A video about spiders and how no one knows if someone once said we swallow them or not.
In August of 2021, the founder of Snopes, David Mikkelson, finally admitted to "Lisa Birgit Holst" being a deliberate anagram for "tHis is a Big troLl". VINDICATION! In other words, the PC Professional article from 1993 never existed so the origins of the myth remains a mystery.
A month after this video was uploaded, a viewer named Jinkinson Smith managed to find a mention of this myth in an article from 1992. Smith's blog post about it can be found here, while the article itself can be found here. The article was published in April of 1992 which antedates the elusive PC Professional article cited by Snopes by several months. So, even if it does exist (which I sincerely doubt) it is no longer relevant.
In this part of the video I state that "spiders are not insects, they are arthropods." While this is true, it is not what I intended to say. What I meant to say was that spiders are not insects but arachnids. Both insects and arachnids are arthropods. It's a mistake that really bug me to this day...
The word "intelligible" makes no sense in this sentence. The word I was looking for was "unintelligible". I likely assumed that the prefix in- reversed the meaning of the word much like it does in words like in-visible or in-comprehensible without realizing that "telligible" is not a word by itself.
Even though the oldest archived version of the page only dates back to December, 2008, the page has likely existed for far longer. See reference #2 for evidence of this.
UK magazine.
Danish magazine.
Swedish magazine.
German magazine.
Italian magazine.
PC Professionell is first mentioned in PC Magazine a month after the release of its first issue.
On the off-chance that Snopes meant to cite PC Magazine, I looked through the January issue released in 1993 but it does not contain any relevant information.
This book from 2009 includes a quote, supposedly taken from the Lisa Holst article. No further information is given. Given its vagueness the quote was likely invented.
This book from 2001 includes a mention of the myth and a possible direct mention of Snopes article.
An interviewee briefly mentions the myth in a newspaper article from 2006.
A columnist briefly mentions the myth in a newspaper article from 2005.
The two founders of Snopes were initially known as the "The San Fernando Valley Folklore Society" and they first claimed to know of the origins of the myth in a newspaper from 2001.
This article is cited as a source under Snopes article.
To gain access to this article I submitted a post to the Chicago subreddit and a few users were kind enough to provide me with a copy of the article.
According to this article from 2000, Snopes had yet to debunk the myth. This suggests that the Snopes article was written between late 2000 and early 2003. The author also recalls a Usenet discussion in which the myth had previously been debunked but he was unable to find it again. He may have been referring to the discussion of reference #18.
This archived Usenet discussion from early 1997 is the oldest verifiable mention of the myth I've been able to track down.
The myth is featured in the lyrics of this song from 2004.
A Reddit user demonstrates how "Lisa Birgit Holst" is an anagram for "This Is A Big Troll".