I'm going to be honest with y'all. I'm so gullible that I'm a liability. So when u/Sera0Sparrow called for widely believed myths that are not true, I read through all the comments...and gasped several times.
I was so shocked that I had to dig further for many of these myths to fully understand just how much I've been lied to for most of my life. So here are just some of the debunked "myths" that had me questioning my entire existence:
1. "That you need to wait 24 hours to report a missing person. If you sincerely think someone is missing, then report it. The faster that a missing person report is filed, the better chance there is that the person will be found. This is especially crucial when it comes to missing children."
2. "That coffee stunts your growth."
3. "Anyone who says you can trim fat in 'X' area by doing 'Y' exercises is lying. That's totally impossible. You lose fat proportionally over all areas of your body. You can't just target one area to work on."
4. "MSG is harmful and East Asian cuisine is bad because of MSG."
5. “That rice will fix the phone you dropped into the pool. That doesn’t do anything other than get rice stuck in your charging port. Instead, turn your phone off right away, dry it off with a towel, and set it in front of a fan. It’ll do more, I promise.”
6. "The belief that 'lightning never strikes twice in the same place.' Actually it does and sometimes with great frequency."
7. "That some people are more left-brained or right-brained. The brain has a lot of cells and they all work together. There are plenty of different types of brain cells (neurons) but they don’t operate in isolation."
8. "That a polygraph test can actually be used to detect if someone is lying."
9. "Popping your knuckles causes arthritis."
10. "The alpha/beta social hierarchy that we 'observed' in wolves. The researcher who performed the experiment realized he had made many mistakes in his original take and has spent the rest of his life trying to undo the damage that report has created."
11. "Adding another lane will make traffic go away."
12. "People think we swallow a bunch of spiders every year in our sleep."
13. "Thanksgiving is something that spurred peace and harmony among settlers and Native people."
14. "The belief that touching a fawn or a baby bird will make the mother abandon it."
15. "People taking Emergen-C to get over a cold."
16. "The Middle Ages were less barbaric and dark than we think."
17. "It's illegal to have your interior light on in the car while you're driving."
18. "That nuclear power is extremely dangerous and worse than fossil fuels in both the short and long term."
19. "That eating sugar makes kids hyper. Parents perpetuate this myth by saying it around kids so kids just behave according to their parents' expectations."
20. "Daylight savings time was started for farmers."
21. "Rainwater will make your windows dirty."
22. "That urinating on a jellyfish sting will help or do anything at all."
23. "'Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!' Bro...that was a commercial. You’ve spent your entire life repeating a commercial from before you were born."
24. "If you get a raise that puts you into a new tax bracket, you will actually owe more money. My mom used to think getting a raise would result in her making less. Then, when I entered the workforce, I saw someone say something similar. I was shocked to learn that this was a common belief."
25. "Touching a frog/toad will give you warts."
26. "For Americans, the concept of trickle-down economics — that lowering taxes for rich people creates jobs. It’s been disproven by economists and is anecdotally untrue looking at our history since 1980, but it drives most of our politics today."
27. "'If you pee in the public pool, the water around you will turn purple.' I'm not complaining about being bamboozled for years because public pools would be half piss if it didn't exist."
28. And finally, "circumcision having most of the health benefits that it is claimed to have."
What "truths" have you recently discovered are totally false? Let me know in the comments!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.