Analysis Of Matthew Huston's Tall Tales, The Evolutionary Value Of Urban Legends

People have long spread stories down through the generations but only certain ones have taken root and influenced the lives of people today. This can be seen in stories like The Spider Bite, The Hook Man, and Freaky Food. For these stories to have survived this long they had to stand up tall to certain criteria. Matthew Huston’s 2015 article “Tall Tales, The Evolutionary Value of Urban Legends,” published by The Atlantic Media Company explains how people 's personal folklore has value to people. Huston, the writer of The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking, gives reasons why these stories are so important and why their effect is so lasting on the population. He does this with several case studies that are mixed through the article. The purpose of Huston’s

Matthew Huston’s tone throughout the article is light and humorous. He really only gets “serious” when he is describing credible research that has taken place. He uses this humor to pull the audience in at the beginning, in the middle with a funny picture between two research paragraphs and then again at the end to break the tension of the research heavy article. In Huston’s last paragraph he states “Exposure breeds familiarity, which foster credulity- even when you know better. Which is to say, stories about exploding implants might be with us for awhile” (par. 5) This gives the readers closure to the article, especially since it was so full of numbers and research. Huston even adds a humorous picture of a crocodile coming out of a toilet, an impossible feet, to give a break before going into another study that had taken place. His tone also leads to his stance. Which seems to point that he believes that people will always believe in these tall tales as a way to protect from real as well as imaginary threats. Huston states “evolutionarily speaking, we should err on the side of being overcredulous about threats” (par. 2) Basically he evolves the idea that humanity has survived this long due to the fact that they had these ridiculous stories to keep them in