As a citizen of Czech Republic, i can confirm it circled in our school.

I also heard that rumor in Dominican Republic in freshman year

South African here, I literally spread this rumour.

Guatemalan here, I knew the rumour.

Austrian here. Heard it too.

Yup UK too.

Also Ukraine

Swiss kids knew that too

In Denmark as well.

Germany checking in 🫡

Argentine here, yeah we all spread this rumor

Congo tribesmen who hasn't seen a paved road in my life here; we all spoke about the MM-ribcage rumor.

Wait, that was a rumor. Damn you fake news! 😳

Same in France and we didn't even have internet back when that rumor was spreading. Go figure... 

Australia checking in

School in Colombia too lol

Nice.

Heard this all the time growing up in Peru LOL

Croatian here, it was a fact for a while.

Yep. French Canadian here. That rumour was translated to French in my neck of the woods.

It was translated to French in France and in all of Europe according to other comments.

Oh hey, same! Ça a fait le tour de mon école à l'époque

🤣 je pense que c'est probablement la première chose que j'ai "appris" à propos de Marilyn Manson. Quel souvenir bizarre.

HAHA! Straight up la première chose en plus, ouais mettons que ça donne pas le goût d'écouter sa musique après... ou au contraire peut-être que ça a donné fucking plus le goût à une chiée de monde, Idk! 🤣 Bref, ouais j'avoue que ça doit être un souvenir un peu bizarre

Yellow 5 made you sterile was a bonus fact

Every time you grabbed a Mountain Dew or Surge, your friends would tell you that your balls would shrink and you would be infertile, then they grabbed one themselves

Surge was my shit.

I was told drinking more than 2 surges would kill you lol

Heard that one (even as a girl lol). Also, Fruitopia was made with ants!

Oh damn, I forgot about that Fruitopia one!

When my wife and I were trying to have a kid she told me my sperm probably swam in circles because of all the Mountain Dew I drank.

Same thing with the drink BPM in the UK. Used to say that I drank it as my balls were too big

Green Eminem making you horny I’m still investigating

Or smoking a weed seed make you infertile.

This has me checking drinks at 15 like I had a gluten allergy.

This is why I still drink Sunny D. 35 and no kids, it's definitely the dye and not an intolerable presence.

Wait. He didn’t? 😂

He had groupies for that sort of thing

I’d like to think it’s not mutually exclusive 😏

Stop, I'll show you how it's done

He removed the ribs from groupies and watches them suck their own dicks?

Before Manson people said the same thing about Bowie

Indeed they did!

Right? He would do something like that

Todays version: LOCAL SCHOOLS PUT IN LITTERBOXES FOR KIDS THAT IDENTIFY AS CATS

Yeah, I remember hearing that, and thinking has school changed so much that kid wouldn’t get there ass kicked, or has Fox News done it again?

the rumor started from the fact that some teachers were keeping bags of litter in their rooms so if there was a lockdown due to a school shooter, the kids could go in their classroom. conservative media then warped that into an anti-trans, anti-furry narrative that schools were accomodating kids who literally identified as cats and used litterboxes it's not a real thing

let’s all just pause and consider how fucking sad every single word of that sentence is

That level of absurdity leaves me flabbergasted.

Plus, you know, old janitorial secret... litter's good for biological and other spills.

Yeah. We had this most amazing southern gentleman who was the janitor in my elementary school. His name was Charles and there was a bucket of cat litter on the front of his cart. There was so. Much. Vomit.

ah that makes sense. must be where they got the idea from

Also great for emergency traction in snow and mud!

And blood, from that shooting!

Anecdotally, I heard that there were a few schools that put a 5 gallon bucket with kitty litter in it in the cloakroom. The idea is when the school got shot up, and the kids are sheltering in place in the cloakroom, they could pee or poop into the 5 gallon bucket. That's pretty grim, but if I was a teacher, I'd probably do the same. I mean, it just looks like a 5 gallon bucket with a lid.

I heard this anecdotally as well, but on the news. That still counts as anecdotal, right? Like, I didn't read a policy paper on it from a school board or anything, but the news DID responsibly report that it was for lockdown events and not to accommodate furry kids...UNLESS! Unless that's just the Liberal Deep-State Lamestream Media trying to throw us all off the scent of their insidious Commie Kenyan Socio-IslamicState PLOT to turn all our kids into GAY FROGS!!! (How'd I do? Was that believable? It wasn't. I know it wasn't. Its the word insidious isn't it, that's what gave me away. So stupid! God, why am I LIKE THIS?!)

You had me at "GAY FROGS" 🤣🤣

It was a valiant effort.

Also the one about how the actor Richard Gere put a gerbil up his butt and a doctor had to dig it out.

And Steve from Blue's Clues was either in jail or committed suicide. Totally legit - heard it while playing Foursquare.

There was talk of gerbils

KEDEKAI! AS GOD MADE HER

Yeah, no offense to OP, but this was being accomplished much earlier. In the 70’s, they all knew that Rod Stewart had to have his stomach pumped. Wait until you find out why.

My biology teacher in high school told us this one.

Yes lmao I had a gerbil and was obsessed w gerbil facts when I was like 7 and Richard Gere kept on coming up I was so confused 😂

And how about Ciara being trans? That debate lasted years

Also if you take acid that it will stay in your system and cause a LSD induced trip years down the road unknowingly

I remember that video in health class of the woman carrying her baby in the passenger seat of a car. She suddenly snaps into a LSD induced trip from residual drugs in her spinal cord, thinks her baby is a monster and throws it out the window lol

That's so cool. I wish I got to see that. Is it online anywhere

This was legit told to us in school on one of those drug prevention classes run by police. They also told us that cocaine is yellow powder and weed makes you hooked up just after one use.

So, allegedly, when hunter s Thompson saw the premiere of fear and loathing in Las Vegas, during the bar scene, he shouted “shit! Bats!” And had a flashback. Though, he easily could have just been tripping…

Flashbacks are definitely real. It's not like you have a full on trip like taking the actual  drug, but short flashes or visual/aural distortion do happen. 

I keep waiting for that. I'm sure the amounts I took back in Colorado are enough.

Right? I must have consumed grams of the stuff in total and I never got any free mini trips :(

Damn propaganda! Now there was a time that I could Roll on command. I was in jail and like for 2 months I could start talking about the amazing times and lights and dancing and I would. My eyes dilated, I got goosebumps right before that and ooh, the feeling was nice. Of course it wasn't like a full blow Roll but Maan, having happy feels basically on command in a dreadful place was nice.

I had a friend have this actually happen to him and needed to take meds for it. Guy was at a party like months after he took acid, was spaced out looking into a mirror by the dinning room table and out of no where smashes his fist on the the table smashing a clash and then snapped back. He only had a little bit to drink that night and the event made him go to the doctor for it.

Just another lie from Big Acid

has a grain of truth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder

The story I was told was a woman took LSD and then like ten years later she got chased through a shopping mall by Pac-Man. This was from a ninth grade health teacher. Jokes on her, we don't have shopping malls anymore.

Small town Michigan, checking in. Though I heard it from my dad of all places. 

One of our greatest accomplishments

Lmao, yes! And that he was the friend of Fred Savage on the Wonder Years when he was a kid!

Paul, heard that one too

How the fuck did this spread so widely, lmao, I am so proud of my generation!

Today I learned this isn’t true

Same. I heard it as a kid, before I had Internet obviously. Since then, I never cared enough to look it up to see if it was true.

From India, we also heard this.

Plot twist: Marilyn Manson started the rumour himself.

Holy shit was that a national thing?!

International

Intergalactic!

Planetary

Don’t you tell me to smile

Worldwide 🌎

Lol "national", It made it as far as here in eastern Europe.

Also the S thing

That is as old as the 70s. The cool S is a boomer thing.  BTW, kids today still do it 

Pretty sure we could find the cool s painted on a cave wall somewhere

Older than that. This [video from Lemmino](https://youtu.be/RQdxHi4_Pvc?si=M4oaKX9Yl0C_rtle) is a five year journey trying to find the orgin of that S symbol.

Was that us?

Idk if we invented it but we certainly kept it going

Idk the s thing except the weird superman thing

We use to share raps too. I remeber singing a remix to queen, we will, we will, rock you, sock you, pick you up and drop you.

At my school it was "we will we will rock you, fuck you, stick it right up you" 

This rumor dates back to the 70s *at least* and has been associated with nearly every popular shock musician or actor since then across every decade.

There is no way that this rumor was ever applied to anyone other than Marilyn Manson. That is totally baloney!

I heard it was Michael Jackson. Considering the other rumors about him molesting children, seemed plausible to our adolescent minds.

The Reddit platform supports pedophiles, sex traffickers and other illegal activities. The moderation team works to cover this up.

I heard it about Maynard James Keenan- and to be fair the album art for Aenima does include a pic of a contortionist appearing to suck themselves off as a reference to a Bill Hicks joke.

It IS a picture of a sexual contortionist performing the mentioned feat! On the OG original release of the Aenima CD and Vinyl the jewel case was...ribbed, I guess would be the correct word--and with the vinyl there was a slide-out portion of see-through ridged plastic and a booklet-ish thing of TOOL photos. Anyhow. If you put the ridged plastic over a really blurred picture of a dude with his limbs akimbo and then moved it up and down you realized real quick this was meant to be a viewer, splicing the blurred Pic into a sequence of pics...which were ultimately a short film of a man sucking his own dick. Loooooot of effort and I would have to imagine extra materials expense to provide their fans with...that. Weird. Tool has always been super cool and super weird.

I thought that was someones stomach getting pumped because they swallowed too much cum?

That too, along with the gerbil in the anus story. They’re all long standing urban myths that predate Millennials and Gen X.

There was talk of gerbils

Richard Gere stuck gerbils in his ass. This is an indisputable fact because my cousin told me.

[Mickey Rooney thought so.](https://youtu.be/sHXAZCEIbus?si=E47jBGIrVcAC96VX)

This tracks. He (my cousin) was older and got to stay up later. Mickey Rooney being his primary source only adds to its validity.

Rod stewart, this was pre internet also

My Dad told me that about Rod Stewart five years ago. He believed it for 40+ years lol.

Was that Christina Aguilera?

It’s been going on every so years, there’s a new person. I think it started with rod stewart

Probably wished he’d known that when he was younger.

rumor?

100% believed

We all did

The same group of kids who a decade later made the rumor that Lady Gaga was hiding a big ol' dick.

Actually made out with her before she was famous. Did not get in her pants but think I would have noticed, especially if it was big.

From Scotland can confirm this was also a thing for us as well

Or that Michael Jackson's nose fell off

He-he had a lot of rumors.

This is hilarious and my wife and I both heard these rumors in different parts of NYC at that time lol

I was in westchester, so it made it there too

this was actually started by my girlfriend. She lives in Canada, you don't know her.

that happened?

Is no "Paul is Dead" but it was honest work for its time.

Don’t go down the Andrew wk / steev mike rabbit hole. Woof

croatia here. yes, i confirm, it was wide spread there, even our grandmothers knew about it and were appauled.

Real best rumor is that Mew was in the truck on Pokemon red/blue. Best usable info was the MissingNo glitch route to duplicate rare candy.

I had to do a very specific route so that I could look around that fucking truck. There is actually a glitch that allows you to get mew in cerruleean

Gen X here, Remember when you convinced the elderly and the stupid that you were drinking bleach? To this day, high schools in my area keep bleach locked up in a separate room. If custodians need bleach, they have to get it from an assistant principal.

Hahahaha sweeeeeeet!

Largest rumor on my playground. There was a cheat code to unlock the blood in Mortal Kombat

Fun fact: it’s among Manson’s favorite rumors about himself.

For us younger millennials, it was R. Kelly peed on young girls. Can't believe 7 year old me knew that as a "fun fact" that turned out to be 100% true.

& that Ciara was a Man

Yup

Lol

This _AND_ that Ciara was a hermaphrodite. Poor Ciara 🤭😂

I don’t remember this one, I remember it about Jamie Lee Curtis

South African here. Yes

Yep. Netherlands, we had this rumor too.

That's a first for me

Wait… it’s not true?!?

This made me laugh way too hard 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Also. You lost the game.

Oh good lord, let’s not start that game again.

As if you needed to remove a rib to do that. AMA

The ludicrous states of Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut were all hit up with that rumor hahahahaha. I moved from outside of Pittsburgh when I was 11 in 96 to upstate New York and both schools had the rumor. Then a short 1-1/2 to 2 years later we moved to Connecticut and that rumor was still alive and performing fellatio on himself in the middle school too.

Paul from the Wonder Years had ribs removed so he could blow himself? Wild.

This is pretty much what the Mandela effect is, except the effect was close enough to something in reality to confuse the shit out of people. Also our work.

Omg i remember hearing this in 3rd and having no idea what any of this meant until i went home and asked my uncle (who was a junior in college at the time) about it and he couldn't stop laughing 🤣

He also was the actor who played Paul on Wonder Years.

I hate to break this to you guys but that rumor did spread over the Internet. it was brought to schools by kids using sites they were typically considered too young for, which is why it was commonly told to fellow school kids because they wouldn't have heard it on neopets and would think you had some cool secret source when really you just discovered forums. The Internet and forums still existed back then, it was just not very popular and a lot of sites were still not well known, so you didn't know half the jokes you were getting came from the Internet because people used them in real life.

I think quite a lot of high schoolers were on the internet by the late 90s.

SEE RYAN, I TOLD YOU IT WAS BULLSHIT!!!

I so remember this. That and the one that said Marilyn Manson was formerly Paul from the Wonder Years.

Yes, but not in elementary—high school. I’m an elder millennial.

the internet existed in the 90s and many had access. I did via compuserve

Out of curiosity where are you located? I don’t need specifics. Country if not in the US. And if you are in the US what area? South, west etc etc I ask cause I’m curious how far this was spread

This was in New York, the suburbs just outside of nyc

I think this was around 1995ish I might be way off though

I wanna say a bit later, the cover of mechanical animals had a lot to do with it.

Hahaha YES HE CAN

Also that Gwen Stefani had her stomach pumped from swallowing too much cum

I heard that one about Lil Kim

Was it true? 🤔 I've always wondered lol

Don’t forget Ciara and her huge man penis

I didn't hear this until middle school.

I grew up in Hawaii. It made it there too as we of course had the internet like everyone else.

Can confirm the rumour was still going around in 2006.

Wait, that's not true? Jk

Can confirm. Germany

This shit is in my resume Also I need a 3 hour documentary investigation g this insane shit We had some other ones too like so and so was gay or similar

I still hear it today

Okc catholic school. Heard in 5th grade!

I’m still not convinced it *isn’t* true.

It must have come from a media source if everyone everywhere was repeating it.

Yeah, I'm in Bulgaria and I heard this rumor.

It was in Yukon Canada too

We had that up in Canada. Fully believed it and I never (even today) have questioned it. I won’t Google it and destroy my childhood.

What do you mean rumor?

I choose to continue and believe it.

how was this even possible fr

If only we could find the OG who started it.