Score one for Urban Legends

A funny image was circulating around the web and Facebook last week was spreading misinformation along with the laughs. This story originally appeared in The Sun, a UK tabloid, and when I saw the first Facebook post, words failed me.  Supposedly, this woman from Dayton cheated on her boyfriend, a tattoo artist, and later got a tattoo from him, unaware that he knew of her cheating. Instead of a cute scene from the Chronicles of Narnia, she got a steaming pile of poo.

I was skeptical from the get-go. The Sun article says the woman was drunk and passed out – which might be believable, since she got the tattoo from someone she knew, who therefore might have been willing to disregard laws against such things. But a tattoo of this size would have taken many hours and required several potty breaks – probably lunch and dinner break, too. I also find it hard to believe she’d have remained passed out for this much time, given the painfulness of getting a tattoo, especially over such a wide area.

A couple days after the article’s publication in The Sun, Dayton Daily News staffer Amelia Robinson decided to check things out. What she found:

• There were no court records anywhere in the county relating to this case.
• There’s no known tattoo artist named Ryan Fitzjerald in the Dayton area.
• The woman who allegedly got the tattoo could also not be found.
• The photo appeared a year and a half ago elsewhere online.

The original article never came out and said where the tattoo was done, only that the “victim” was from Dayton; however, the Facebook postings imply that it did. I won’t lie, a lot of crappy things happen in Dayton. But this wasn’t one of them. If this happened at all, it didn’t happen around here.

Seen any misinformation on your hometown lately? What did you do to dispel it?

More at the My Town Monday blog

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