Some stories sound too unrealistic to be true. That’s because quite often they aren’t. Whether it’s a myth, a conspiracy theory, or simply a lie someone blurted out, it might spread among people, making some of them actually believe it. And when they do, they are inclined to tell others about it.

Looking for some of the most unbelievable stories people consider to be true, redditors have repeatedly turned to the ‘Ask Reddit’ community with a question—what is the dumbest myth you have ever heard? The abundance of answers they received covered everything from dinosaur remains being planted by the Government to people looking for gold for aliens. Scroll down to find more of their unbelievable answers.

#1

Vaccines cause autism.

Image credits: thatsboxy

#2

scientology

Image credits: ReMiCkS_25

#3

Aside from everything in the bible itself, my mom told me that bibles could not burn because they contained the word of God so God protected them from being destroyed. She told me there were many instances of entire houses burning down but the bible(s) remaining intact and virtually unscathed. So I burned a bible when I was about 8 years old. Myth busted!

#4

Your birthday decides who you are as a person

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#5

If you have "organ donor" on your driver's license then EMTs will let you die to take your organs

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#6

Whales control the weather and are currently causing global warming.

Because apparently their movements affect ocean currents or air currents or I don't even know what. I wish I were making this up.

Image credits: dynamouse

#7

David Icke's theory That every world leader, member of royalty and figure of importance is reptilian.

Image credits: 0wl-Exterminator

#8

Breatharianism. The idea that people can live without food and all we really need to survive is oxygen. Not sure how this group still exists

Image credits: Akatsiya

#9

The earth is only 6000 years old. Tell that to the Sumerians

Image credits: rawbamatic

#10

So many people genuinely believe blood is blue inside their body

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#11

we only use 10% of our brains

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#12

The world is flat, and it only looks round from space due to gravity distorting light.

Image credits: Dr_Graves

#13

My father once told with with absolute seriousness that if a snake bites you, and you survive, the snake dies instead. Apparently this is an old wives tale from India, but he defended it for a solid ten minutes before begrudgingly admitting that it didn't make any sense

Image credits: Nightslayer9522

#14

An idiot told my wife a few weeks ago that if you are being mugged at an ATM you need to type in your PIN backwards. He thinks this will allow you to withdraw money as normal but "alerts" the police who dispatch a squad car to your location imediately.

When she asked what about people with mirror image PINs and PINs such as 4444 he still maintained that he was right. No actual answer, just insisted he was correct.

Image credits: Creabhain

#15

That if you startle a pregnant woman the baby will come out cross eyed

Image credits: m0ther0fg0ds

#16

Illuminati conspiracy is the dumbest s**t I've ever heard of. I even heard that they controlled the earthquakes in Haiti

#17

My MIL got mad at me for reaching up high to grab something while pregnant because, "That'll wrap the umbilical cord around the baby's neck!"I told her that no part of my anatomy directly connects my arms to the inside of my placenta. She didn't believe me so I googled to show her it's an old wives tale. She got upset and cried. :/ Sweet lady but damn. Use some common sense

#18

There is an activist group (with a large following) that claims that clouds in the sky are not real. They are just figments of everyone's imaginations because the government brain washes everyone into thinking clouds exist.

Seriously?

Image credits: dubefest

#19

A black cat is an omen of bad luck and if one crosses your way you have idk how many years of bad luck. Along the same lines is the mirror 7 years of bad luck, and walking under a ladder. Like, excuse me? Can that cat ration enough to put a fucking spell on you?? And how tf are inanimate objects gonna cast a fucking spell????? Like it just seems extremely dumb

Image credits: ComicCat-Laz

#20

A coworker of mine believes that if you play the phrase "Yes we can." backwards, it sounds suspiciously like "Thank you Satan.", and so Obama must have made a pact with the devil in order to win the presidency. The strangest part is that he isn't particularly political, or outspokenly partisan. His real concern is ACTUALLY Satan.

#21

I can't decide which one of these are worse.

- Having a discussion with a friend and his buddy about Bruce Lee. Then the topic of his death comes up. The conspiracy theories start to fly but it didn't really get too ridiculous until my friend's buddy piped up.

"Bruce Lee actually died when he set himself on fire while cooking hot dogs. They covered it up because no one wanted to think that the world's greatest martial artist would have done that to himself. But anyone who does a little reading will know this."

- At work we were discussing fighting games. The one guy then blurts out that the reason Asians are so good at these games is that the machines are built by other Asians to have *genetic decoders* built into the buttons. Once the machine verifies that you are Asian, the game gives you unfair advantages over your opponent. He was completely serious about this theory. When he was finished talking, there was a good 8 seconds of complete silence until my friend piped up and says, "That's.....got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard."

#22

Definitely the Korean urban myth of sleeping with a fan on will you. I’ve heard it explained as the blades chopping up the air creating gaps so that you suffocate in your sleep

Image credits: LosAngelesLio

#23

That the Mona Lisa is actually Leonardo da Vinci in drag

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#24

Some guy told me about how the Illuminati gets two dead bodies every year and place them in the Coca Cola tanks. Then they use them to ferment the Coca Cola the public drinks to control us

Image credits: fluffy-muffin

#25

That dwarfs didn't exist before World War 2.

A friend tried to tell me that They were bred by the Australians to be able to hide in kangaroo pouches and 'sneak attack' if the country was ever invaded.

We're not friends anymore.

#26

Magnetic balance improving bracelets. I will immediately write you off as dumb or at least very gullible if you wear one of those those things.

Image credits: Nsekiil

#27

Freemason here.

I am constantly amazed by the people who claim that Freemasons have some kind of New World Order conspiracy going on. The only thing even *more* amazing is how people who are **not** Freemasons can describe to me in detail how the entire conspiracy works, except that I, myself (you know, the guy who's *actually* a Mason), don't know about it because I'm apparently not high ranking enough.

For those who don't know, there is no "head" of Freemasons. It's a fairly loose conglomerate of Grand Lodges which oversee local lodges. In the US and Canada, each state/province has it's own head 9Grand Lodge) - there isn't any national head. In Great Britain, England, Scotland, Ireland each have their own Grand Lodges. There's no head of the organization to flow down any kinds of instructions.

Also consider: Local lodges are filled with (mainly older) members of the community, like your grandfather, uncle, the neighbor across the street, etc. Generally, I'm amazed that the local lodges can successfully plan a charity fund raiser (or sometimes, even a picnic). Planning a far-reaching extra-government conspiracy is, well, you know. Just nuts.

#28

Dinosaurs were placed in the ground by the government in order to discredit religious people and prove evolution...or something like that. I can't remember the details. It gave me an aneurysm.

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#29

The moon landing is fake.

Image credits: feel_the_burns

#30

Birth control pills will cause the downfall of society.

As my sociology professor explained, "Birth control pills let women have all the sex they want and don't have to worry about having babies, and there are more and more women who are using them and never settling down and having families. With no women getting pregnant anymore, the government will have to step in and start creating a workforce using cloning technology. These clones will grow up in a government-controlled school and trained to be mindless automatons whose goal in life is to work and to serve their government masters - they will be chemically neutered so that they aren't concerned about sex and marriage, and they will all be the same race."

Funny enough, he never thought about what would happen when the government officials die off and there are only clones left.

#31

My all time favorite is Chinese buffets are just a way of making us fatter and easier to invade.

Image credits: ChiefChivo

#32

The Phantom Time hypothesis. That 300 years of European history between 600-900 AD were just made up.

This is also my favorite conspiracy theory.

#33

Hollow Earth theory. One of my co-workers asked if I had heard of it and then very seriously told me to look it up. I thought she was kidding until I talked to her again about and it turns out she was completely serious.

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#34

Aliens put humans on earth to find gold for them

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#35

In the past few months my friend went out with a girl that said she didn't believe in dinosaurs, I don't know why this bothers me so much I mean who cares what someone else thinks right? But f*****g hell dinosaurs the evidence is so f*****g overwhelming it's like saying every night the people from the Truman Show turn on the moon.

#36

As recently as 1993, when I had my youngest child, there were people telling me during my pregnancy to get rid of my cat because it would get in the crib and "take the baby's breath away." The fact that I had an almost-four-year-old who survived household cats didn't hold water with them.

Image credits: sirdigbykittencaesar

#37

If you have a sat nav/gps it's really the government spying on you and can control your car.

Image credits: sbdores

#38

A moron I worked with, swore that the diet Pepsi I was drinking was flavored with aborted fetuses from planned parenthood... He was serious.. Google it... This dude had tattoos on his eyelids too, so not real bright to begin with

#39

Bermuda Triangle

Image credits: Jfonzy

#40

If you are in a cold environment you'll catch a cold

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#41

That Hello Kitty's creator made a deal with the devil to save her daughter that had mouth cancer and that's why she created hello Kitty.

Image credits: Lis_9

#42

This thing that keeps coming up that, somehow, the US government is engineering a new flu and wants the American people people to get it. I work in infectious disease research and this comes up so often when people want to talk about my work, I can't even tell you. The whole thing is so baffling I don't even know how to address it: why would the US government want to give AMERICAN people the flu? Where does this even come from?

#43

That the pyramids were built by ancient aliens to land their spacecraft on. This same theory incorporates further pyramids on the moon that astronauts from various missions know about.

Everyone get your tin foil hats.

#44

Anything. To. Do. With. Mayan. Calendar.

#45

I met my new downstairs neighbor a few months back. He asked for a ride to work, I obliged, and well, let's just say i learned a lot about him in around ten minutes. The very first thing on the drive that comes out of his mouth is this, "Okay so you know how there are organic beings floating around in the sky that can travel thousands of miles an hour and make 90 degree turns within the blink of an eye? Well I think the government is going to tell us that they are angels and that they are good for humanity. Because angels are supposed to protect us right? They gain our trust. The thing is, I think they are actually demons who told the government to tell us that they are angels, so we think we are safe and protected for the alien invasion that is sure to come. But the aliens have been here working with our government for years now, and this is all their idea to keep us regular citizens more manageable."
This was only the beginning.

tl;dr - My downstairs neighbor has 'yo dawg' conspiracy theories.

#46

When you talk on your cell phone or land line there are people from the NSA listening in real time.

I've heard this from 2 people

#47

That the government was/is using the Kinect to spy on people in their houses.