same rumor in Marseille and attacked on the basis of an SMS sent in large numbers to schools in the Marseille city.
Why is the rumor so tenacious?
This urban legend is located at the crossroads of several collective fears represented by the abduction of a child and the figure of the foreigner. Interviewed by Le Monde in 2019, researcher Aurore Van de Winkel, a specialist in the study of rumor phenomena in Belgium, believed that the fear linked to white vans had increased with the criminal cases of Marc Dutroux and Michel Fourniret, who rocked public opinion in the 1990s.
“These events further crystallized these kidnapping fears, as the murderers effectively kidnapped children in white vans. It was a way to blend in and white was the best-selling color because it was [and still is] the cheapest,” says Van de Winkel. But there are variations: “In the United States, in the 1980s, it was said that children were kidnapped in vans from ice cream parlors, by clowns”, recalls the specialist.
As for the racist accusations made against Roma, these are only the sad reflection of the fear aroused by foreigners. And the gypsy populations, in particular, who have been victims of it for centuries.
“In Europe, Gypsies have always been accused of all kinds of imaginary crimes, of which child theft is just one example,” explained in 2019 Ilsen About, historian specializing in Gypsies in Europe. And to clarify: “There is a whole literary production at the end of the 19th century which is linked to these questions and which has frozen in the imagination stories of children stolen on the road by wagoners, a theme which echoes to the current urban legend of white vans. »
This urban legend has a tough skin and has been circulating by word of mouth for many years: the fast food chain McDonald’s would voluntarily insert anti-emetic tablets in the buns of its burgers. A legend so tenacious, that we find its trace on TikTok. In 2021, a user of this video platform published a sequence in which he advised Internet users to remove this “white dot”. Although the rumor has been repeatedly denied, the video has racked up nearly 650,000 views.
Faced with this question on a recurring basis, the American company has even devoted a page to it on its site. McDonald’s explains that this white circle is linked to the bread manufacturing process: “An air bubble forms between the mold and the dough when placing the dough in the mold. The part in contact with the mold will brown while the part in contact with the air bubble will form this white circle. And to recall that European regulations do not authorize the integration of medicinal substances into food products.
Variations: Still in the realm of food, one of the best-known stories aims to alert people to the presence of rat urine on soda cans. Other similar stories still reported that a person had died at a picnic after drinking from a can infected with mouse urine.
Why is the rumor so tenacious?
Professor of ethnology at Laval University, in Quebec, and author of the book From rumor to urban legend (Presses de l’université Laval, 2010), Martine Roberge points out that food is a theme of choice for legends. urban. This aims above all to alert against the hidden dangers of industrial food.
These captions “express social concerns related to the increasingly distant and ambivalent relationship we have with food and the food chain, from industry to plate”. In their role of social control, these narratives act as warnings, with the idea of ??pointing out processed food because “you don’t quite know what you’re eating”.
The legend has been circulating among high school students for over forty years. It is said that a candidate for the baccalaureate came across the subject “What is audacity” on the philosophy test and obtained a mark of 20/20 by returning a quasi-white paper, answering only: “Boldness, that’s it. »
Variations: Depending on the version, it can also be a French test, and “l’audace” can be replaced by “le courage”, “le base” or “le risque”.
Why is the rumor so tenacious?
In 2015, the Slate media tried to find its origin. According to the site, it may come from the 1978 fiction film Le Pion, directed by Christian Gion, which contains a scene where a student obtained 18/20 after writing “Le risque, c’est ça” in his French homework. . It is however difficult to know if the legend was created by this feature film or if this one just reinforced its popularity.
Four decades later, it remains tenacious, so much so that in 2020, the website of the Ministry of National Education mentioned this story as “a legend that adds to the many ideas received about the baccalaureate” . A ministry document on the evaluation of work intended for professors of philosophy considers that an essay “unstructured”, “excessively short” or “marking a manifest refusal to do the exercise” can justify a mark between 0 and 5.
In his book on urban legends, Jean-Bruno Renard explains that “this anecdote is also attested in the United States and Germany”. Despite the fact that there is “no proof of [its] veracity”, he maintains that the account remains implausible, in the opinion even of many professors of philosophy for whom such a copy would hardly demonstrate the capacities of expression of a pupil’s thought.
As Mr. Renard points out in his book, “this anecdote appeals because it is a revenge of the high school students against the dominant position of the philosophy teacher”. Although those who hear it or tell it may doubt its veracity, it remains tenacious because it acts as “an antidote to the stress of discovering and learning this difficult discipline, as well as a compensation for the anxiety created by the examination situation”.
