[CaptainHaplo]

What you were dealing with wasn't static electricity, since you had a conductor that simply arced to "ground".

Is it overstated? Yes, but with good reason.

The chances of you frying something are pretty low with ESD, mainly because static electricity isn't a huge issue for most people. However, every person is different, some people build it up naturally and never seem to "bleed" it off, getting shocked quite often, while others never build up enough of a charge to ever create that "arc". I have no idea why this is, but basicly, if your one of those people who gets shocked 2 or 3 times a day, don't work on your own PC - because your static charge is likely to be higher than the device your working on can stand.