ABSTRACT
The vast majority of research on rumors and contemporary legends addresses questions of content, or the related matter of context. Rumors and contemporary legends are by no means the only phenomena that exhibit this pattern. Other short-lived enthusiasms include fads, fashions, crazes, surges, episodes of collective hysteria or collective delusion, moral panics, joke cycles, crime waves, news stories, and stock market bubbles. Openness to novelty is widespread in contemporary society. Critics often marvel at people's readiness to believe rumors that, in retrospect, seem implausible. Topical joke cycles reveal the dynamics associated with fads and other short-lived enthusiasms–an abrupt rise in popularity leading to a peak, and then a decline. Analysts of legends have been more reluctant to speculate about dynamics, probably because people think of legends as enduring and ongoing. Studies of topical joke cycles speak to the contours of process.
