Misconceptions from the Internet - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep. 15)

Hi, I'm Elliot, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube

Today I'm going to talk about some misconceptions that you may have learned from the internet

You should have known better. Misconception number one, putting your personal identification number in reverse is a universal distress signal

There's a persistent internet rumor that if you're being robbed at an ATM, you can just punch in your pin in reverse

Then the police will be alerted and will show up to save you. That's not true. Illinois passed a lot of this effect, but the language was so watered down that nobody

bothered to implement it. Plus, the Federal Trade Commission has announced that this would put the person being robbed

in even further danger. And they doubted that the police would even show up in time. And some people have pins that are the same forwards and backwards, like mine, which is 1-1-1-1

Misconception number two, the government of New Zealand tried to introduce a fart tax to find

people from farting publicly. The government of New Zealand did try to introduce a fart tax, but it was not to find people

who farted. In 2003, the agricultural emissions research levy was proposed. That's the less fun name for fart tax

It would have taxed livestock farmers for the emissions from their farm animals. The government was mostly concerned with methane contribution to greenhouse gases And methane comes from you know animal burps The New Zealand government would have brought in over million to fund research on greenhouse gases but the tax alas did not pass

Misconception number three, Australia has two times more kangaroos than people. In fact, we don't know how many kangaroos there are in Australia. The Australian government's Department of Environment reports that there are over 34 million kangaroos there, but that the number could be much higher as they don't survey the entire continent. The current population of Australia in people is about

23 million though, so people are catching up to kangaroos. We're going to get you

Misconception number four, men take twice as many selfies as women. This might be true for me

but this statistic seems to be a loose interpretation of a 2013 survey conducted by Samsung

which found that 17% of men admitted to taking selfies as opposed to 10% of women. I would be

among them. That's not twice as many. Plus, it has nothing to do with the number of

selfies taken and everything to do with how many people admitted to taking them. See

Misconception number five. Smoking makes your nipples fall off. In 2011, a plastic surgeon made headlines for saying, smokers who undergo breast lifts

are at great risk of losing their nipples. Somehow, over time, the internet simplified and simplified that sentence until it meant that all smokers

need to look out for their nipples. That's not true, you guys. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons does recommend that people quit smoking well before plastic surgery But your nipples are okay Bonus misconception Cigarettes do not contain whale vomit like people on the internet claim

That substance being referred to, Ambergris, has been illegal in the US since the Endangered Species Act of 1973

Misconception number six, there are more people alive now than have ever lived before

A demographer did some calculations in 2007 and estimated that over 106 billion people have been born since the beginning of human

Which he called like 50,000 BCE. Our world population is around 7 billion. So we're a mere 6% of all the humans that have ever lived

But don't worry. We'll get there. Misconception number 7. Women speak 7,000 words a day to men's 2,000 words. There are many different variations of this one on the internet

We also read that apparently women speak 20,000 words per day and men speak 7,000. So in 2007 these claims were put to the test in a study done by Arizona State University

The study found that both men and women speak approximately 16,000 words a day. And

There was no statistically significant difference between the amount both genders spoke

Misconception at number eight, internet explorer users have lower IQs. I didn even know there were still internet explorer users but in 2011 there was a study about this supposed phenomenon that was reported on by reliable sources like CNN the BBC and NPR The company AptiQuant Psychometric Consulting Company announced that they had surveyed 100 internet users and had come to this conclusion It turned out that the whole thing was a hoaxed by a web developer

Hashtag internet. Misconception number nine, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were both assassinated as part of the same conspiracy

This theory is very prevalent on the internet and involves pointing out similarities between the two former presidents

These similarities include Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln

They were both shot by Southerners and their assassins were born in years ending in 39, just 100 years apart

A couple of problems here. Lincoln did not have a secretary named Kennedy, John Wilkes Booth

who shot Lincoln was born in Maryland, and Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939, but Booth was born in 1838

And let's finish with one very good reason to ignore spam email. Misconception number 10. Nigeria has a prince

There are at least dozens of families still claiming to be royals in small parts of Nigeria, but all of their royal power was stripped in 1963 when Nigeria became a republic with a president

It's very sad. Thank you for watching Misconceptions on Mental Floss on YouTube, which is made with the help

of all of these wonderful, wonderful people. If you have a topic for an upcoming misconceptions episode that you would like to see, leave

it in the comments. I'm going to go track down that Nigerian Prince now. I sent all of my money to

I will see you guys next to you