Before the advent of the internet, how did certain schoolyard rumors manage to spread globally?

Or the school janitor who went down into the basement and never emerged.

Back in olden times (prior to the 1980’s) we use to use the telephone (sometimes call “land lines”).

Radio stations, that put out pop music and pop culture news.

There was a pattern of sick jokes being spread through the financial industry back in the 1980s. A disaster would occur, and a joke would be spread within minutes.

A typical time line:
Mexico City has a devastating earthquake at 7:18 a.m. Thousands dead. Hits the US newswires by 7:25 a.m. By 7:30, phones ring on stock trading floors across the US: “did you hear of the new Mayor of Mexico City? Barney Rubble”

That happened repeatedly with jokes about tragedies. The NY Times traced it back to a particular trader at the Goldman Sachs trading desk.

In addition to phones, jokes were sent over teletypes.

@gondwanalon
How many school children in Germany have you called?

These things can usually be traced to single sources, like a magazine article or radio host, which is then repeated by other media sources scrounging for content, who are just repeating what others have said, absolving them of journalistic responsibility, apparently. With multiple seeds planted, these ideas start to root in pop culture and word of mouth.

I don’t remember the Richard Gere one specifically, but the term “felching” was all over the place for a while, some shock jocks had a classic description of an anal mortar incident which was an early viral email attachment, until Lemmiwinks took the whole idea to a new level and dismantled it in absurdity.

@ragingloli We were so poor that my Mom would have strangled me if I ever made a long distance phone call. She use to write hot checks sometimes to buy food.