Human Ingenuity Knows No Bounds

Idleness the Mother of Invention?

I received the following recently:

1) Start with the given: CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR

2) Change all U's to V's (which is proper Latin anyway): CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR

3) Extract all Roman Numerals: C V V L D I V

4) Convert into Arabic values: 100 5 5 50 500 1 5

5) Add all the numbers: 666

Thus, Barney is Satan. I knew it!

Neat. But the thing I'd like to know is, like acquired tastes and the Japanese fugu fish that has to be prepared just right to avoid poisoning everybody, how do these things get discovered in the first place? I guess there must be people out there with a lot more spare time on their hands than I ever manage to find.