My friend told me there was a ghoul who lived in a tree in my neighborhood. He took me there to see it. In the tree, I saw a crazy looking hairy beast, sneaking around behind the branches... It kept saying "Hosssssssssss" menacingly.

Turned out to be his best friend in a gorilla costume. I was only 6. That shit fucked me up.

My example was a friend told me you get computer viruses if you use disks that were dropped on the ground outside. His logic was he was told you get sick if you eat stuff off the ground. Sickness is caused by viruses. Computers can get viruses. Computers “eat” floppy disks. So if you put a dirty floppy into a computer you will make it sick by giving it a virus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

Hiro Protagonist is a freelance hacker and pizza delivery driver for the Mafia. He meets Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), a young skateboard Kourier (courier), who refers to herself in the third person, during a failed attempt to make a delivery on time. Y.T. completes the delivery on his behalf, and they strike up a partnership, gathering intel and selling it to the CIC.

Within the Metaverse, Hiro is offered a datafile named Snow Crash by a man named Raven, who hints that it is a form of narcotic. Hiro's friend and fellow hacker Da5id views a bitmap image contained in the file, which causes his computer to crash and Da5id to suffer brain damage in the real world. Hiro meets his ex-girlfriend Juanita Marquez, who gives him a database containing a large amount of research compiled by her associate, Lagos. This research posits connections between the virus, ancient Sumerian culture, and the legend of the Tower of Babel. Juanita advises him to be careful and disappears.