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Don't go to the Trafford Centre
What makes a story likely to be retold? It seems obvious to me that a story is likely to be retold if it has an effect on the person who hears it, if it makes an emotional connection it is more memorable and more rewarding to re-tell, especially if the story seems to illustrate a point that a person will enjoy making.
Take the following stories
A] A black man followed me down the road, pulled a knife out and demanded I give him my wallet. I did, it contained half a week's wages. The black man ran off.
B] A black man followed me down the road, pulled a knife out and demanded I give him my wallet. I told him it was too late as another black man had already robbed me ten minutes beforehand.
Of the two stories B is obviously a better story if you want to make a point about crime or black men being criminals. Actually it is a better story in every respect, it has more man bites dog news value to it. On hearing the story the American racist might think it needs polishing a bit to make it even better, how about making it a Korean who made the successful robbery? Excellent. Two racial stereotypes for the price of one: black guy tries to rob me but damn immigrant beat him to it and took his job! You can't trust blacks because they're too criminal and dumb and Koreans are too smart and steal jobs.
Of course story A is clearly the most likely to be true and version C we know is a fake, but we also know that version C is the fittest meme. It is the story most likely to be retold because it has the strongest lesson and is the funniest, it is the one which makes you think the most and the one you will feel the biggest urge to pass on as if it happened to you. Version C has got what it takes to be spread, a bit. But it could still could be improved a little.
In the next generation of retelling there is room for a speech at the end rather than just leaving the “moral lesson” hanging there for people to make for themselves. Good. It's getting better, fitter, and less truthful.
Another polish could come here by changing the victim. But we have a choice, we could make the victim somebody the audience wants to see be a victim and possibly somebody who would make a good wisecrack at the end. So it's Hillary Clinton walking through Harlem or the Rabbi with a big stash of Jewish cash. But hang on, that sounds like a joke. If the object is propaganda rather than humour it needs grounding in (an illusion of) reality, some greater detail is required, it needs to become real and personal. It's now my friend's brother, it was about three weeks ago, it was two miles away from where we are sitting now. Just think how many stories you are told have that kind of detail, just out of reach of proof, just within the bounds of plausibility.
One of the most interesting stories I was told involved a girl who helped a man with his spare tyre. The man had an Irish accent, he thanked her and added as an aside “Don't go near the Trafford Centre this Easter, darlin' ”. Whoa. Two weeks to Easter. Pass that on. Actually no. Don't be silly. The Trafford Centre was a victim of a systematic campaign of rumours shortly after it opened, this was one of those. The last thing any bomber is going to do is tip anybody off like that. First of all they are committed to the cause and must have accepted the concept that innocent people will die, second any leak of a rumour will put them at great risk. During the war when Norwegian saboteurs were sent in to stop heavy water leaving Norway to go to Germany they had to blow up a ferry with many innocent Norwegian civilians on board. They could not risk telling anybody about it so one of the saboteurs spiked somebody's food with laxatives so they would be too ill to catch the ferry, that was all they could do to save their life, the ferry had to leave and the bomb explode when it was in the middle of the lake, there was no other way to achieve the objective. Many decades later the wreck of that ferry was discovered at the bottom of the lake and was found to have contained exactly the right amount of heavy water the Germans would have needed to help produce an atomic bomb which no doubt would have been used to destroy London. At least that's how the story goes, and it sounds good, doesn't it?
What matters to a story, a meme, is how good it sounds and how much reward those who tell it receive by telling it. Being true is neither sufficient nor necessary. The don't go near the Trafford Centre this Easter meme would reward people with the thought that they could be saving the lives of the people listening. It could also reward those people who want to show Irish terrorists as somehow noble and human, or indeed cowardly or incompetent. Of course it really rewarded those people whose livelihood depended on shops that were losing out to competition from the new Trafford Centre, the largest and newest shopping centre in the North of England. Coincidentally I heard it in just such a shop, but this was a meme that had been around the block, it had begun as don't go near the Trafford Centre this Christmas.