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Childlore is folklore passed directly between children, without the input of adults.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childlore

Stuff I can think of off the top of my head are paper fortune tellers, summoning Bloody Mary/the candyman, the cool S, parody songs like "Jingle bells Batman Smells" and "Joy to the world, the teacher's dead" etc.

This stuff has intrigued me since, well since I was a kid. I always wondered where they came from. I never saw adults doing that stuff, so I figured another kid had to have come up with it.

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[-] GalacticSushi@piefed.blahaj.zone 29 points 2 months ago

The rumor that existed in every single school that Marilyn Manson had a rib removed so he could suck his own penis

[-] MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

That rumor came up in his autobiography and he wrote -

"If I really got my ribs removed, I would have been busy sucking my own dick on The Wonder Years instead of chasing Winnie Cooper. Plus, who really has time to be killing puppies when you can be sucking your own dick? I think I'm gonna call the surgeon in the morning."

Side note: Marilyn Manson is a peice of shit.

[-] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I'm out of the loop on that one, why is he a piece of shit?

[-] Geobloke@aussie.zone 6 points 2 months ago

A bunch of women accused him of sexual violence, but nothing is showing up on his wiki.

He also seems to have been a bit of a dick to bandmates

[-] Quadhammer@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

He... he was on the wonder years?

[-] rosco385@lemmy.wtf 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

No, but there was a rumour back in the day that he was the kid who played Kevin's best friend.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wondering-about-marilyn/

[-] essell@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

For my generation this was about Prince

[-] barkybeak@lemmy.zip 21 points 2 months ago

So many gaming ones.

When mortal kombat was released for consoles, the kids passed the “blood code” for the genesis

When mortal kombat 2 came out, their were so many myths about super fatalities and weird stuff about how street fighter was in it.

[-] early_riser@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

Man oh man I could probably have a whole thread just for video game urban legends from the late 90s. That's when some of your friends had internet, but maybe you didn't, so there was just enough legit info to make the fake stuff seem believable (looking at you, MissingNo). Luigi in SM64, all sorts of secret Smash 64 characters, literally the entirety of Pokemon.

[-] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I wonder if Luigi in SM64 and other games was also a product of memory constraints as some of these games did omit him for that reason specifically and thus presumably had initially been intended to include him before the memory issues came up. If that's true he may have shown up in very early marketing material and spawned the legends.

[-] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago

presumably had initially been intended to include him

Fun fact: In one of the many leaks of Nintendo internal files in the past decade, early source code and the model was found for Luigi in SM64. His inclusion was abandoned very early on in development.

[-] ToffeeIsForClosers@piefed.ca 21 points 2 months ago

On another kid’s hand: “Circle, circle, dot, dot. Now you have your cooties shot.”

[-] TAG@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That is not sufficient cootie protection. A properly trained physician will follow it up with

Circle circle, square square,
Now you have it everywhere

[-] early_riser@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

No cootie insurance though

[-] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 2 months ago

Going way way back to the 1980s... there was a rumour around my school that there was a secret chocolate factory hidden in Super Mario Bros 1. We didn't really think there would be much to it, but we'd all been to the minus world and we saw the palette swap in some worlds (like I think world 6). The more reasonable or computer/code minded of us just figured it was a glitch that palette swapped everything to browns, so "chocolate factory" became the name for it, where it didn't officially have one.

Nintendo must have heard this rumour, because Super Mario World featured a "Chocolate Island." But this was before SMB2 was ever a thing.

[-] early_riser@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I've heard of this (way after the fact). IIRC it was part of some player's guide, and may have been included either as a joke by the author or a copyright trap by the publisher.

Seems I was right. Per this wiki article Apologies for linking to Fandom.

[-] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

Wow, I never heard it was written down anywhere. I never bought unofficial guides, either, though I did subscribe (rather, my parents subscribed me to) Nintendo Power. Not sure if they wrote it in an article in a magazine, or if I just heard it on the playground.

Either way, that's pretty common with maps. Map makers will invent towns that do not exist, and if they see other map makers using it, they know their work was stolen.

[-] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 months ago

Hold B+Down to increase your chances of catching a pokemon.

[-] jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Not necessarily my favorite nor something widespread, but it was always the legend/meme that my middle/high schools had a pool on the roof (it was a one story building lmfao)

[-] 5too@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

I remember kids would try to sell each other a pass to get to the second floor of one of our one-story buildings; I wonder if the pool rumor started as a similar joke/scam

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

This might be local but "Deem!" as the sound of magical transformation. As an adult I think some child heard/read something like "I deem you Sir Galahad, Knight of the Round Table" and mixed it up with cartoon magic sounds, but in our neighborhood any kid with a good stick could wave it and say "Deem! You're a horse!" or "Deem! You're a frog!" and the other kid would act the part for awhile. You could even deem yourself, like "Deem! I'm a wizard!" Which is redundant now that I think of it.

[-] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Could it be an onomatopoeia of the ringing/shimmering sounds sometimes used? Like an alternate of "ding"?

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes to that, but also I remember, if I was the fairy or the witch I might say "I'm gonna deem you a princess, okay?" Or even "what do you want me to deem you?" if I wasn't feeling bossy.

[-] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago
[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

My childhood was in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, so it's possible the cartoon's author had a similar background and Dwayne is a humorous twist on Deem.

[-] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

IDK but the Brothers Chaps are from Georgia. I was just trying to be funny.

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

Well you succeeded, and now I have to go learn more about them and their work! (so I can't possibly do any of my chores rn)

[-] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

oh you're welcome. Homestar Runner was a staple of the 2000s. The original site used to be all in Flash until adobe killed it, which they comment on here. There used to be a "disturbingly comprehensive" wiki, but it seems to have been buried by bot traffic. The domain is pingable but http requests time out.

[-] LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

I middle/high school the best sub was rumored to live out of the back of his station wagon and had cardboard boxes to extend the back of it for extra shelter. It didn't help that the man embraced the rumor.

He once shared some pie with me when I was having a small breakdown in an empty room senior year due to my severe depression and from being bullied severely. He just offered me pie and we sat in silence and each ate a piece and then went on our way. It was nice.

[-] lime@feddit.nu 9 points 2 months ago

the swedish word for "dibs" is "pax". which, i only realized much later, is latin for "peace". always thought that was neat.

[-] logos@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 months ago

Blowing in the Nintendo cartridge. Miss Mary Mack.

[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I have a child monitor that only charges if I blow in it before plugging it. It's legit

[-] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 months ago

Blowing in it did work, it was just bad long term

[-] fizzle@quokk.au 9 points 2 months ago

You can make yourself wake up at 6am tomorrow by hitting yourself on the head 6 times, you need to do it really hard though.

[-] emb@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

It's gotta be The Cool S.

[-] GlenRambo@jlai.lu 7 points 2 months ago

You could somehow make a legal and illegal version of a ninja throwing star with popsicle sticks.

[-] Waldelfe@feddit.org 7 points 2 months ago

In my elementary school there was a rumour that kissing someone on the mouth makes a baby in the throat. I've heard it still being spread years later. There are also parodies of famous German poems that you have or had to memorize in school, although I some kids learnt them from their parents. I know parody versions of Die Glocke and Die Bürgschaft.

[-] hungryphrog 3 points 2 months ago

Soo... Does that mean you're gonna give birth by coughing or vomiting up the baby?

[-] Waldelfe@feddit.org 8 points 2 months ago

I don't think the kids thought that far. I certainly didn't.

[-] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago
[-] KuromiGirl04@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The version of the Little Einsteins theme song i would sing in middle school and high-school everytime we went on a field trip on a school bus

We're going on a trip, in our favorite piece of shit! Doin' 95, we'll probably fucking die!

The teachers hated it but a bunch of the other kids thought it was funny and would sing along

But really though, have you ever ridden on the highway in a schoolbus during a fieldtrip? This is absolutely what it felt like, that you were going 95 mph with no seatbelts and you were gonna die

[-] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

These video game ones now have me wondering if anyone else was told they could unlock extra characters in Super Smash Bros (N64) by clicking certain names in the credits.

We had various rules about how to do a "snow dance". Something about wearing pajamas and walking around a pillow to get school canceled.

[-] early_riser@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

These video game ones now have me wondering if anyone else was told they could unlock extra characters in Super Smash Bros (N64) by clicking certain names in the credits.

The methods for unlocking these supposed secret characters were always ridiculously convoluted, so if it didn't work you were probably doing it wrong. Like beating the game 10 times on level 9 difficulty with 1 stock with Pikachu would unlock Mewtwo, etc.

But like I said above, the stuff that was legit was often so weird and seemingly arbitrary that the fake stuff sounded more plausible. Talk to a specific NPC, fly to a specific area and surf up and down a specific coast, and you'll encounter a glitched pokemon that will duplicate the sixth item in your inventory. Yeah it was all about memory registers or whatever, but I didn't know about that stuff at the time.

[-] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 months ago

Hold your breath when you pass the graveyard, or go through a tunnel.

Lift your feet off the ground when a vehicle you're in goes under the train tracks.

If you sharpen a pencil really sharp, you can stick it into a ceiling tile and it will stay there.

Chew up some paper and you can spit it at someone through a straw as a spitball.

How to fold a paper fortune teller, and play it. For some reason my classmates labeled it with the different kinds of sex acts we had heard of but didn't really understand. (Kissing, sex, 69, blowjob...)

How to play MASH.

How to play tag.

[-] MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

You heard about that guy that took too much acid and couldn't sit down because he thought he was a glass of orange juice and he would spill?

[-] LORDSMEGMA@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

Ours was a kid on a band trip to Disneyland. Wouldn't get off the teacups be wise he didn't want to spill

this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
112 points (100.0% liked)

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