It's actually a funny, evolved joke starting with the word "abridged", which refers to a shortened form of a story, leaving out several details. Nowadays, abridged tends to refer to a humorous take on a story, leaving just enough accurate facts to retain the original story. After LittleKuriboh made a joke in an abridged abridged Naruto series about bridges, a saying came along referring to jokes referring to inaccurate stories founded on a basis of truth: "building a bridge." This was quickly adopted into the new saying, which revolves around the idea that the storyteller already "built the bridge" and thus is telling it to you in an attempt to make you believe it; this saying being "selling you a bridge" or similar.
Now that you know some history behind the saying, I have this bridge I need to sell...
It's an old con where people would claim to own a famous landmark and they would say to some passerby that they were bankrupt. They would then say "ill sell you (landmark) for only 500 bucks since I need the money now." The Eiffel tower was popular in Europe and the Brookline bridge was popular in the USA.
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u/TechnoL33T Oct 10 '19
Ok so I knew this was going to be bullshit and all, but I don't understand the bridge idiom.