We’ve all grown up with countless bits of bad advice and tall tales hovering over us. Masturbation makes you go blind, shaving once brings a full beard– all stories that went from ridiculous to widely accepted. In the last few years people have taken many of these old myths to task, and now most are accepted not as truth but rather, as (for lack of a better word) bullshit. Somehow, these defunct, old wives tales about men are still passed around like common knowledge.
The More You Shave, The Thicker The Beard
Many men still vehemently swear this myth is true, but it simply isn’t. Just as you can’t permanently “train your hair” because follicles do what your genetics tell them to, neither can shaving your beard change the way it grows. It will definitely feel more coarse afterward, but that’s because you’ve chopped off the tapered ends of the individual hairs, leaving only the thicker portions of their shafts. And despite the uproar about it, dermatologists have put their collective foot down on the matter.
Drinking Yellow #5 Is Bad For Your Manhood
This popular myth spread about just like the old “fake sugar causes cancer” myth (and it can, if you eat five times your body weight in fake sugar daily). The fact is, Yellow #5 dye is harmless, and has always been harmless, and will always be harmless. The rumor myth grew in among young people and got taken to college with them, where it apparently didn’t learn anything because people still believe this one, too.
Wearing Briefs Causes Sterility
It’s very easy to be taken in by this one, since doctors will warn men suffering from low sperm counts to stay away from hot tubs, and wearing tight underwear, sitting on BBQ’s, etc. Testicles need to maintain temperature to keep viable sperm, and that’s why they need to hang away from the body, but the affect of wearing briefs is negligible if you are a healthy, virile male. You can wear spandex biking shorts all day long if you want to, but you’re not going to wind up sterile.
Drinking Beer Causes a Beer Belly
Drinking beer, in mass quantities, will contribute to your inevitable beer belly if your diet and exercise habits are severely lacking. Caloric content in beer is extremely high, but there is nothing special about beer that makes you grow a bulbous midsection, unless you’re a woman, and that’s due to bad decisions after having too many beers in one night. You can just as easily grow a beer belly without drinking any beer at all, you just wouldn’t have as much fun doing it.
Balding Comes from Mom’s Side, or Wearing Hats
This simply is not true, at all. Men’s baldness is entirely blamable on genetics, but it can be from a man’s mother, father, grandfather, or grandmother. There is no set pattern for it to follow, it can skip generations or pop up seemingly out of nowhere. Wearing hats will not cause baldness either, unless you’re surgically implanting hats into your scalp. Instead of finding blame, it’s best to try to deal with it – just not with a comb-over, please.
Penis Length Measured by Shoe or Hand Size
This is one of those fun myths we don’t seem to want to go away. Even women swear this is true, because their mothers tell them it’s true. The fact is that while it’s tempting to say that an erect penis’s length may be very close to the distance measured between the tip of your thumb, and that of your forefinger (held at a right angle), it’s just a coincidence. Likewise, thinking your shoe size has any bearing on your penis length is just begging for disappointment.
Men Hit Sexual Peak at 18
This is still widely thought to be true, while in reality it’s more like testosterone levels are highest at this age. That may be chief among manly hormones, but it has little bearing on a man’s functional sexuality, and even less to do with his sexual experience or skill. Women in particular call this myth absolutely ridiculous.
Masturbating Too Much is Bad For You
It’s like this: Unless you’re suffering from some sort of repetitive behavioral disorder, you really can’t masturbate so often that it becomes a physical problem, socially, well that’s a different story. Men continue producing ridiculous amounts of semen throughout their entire lifetimes, there’s no chance of you ever running out because of masturbation. Neither will you somehow cause damage to your equipment through frequent solo use.
Spicy Food or Hard Liquor Will Put Hair On Your Chest
Some people actually still believe this, even today. The idea itself is simply ridiculous, and the only thing that’s going to put hair on your chest is your genetics, or maybe glue.
Oysters Make You Horny
There are actually quite a few storied foods that people still think are aphrodisiacs today. Oysters is a big one, but let’s not forget the fantastic drink Josta that got pulled off the market when the public got hoaxed into thinking Guarana was an aphrodisiac. The truth is that no food or drink has ever been found to actually affect sexuality, physiologically at least. If it makes you feel sexier to eat something with the consistency of snot, then by all means, get your groove on.
Men Think About Sex Every Seven Seconds
Every seven seconds, a woman somewhere still quotes this in a rant about men. Lately, it’s been completely abandoned, since whatever research was done to “prove” this was shoddy at best. If anything, the myth itself causes men to wonder if they’re wondering about sex.
Antiperspirants Cause Male Breast Cancer
This was another fairly epic schoolyard myth that got carried with boys throughout their young adulthood into maturity. Studies have shown that women who regularly shave their armpits and use antiperspirant just as regularly may possibly have a slightly higher likelihood of developing breast cancer, but no study has even been conclusive in that. As for men, not even a one in a million chance.
Staring At Large Breasts Can Help You Live Longer
While in a punnery sense, this could be true, in a literal sense it’s absolute hogwash. A man can stare at pure pornography all day long and not live a day longer than if he hadn’t. This myth follows the same rules as “petting kittens can add years to your life,” where the idea is to be happier, more calm, have good blood flow and live your life. That being said, it doesn’t really hurt either.
Average Penis Length Is Seven Inches
This one is so widespread it’s pretty much thought of as statistical fact. The real statistical fact is that the average penis length is somewhere between four to six inches, erect. Feel like a superman now, don’t you? (whew)
Men Can’t Get Breast Cancer
While the odds are overwhelmingly against a man getting breast cancer, it’s technically possible. No need to worry though, you don’t need to do regular checks since it’s not really something you’d miss.
Having Lots of Sex Can Negatively Impact Your Sporting Prowess
This old myth has become more of a superstition, but some still swear by it in the literal sense. Fact is, sex does alleviate stress, anxiety, and aggression for a short period of time directly after the act, but that has nothing to do with your actual performance in sports. If your suddenly being happier detracts from your ability to score a point, you may have other issues to deal with, but sex isn’t one of them.
Comments
Kevin
July 1st, 2009 - 10:18:53 AM
so if my dad is bald, my dad's dad is bald, my mom's dad is bald and my older brother has a receding hair line ... you're saying i have a chance? really?!
girlatastartup
July 1st, 2009 - 10:54:07 AM
haha...good list, Percival. I always thought that Oyster one was true.
ginosuave
July 1st, 2009 - 11:17:20 AM
Excessive masturbation in late teens/early twenties has been linked to prostate cancer in recent studies.
wayne
July 1st, 2009 - 11:22:11 AM
Linked to reducing the risk in prostate cancer you mean.
simon
July 1st, 2009 - 11:29:22 AM
ginosuave - Citation Required.
antares
July 1st, 2009 - 11:31:16 AM
What's your source for the oyster one? I found an article that states they are aphrodisiacs. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/03/23/1111525227607.html
FAILBLOG
July 1st, 2009 - 11:35:18 AM
Fail. Yellow #5 is a carcinogen. It's banned by every developed nation except ours, as well as most developing nations. You're naive if you believe the food lobbies bullshit that it's okay for you. Afterall, our retarded fellow Americans wouldn't drink Mountain Dew if it wasn't green, or eat pickles if they weren't neon yellow.
jerkface
July 1st, 2009 - 11:55:41 AM
FAILBLOG, if that were true, don't you think they would just use a different yellow die, like yellow die #6?
Ruggy
July 1st, 2009 - 11:57:56 AM
Sex definitely does affect sports performance, assuming the athlete sublimates sexual energy during the sport. Having sex within a day or two beforehand depletes the available sex drive energy which the sporting activity would otherwise make use of.
davelog
July 1st, 2009 - 12:24:29 PM
Men DO think about sex more often than women, and every 7 seconds isn't necessarily out of the question. You know why? Friction. Men's junk rubs up against their clothing with every movement. Women, not so much.
MERMANPOP
July 1st, 2009 - 12:36:35 PM
"Excessive masturbation in late teens/early twenties has been linked to prostate cancer in recent studies." uh ohhh...our entire generation is f'd in the a (pun intended)
idisagree!
July 1st, 2009 - 12:58:09 PM
@jerkface: it's worse for you... Yellow #5 is banned in the EU and several other developed nations, and in others it's coming up as an important issue - along with most of the currently allowed 'E numbers'. @thisArticle: FAIL I rate. (1) Fake sugar (Aspartame, Sucralose, NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, E951... call it what you will) is dangerous. Isolated amino acids are not a very good idea, and it's most certainly linked to brain tumors. (2) Four to Six inches? Really? Glad I was born in Africa. Our average is around Eight. (3) That's why we don't wear briefs. (4) Men can get breast cancer. It's more common amongst men who ingest large amounts of carcinogens and who eat a lot of processed hormone rich foods. (5) Having a pet reduces your risk of having a heart attack by up to 30%, therefore, statistically, people who pet cats regularly live longer than people who do not. (6) I agree with Ruggy
failfailfail
July 1st, 2009 - 1:03:37 PM
MAJOR ARTICLE FAIL. Yellow #5 (Tartrazine) is not exactly good for you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartrazine
Graham
July 1st, 2009 - 1:38:17 PM
@Ruggy "Sex definitely does affect sports performance, assuming the athlete sublimates sexual energy during the sport." "Having sex within a day or two beforehand depletes the available sex drive energy which the sporting activity would otherwise make use of." What the hell are you talking about? Sources? SUBLIMATES SEXUAL ENERGY DURING THE SPORT? What does that even mean? Like there is some internal battery that stores energy only for sex? Prove it.
Philip
July 1st, 2009 - 1:46:21 PM
Fake sugar may not cause cancer( in most cases); however Aspartame (Equal/Sweet 'n Low) causes brain lesions(aka cut across you brain) so unless you have some condition that prevents you from consuming sugar, stay away from diet soda. As to the sex and sports. Chronic masturbation lowers testosterone as unused sperm is broken down and the testosterone is transfered into your bloodstream. Over time, chronic masturbation will temporarily lower your testosterone level, decreasing one's ability to gain new muscle mass. Antiperspirants do raise your risk of cancer( but the chances of male breast cancer is still virtually nothing) People who quote the seven seonds thing are of very low intelligence, shut your mouth unless you know what the hell you are talking about. People just accept it as a fact without thinking: "Wait a second... How the hell you it be even possible to perform this research, not to mention the results would be extremely skewed but the subjects(and probably their hormone levels and age/maturity level as well). I'm a guy and I think about sex(and even sexual topics) only a few times a day(unless sometimes when I see a very sexually attractive person and even then). When I was in highschool, I always used to think about sex, untill I got over it[btw, threesomes are a lot of work and foursomes are hard to manage(I used to be a total man-whore).
cameltoe
July 1st, 2009 - 2:07:22 PM
This article is a fail. I see not links to prove the authors opinion or back up his supposed facts. FAIL
buttons
July 1st, 2009 - 2:08:55 PM
I agree with most of the comments this author failed.
dave is dumb
July 1st, 2009 - 2:22:14 PM
"Men's junk rubs up against their clothing with every movement. Women not so much." -davelog Just because a piece of clothing touches our "junk" does not mean that we immediately think about sex.
Gregor Mendel
July 1st, 2009 - 7:20:36 PM
Male pattern baldness is a sex-linked trait that comes from the mother's X chromosome. For women, it has to be dominant trait to express itself, whereas for men, it is expressed even if its recessive, but it is carried from the maternal X chromosome.
Sthteven
July 1st, 2009 - 7:22:09 PM
What about gay masturbation? Sometimes I put things in my rectum for pleasure and fun. Will this cause any damage to my fun-hole? One time I sat on a glass jar, and it broke, and I bled everywhere with shards of glass in my ass. Luckily, the handsome doctor at the hospital was able to remove all the glass and sow my sweet ass back up.
1adam1
July 1st, 2009 - 7:59:43 PM
pics or it didn't happen
Rafa
July 1st, 2009 - 8:08:33 PM
Sex DOES affect sports performance! Just try squatting 495 pounds the day after a sex marathon and THEN talk. On the other hand, try to have a sex marathon a few hours after having trained your quads to the max... not good. Really, not good.
proindianblogger
July 1st, 2009 - 9:00:22 PM
Of the subjects who had been diagnosed with cancer: * Forty per cent of men in their twenties fell in the highest frequency category, reporting that they had sex 20 or more times per month, compared to 32 per cent in the control group. * Thirty-four per cent of men in their twenties reported that they masturbated frequently, compared to 24 per cent in the control group. One theory to explain the link could be that having higher sex hormone levels not only leads to a higher sex drive, but also to a higher risk of cancer, the researchers said.
idisagree!
July 1st, 2009 - 9:01:57 PM
I almost forgot to include that with our average of 8 inches; almost 70% are HIV+!
Masterbater
July 1st, 2009 - 10:03:58 PM
Thanks to this, I'll masterbate more
daevos
July 1st, 2009 - 11:00:11 PM
tbh, and i can believe im saying this but i trust this site wayyyyyy more than the folks who post comments.
idisagree!
July 2nd, 2009 - 12:45:53 AM
P.S. Africa is secksy
idisagree!
July 2nd, 2009 - 1:44:46 AM
SOOO MANY COCKS!!!
Ted Simmons
July 2nd, 2009 - 7:29:15 AM
The reason drinking beer DOES cause a beer belly is that the sugar in beer, Maltose, provokes an insulin response that turns the sugar to fat relatively (much) faster than the sugars found in fruits, juices, candies, and even corn syrup (dextrose, glucose and the like).
MISCER12
July 2nd, 2009 - 10:09:10 AM
Bullshit, I once fapped before a football game, I got laid out over and over.. once I hooked up with my boyfriend for a week before, I got 7 sacks and 12 tackles. Wait, Wut?
Anonymous
July 2nd, 2009 - 11:02:51 AM
The ridiculous part about these studies are that people just test people as an example, like "30% of men who ate this had this testosterone level, but 40% of men who ate that had that testosterone level" It's ridiculous because there are numerous other factors that can affect testosterone that aren't taken into consideration.
Female
July 3rd, 2009 - 8:03:10 PM
What about blue balls???
Dr. Rick Winkelman
July 4th, 2009 - 11:56:36 PM
As far as Yellow dye found in many food products, it conceivable that you could develop canser. In reality there are far more determining factors in who will develop canser that just the ingestion of yellow dye. Family history, reckless or extreme life styles, and prolonged exposure to radiation (over exposure to ultraviolet, AKA sun burn). Any excesses in ingestion of unnatural or man-made substances can be bad for you! Moderation is the best rule of thumb!
genetically enhanced
July 7th, 2009 - 12:48:06 PM
Well if an athlete stays up all night doing anything, much less sex, he won't be in any condition to compete at his peak. But that has more to do with sleep deprivation than sex. If anything I fancy good sex might even help mitigate the lack of sleep associated with it.
Kip
July 8th, 2009 - 2:15:14 PM
Indisagree, I hate to tell you but African on average don't have the largest equipment. Check out this site. http://www.world-sex-records.com/sex-003.htm
aaron
July 9th, 2009 - 3:55:45 PM
this is the funniest shit ever hahahahaha...the man panties..hastlehoff...the kitten monsters lol lol but ol boy up there saying africans aint packing the biggest snakes hahahahahaa.....Yao Ming is 7'7 are we saying the chinese are tall...HECK NO hahahahahahahahaha
Robert
July 14th, 2009 - 7:57:08 AM
Incredible list, thanks. I love how people think "The More You Shave, the Thicker the Beard" is true - I've shaved my bald head twice a week for three years now and it's not growing back thicker... A man can dream though.
Lost Guy
July 15th, 2009 - 3:19:46 PM
its not that oysters make you horny its just that it makes me wanta put it in her b****
Jessica
July 16th, 2009 - 8:21:13 PM
The baldness one actually has truth to it. Most male pattern baldness is X-linked recessive, which is why it is rare for women to get it because they'll likely have one good copy, while men only get one X from their mother so if it's bad, they will go bald.
schizuki
July 18th, 2009 - 7:38:52 PM
"You’re naive if you believe the food lobbies bullshit that it’s okay for you. Afterall, our retarded fellow Americans..." Let's see - Bringing up eeeeeevil corporations... check. Smugly insulting the intelligence of your fellow citizens... check. Yep, you're a left-wing a-hole.
schizuki
July 18th, 2009 - 7:43:51 PM
Anybody who believes the seven-seconds study is intellectually lazy. Five seconds of thought about it would reveal it to be self-evidently nonsensical. If any woman quotes that to me, I will tell her how impossible it would be for us to build all of those bridges and airplanes and rockets to outer space if we were that frequently distracted. Then I'd ask her what's distracting women every seven seconds to make them accomplish so little. I'm guessing shoes.
Max Bern
July 18th, 2009 - 8:37:44 PM
I always love the torrent of "No it's true! it's true!" comments that flood in after a myth thread. To you brain surgeons screaming about yellow dye #5 causing health problems, here is what you obviously don't know. Most of the trials done on chemicals in laboratory animals are "megadose" trials. They pump those mice full of more chemicals than you could ever ingest in four lifetimes. Then, when the rats develop health problems, they up and ban it. When the chemical Alar was banned and the drug trial transcript was released to the public, it was revealed that in order to produce the same tumors in a human, you would have to eat over 65,000 bushels of Alar coated apples A DAY for over forty years. If "natural" substances were subjected to the same type of testing one of the first things that would be banned is milk.
Brown Line
July 19th, 2009 - 7:05:57 AM
Amusing list. Thanks! But I do want to add one thing, about male breast cancer. About one in every 100 cases of breast cancer occur in men. And, unlike breast cancer in women, male breast cancer is almost always fatal, because men tend to ignore lumps in their breasts until the cancer has spread throughout the body. If a man feels a lump in or around his nipple, he should have it checked out immediately: it could save his life.
Flashman
July 19th, 2009 - 7:10:34 AM
"The trouble is not that players have sex the night before a game. It's that they stay out all night looking for it." -- Casey Stengel
Rich Rostrom
July 19th, 2009 - 7:22:17 PM
@Flashman: Let's get that quote correct: "Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in."
abhinav narain
August 14th, 2009 - 9:26:41 PM
this blog sucks , big time ... he has just put in stuff without citing the source of his conclusions .... dumbass
hippy asian chick
November 10th, 2009 - 5:42:59 AM
In asia we believe penis size is related to the size of a man's nose. This is actually true judging from my Israeli boyfriend:)
Han Solo
November 14th, 2009 - 10:43:29 AM
Hate to use this old thing, but link or it didn't happen. Just not take your own assumptions for granted. Prove them or shut up. Saying it is so, doesnt make it so allthough most of these border on ridiculous, you still need actual proof before claiming something is or isn't so. Better luck next time.
ravi
December 20th, 2009 - 2:35:32 AM
fvghbtgbhhbh
prince cooper
January 14th, 2010 - 9:59:11 AM
i love to masterbate
Da Captain
January 14th, 2010 - 10:07:48 AM
yea i love 2 stare at tits