In a short pro­file of David and Bar­bara Mikkelson–proprietors of urban leg­end ref­er­ence Snopes–the two dis­cuss how they have seen their site grow and what they have observed about the sub­set of soci­ety that visit and con­tact their site.

It’s an emi­nently quotable arti­cle of obser­va­tions, ques­tion­ing why urban leg­ends spread the way they do. (The answer, as Ryan Sager states, is “Peo­ple don’t much want to know the truth. They just want a story that amuses them, con­firms their biases, or makes the world a more won­drous place”).

“Rumors are a great source of com­fort for peo­ple,” Mrs. Mikkel­son said. […]

“Espe­cially in pol­i­tics, most every­thing has infi­nite shades of gray to it, but peo­ple just want things to be true or false. […] In the larger sense, it’s peo­ple want­ing con­fir­ma­tion of their world view.” […]

It is not just the naïveté of Web users that wor­ries [Snopes’ fans and vol­un­teers]. It is also what Mr. Mikkel­son calls “a trend toward the oppo­site approach, hyper-skepticism.”

“Peo­ple get an e-mail or a pho­to­graph and they spot one lit­tle thing that doesn’t look right, and they declare the whole thing fake,” he said. “That’s just as bad as being gullible in a lot of senses.” […]

“When you’re look­ing at truth ver­sus gos­sip, truth doesn’t stand a chance.”