Never really noticed how many hills were in this thread before.
Littered with the corpses of fanatics, clutching standards and banners that long ago rotted away, leaving bare wooden poles in their wake, bleached by the sun.
THIS HILL IS MINE. IT WAS MADE FOR ME!
DRRR DRRRR DRRRR
Oh fuck off.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Never really noticed how many hills were in this thread before.
Littered with the corpses of fanatics, clutching standards and banners that long ago rotted away, leaving bare wooden poles in their wake, bleached by the sun.
THIS HILL IS MINE. IT WAS MADE FOR ME!
DRRR DRRRR DRRRR
Oh fuck off.
Metz is talking about himself, cool your jets.
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chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
Like, Berenstein being Berenstain I'm willing to chalk up to my dumb kid memory cause I can't find my old books to prove it. But I will swear up and down I saw Shazam when it was on the Disney Channel once and I have never seen Kazzam in my life.
The thing that weirded me out about that one was how fucking prevalent it was. Like, there was a show! The show should have corrected that mistake. I've seen video of the show pronouncing it, and it's clearly Stain. Fucking clear as a summer's day. And I watched that shitty show as a kid. A lot.
But no. And everyone I asked personally (because huh, this was mildly weird) remembered stein too. I've seen articles from magazines from when I was a kid where the text says "Stein", right next to pictures saying (again, clearly) "Stain".
I'm not saying it means anything. I'm just thinking that the scale for that one was fucking odd.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
See, that's the kind of weird memory things where I go "Ah. I see how I remembered that wrong. Everything is clear now."
Berenstain, now that one's a freaky fucker.
I don't even understand the bear name thing. Can someone explain it simply?
People spent their childhoods misreading the name "The Berenstain Bears" as "The Berenstein Bears." "Berenstain" is kind of a weird last name, while "Berenstein" fits into a much more common naming convention with many famous examples, so most of them never caught the mistake as children. Then they spent a decade or two not thinking about it at all, since they are children's books. Then they re-encountered the name as adults, and a small fraction of them made the oddly narcissistic leap that this very minor memetic hiccup was proof that we are living in an alternate timeline from the one they grew up in.
Then they went to Reddit and posted about it, and a bunch of other people either agreed or ironically shitposted that they agreed, and now here we are in the darkest Berenstain timeline.
The genie thing is similar, but with the uncomfortable twist that it involves not being able to tell two black guys apart.
Being a little harsh don't ya think?
The entire Stein/Stain thing was, like, 90% a joke, and in most cases was written about in the style of a creepypasta or non-scientific thought experiment. The most serious it got was when science educators used it as a jumping off point to discuss how memory remains subjective with time.
At worst it's a simplistic story idea that is going to end up being dredged up for someone to make money off of at some later date because it went viral.
It also seems ridiculous to call it narcissistic when the entire concept relies on community input rather than on an individual. The Stein/Stain thing would be nothing without other people and doesn't rely on any one individual or even any one group. The whole thing centers on two groups that are similar in every way but one. One group remembers Berenstein, and the other remembers Berenstain.
I never got the sense that the Berenstein crowd were anything but sincere. Maybe I'm being cynical, but it seems like anyone saying they were being ironic after the fact are like the shits on 4chan who were making white-supremacists memes "ironically".
I remember those books as a kid, and it was always Bearenstein Bears in my head.
But part of that was my parents reading the books to me as a little kid, then I never looked super close at that word after I learned to read.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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DeadfallI don't think you realize just how rich he is.In fact, I should put on a monocle.Registered Userregular
See I have a vivid memory of it being stein because I recall trying to figure out why it wasn't stain. I asked my sister to spell it and she spelled it stein.
But apparently it was all wrong.
Or I'm from the stein dimension.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
See, I thought I had watched a cartoon or heard an audiobook where it was also bearenstein.
But I have no fucking clue.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Yeah, listen to the first five seconds of this intro:
I was 100% positive it was -stein to the point where I assumed there was some publishing or copyright event when I noticed it was spelled -stain later in life. The whole parallel universe theory was interesting for informing me that it was always -stain and that I wasn't alone in having very vivid memories of the contrary. It's pretty interesting brain stuff when you're not being a dick about it.
The Sinbad genie movie, despite insistence to the contrary, really does just sound like people being kind of racist in confusing him with Shaquille O'Neil but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Also! I know I've harped on it a couple times but if you enjoy the S&R posts on nosleep, check out David Paulides' turns as a guest on Coast to Coast AM, real spooky stuff.
The David Paulides stuff freaks me right the fuck out. There was one episode of C2C: AM where Art Bell asked him if he thought it was aliens or something like that making all these people go missing, and David responded with something like "I wish it were something that simple." Sent chills down my spine, prime spooks.
I listened to most of this last night, because I was curious - a serious investigator who doesn't jump to conclusions and sticks to the facts? That's refreshing!
So, OK, I agree that he does a pretty good job of not speculating on causes ("It's aliens/bigfoot/the government/the bigfoot alien government!"), but I guess I remain unconvinced that there's anything extraordinary here? Maybe I need to check out one of his books or something, to see more details and discussion. Based on what he said on that show - and I realize that he's just giving a surface summary due to time constraints - it just seems like the human mind seeing patterns and attempting to find common causes, and thinking that things that are merely as-yet-unexplained are actually mystically-mysterious.
Without more elaboration, statements like "it makes no sense for [missing person X] to have done [weird act Y]", "how could they have gotten to [point Z]?", and "the dogs lost the scent" don't sound very compelling to me. I would imagine that there are multiple reasons why dogs can lose the scent, and they don't all have to do with Unnatural Forces lifting people off the face of the earth. As for people covering large distances or doing illogical things: I dunno, man, it's pretty easy for the human brain to get confused, and to think that reality is one way when it's actually another way. You keep walking in a circle while being convinced that you're walking due north, and slowly start freaking out when you see the same boulder over an over. That's not weird; that's literally the human condition. Misinterpreting reality is something that is hardwired into our brains. When you're in the woods and are losing your shit because you're lost, hungry, and you're pretty sure you just heard the howl of the chupacabra, you're going to start making mistakes and taking unnecessary risks. Even people with training and the right equipment are human, and will eventually be worn down.
And on the subject of the government apparently knowing all about this and doing nothing/covering it up: He says that when a person goes missing there's a well-publicized search and rescue effort for about a week, and then after that those efforts Mysteriously Stop. But, like... is it maybe because people out in the wild probably won't last more than a week, and search and rescue efforts cost time and money and manpower that could be more effectively spent elsewhere at that point? Like you can keep these 30 people and 2 helicopters on task looking for what is now probably a corpse - or you can switch them over to this new missing person, who is still probably alive. He also makes it sound like his research efforts are being thwarted; I can believe that, but I'm more inclined to believe that this is the work of bureaucracy and/or ass-covering, not something sinister.
Lastly: He talks about this being some weird force with a 90+% success rate - but that's only if all of these cases are actually connected. Ten people around the country walking into the woods and disappearing without a trace could be the work of this mysterious force, or it could be ten different people walking into ten different woods and disappearing for ten completely different reasons. He might not be jumping to conclusions on what this unifying cause is, but I feel like he might be jumping to conclusions that there is a unifying cause.
I should make it clear that I am super-ignorant about national parks, search and rescue, etc etc, and this dude probably has a much better idea about how all of this works. I am absolutely open to having my mind changed - but based on this short summary, I don't feel like there's anything particularly strange here. I appreciate this narrative as mythology, as The World Is Weirder Than You Think storytelling (which is why I love urban legends and conspiracy theories so much), but I remain unconvinced that there's actually anything weird going on here.
And if you GIS Sinbad Costume you get pirates looking costumes and genie looking costumes. And Sinbad had a show in the 90s called the Sinbad Show. And Sinbad the Pirate had a show in the 90s. And Sinbad the comedian might have dressed up like a genie or a pirate at some point in his career, either on his own show or on SNL at some point. And you might have watched tv late at night and confused the two.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
And if you GIS Sinbad Costume you get pirates looking costumes and genie looking costumes. And Sinbad had a show in the 90s called the Sinbad Show. And Sinbad the Pirate had a show in the 90s. And Sinbad the comedian might have dressed up like a genie or a pirate at some point in his career, either on his own show or on SNL at some point. And you might have watched tv late at night and confused the two.
I believe when I last came across the Shazaam thing someone had tracked down Sinbad dressed pretty much as a genie doing narration or introducing vignettes of something, which seems to be part of the DNA of the whole thing.
And if you GIS Sinbad Costume you get pirates looking costumes and genie looking costumes. And Sinbad had a show in the 90s called the Sinbad Show. And Sinbad the Pirate had a show in the 90s. And Sinbad the comedian might have dressed up like a genie or a pirate at some point in his career, either on his own show or on SNL at some point. And you might have watched tv late at night and confused the two.
I believe when I last came across the Shazaam thing someone had tracked down Sinbad dressed pretty much as a genie doing narration or introducing vignettes of something, which seems to be part of the DNA of the whole thing.
Either way it's very silly.
Sinbad the Entertainer hosted a TV marathon for Sinbad the Sailor, while Sinbad the Entertainer was dressed as Sinbad the Sailor.
And if you GIS Sinbad Costume you get pirates looking costumes and genie looking costumes. And Sinbad had a show in the 90s called the Sinbad Show. And Sinbad the Pirate had a show in the 90s. And Sinbad the comedian might have dressed up like a genie or a pirate at some point in his career, either on his own show or on SNL at some point. And you might have watched tv late at night and confused the two.
I believe when I last came across the Shazaam thing someone had tracked down Sinbad dressed pretty much as a genie doing narration or introducing vignettes of something, which seems to be part of the DNA of the whole thing.
Either way it's very silly.
Sinbad the Entertainer hosted a TV marathon for Sinbad the Sailor, while Sinbad the Entertainer was dressed as Sinbad the Sailor.
When I was ordering lunch this morning, I was absolutely convinced I ordered a chicken Cobb salad. Then, when my lunch was delivered, I realized that what I'd actually ordered was a chicken Caesar salad.
So
that's kind of like this whole Shazamenstain thing, right?
I hope the alternate-universe me who's eating a chicken Cobb salad right now is enjoying himself.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
When I was ordering lunch this morning, I was absolutely convinced I ordered a chicken Cobb salad. Then, when my lunch was delivered, I realized that what I'd actually ordered was a chicken Caesar salad.
So
that's kind of like this whole Shazamenstain thing, right?
It's about the nature of memory, in the Sinbad case.
But in the Bearenstain Bears case, somehow people started mispronouncing the name. It's probably because the two spellings have practically an identical way of speaking them.
Like, look at the video I posted and listen to the intro. The first time they mention the name, I thought for sure they were saying Bearenstein Bears. But the second time it was mentioned, if I listened real close, I realized that they said Bearenstain Bears. Hell, try saying the two names in succession quickly and casually. It's basically the same. And kids are dumb, and this is a book series since the 60s, so our parents parents were read it a certain way that caused their kid minds to hear it as Stein and they just read it to their kids that particularly way as well.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Psychotic OneThe Lord of No PantsParts UnknownRegistered Userregular
This bears conversation is making me want to watch the Angry Video Game Nerd episode from Halloween this year that covered this topic pretty precisely.
When I was ordering lunch this morning, I was absolutely convinced I ordered a chicken Cobb salad. Then, when my lunch was delivered, I realized that what I'd actually ordered was a chicken Caesar salad.
So
that's kind of like this whole Shazamenstain thing, right?
It's about the nature of memory, in the Sinbad case.
But in the Bearenstain Bears case, somehow people started mispronouncing the name. It's probably because the two spellings have practically an identical way of speaking them.
Like, look at the video I posted and listen to the intro. The first time they mention the name, I thought for sure they were saying Bearenstein Bears. But the second time it was mentioned, if I listened real close, I realized that they said Bearenstain Bears. Hell, try saying the two names in succession quickly and casually. It's basically the same. And kids are dumb, and this is a book series since the 60s, so our parents parents were read it a certain way that caused their kid minds to hear it as Stein and they just read it to their kids that particularly way as well.
I originally found all this on this Buzzfeed Post that listed the same memory mishap biases and I think it's just people mispronouncing things and not recalling things exactly as they were when they were 10.
This puts a lot of pressure on me, and I'm not sure I can handle it. Look, I can't even order a salad right - or so they would have me believe.
Who profits, follow the money, trust no one, leave no evidence.
So if you subscribe to one of the less-mainstream theories about this timeline-divergence stuff, you made the right call by screwing that up, because consciousness can only follow timelines where we make decisions that don't lead to our deaths.
Cobb Salad Delduwath is now on an inescapable slide towards a confrontation with mortality. You, as TankHammer pointed out, are now immortal until another branching node.
Also! I know I've harped on it a couple times but if you enjoy the S&R posts on nosleep, check out David Paulides' turns as a guest on Coast to Coast AM, real spooky stuff.
The David Paulides stuff freaks me right the fuck out. There was one episode of C2C: AM where Art Bell asked him if he thought it was aliens or something like that making all these people go missing, and David responded with something like "I wish it were something that simple." Sent chills down my spine, prime spooks.
I listened to most of this last night, because I was curious - a serious investigator who doesn't jump to conclusions and sticks to the facts? That's refreshing!
So, OK, I agree that he does a pretty good job of not speculating on causes ("It's aliens/bigfoot/the government/the bigfoot alien government!"), but I guess I remain unconvinced that there's anything extraordinary here? Maybe I need to check out one of his books or something, to see more details and discussion. Based on what he said on that show - and I realize that he's just giving a surface summary due to time constraints - it just seems like the human mind seeing patterns and attempting to find common causes, and thinking that things that are merely as-yet-unexplained are actually mystically-mysterious.
Without more elaboration, statements like "it makes no sense for [missing person X] to have done [weird act Y]", "how could they have gotten to [point Z]?", and "the dogs lost the scent" don't sound very compelling to me. I would imagine that there are multiple reasons why dogs can lose the scent, and they don't all have to do with Unnatural Forces lifting people off the face of the earth. As for people covering large distances or doing illogical things: I dunno, man, it's pretty easy for the human brain to get confused, and to think that reality is one way when it's actually another way. You keep walking in a circle while being convinced that you're walking due north, and slowly start freaking out when you see the same boulder over an over. That's not weird; that's literally the human condition. Misinterpreting reality is something that is hardwired into our brains. When you're in the woods and are losing your shit because you're lost, hungry, and you're pretty sure you just heard the howl of the chupacabra, you're going to start making mistakes and taking unnecessary risks. Even people with training and the right equipment are human, and will eventually be worn down.
And on the subject of the government apparently knowing all about this and doing nothing/covering it up: He says that when a person goes missing there's a well-publicized search and rescue effort for about a week, and then after that those efforts Mysteriously Stop. But, like... is it maybe because people out in the wild probably won't last more than a week, and search and rescue efforts cost time and money and manpower that could be more effectively spent elsewhere at that point? Like you can keep these 30 people and 2 helicopters on task looking for what is now probably a corpse - or you can switch them over to this new missing person, who is still probably alive. He also makes it sound like his research efforts are being thwarted; I can believe that, but I'm more inclined to believe that this is the work of bureaucracy and/or ass-covering, not something sinister.
Lastly: He talks about this being some weird force with a 90+% success rate - but that's only if all of these cases are actually connected. Ten people around the country walking into the woods and disappearing without a trace could be the work of this mysterious force, or it could be ten different people walking into ten different woods and disappearing for ten completely different reasons. He might not be jumping to conclusions on what this unifying cause is, but I feel like he might be jumping to conclusions that there is a unifying cause.
I should make it clear that I am super-ignorant about national parks, search and rescue, etc etc, and this dude probably has a much better idea about how all of this works. I am absolutely open to having my mind changed - but based on this short summary, I don't feel like there's anything particularly strange here. I appreciate this narrative as mythology, as The World Is Weirder Than You Think storytelling (which is why I love urban legends and conspiracy theories so much), but I remain unconvinced that there's actually anything weird going on here.
This is all pretty spot on, really. Search and rescue is costly (even when it uses mostly volunteers), risky, and unlikely to save a life after a certain point. People can cover a LOT of ground, and every step you take increases the area that has to be searched to find you and the odds that you won't be. If the searchers assume you walk even 5 miles a day, are planning to be gone for a weekend, and the search doesn't even get called called in until they day after you don't show up where you're expected, you have a search area of over 1200 square miles. Now, they generally start at last known position and work out in a well determined and reasonable way, but...gee, I WONDER how people get lost and are never found?
Incidentally, that's part of what made the Blair Witch Project work for me. There's a scene where scary wood witch shit in the night makes them nope the fuck out. They're already lost at this point t, but for once someone in a horror movie does what they're actually supposed to do. If you can't stay put once lost instead of wandering around trying to find someplace familiar, put running water on one side and follow it downhill. It's basically impossible to fuck that up - you can't circle back (because water runs downhill) and at worst it feeds into larger bodies of water which will eventually mean civilization of some kind and probably pretty quickly.
And they do that! But then they wind up....exactly where they started. Which is completely impossible.
It's so much better in horror when people react competently and it goes spooky sideways than when people just act stupidly.
Also! I know I've harped on it a couple times but if you enjoy the S&R posts on nosleep, check out David Paulides' turns as a guest on Coast to Coast AM, real spooky stuff.
The David Paulides stuff freaks me right the fuck out. There was one episode of C2C: AM where Art Bell asked him if he thought it was aliens or something like that making all these people go missing, and David responded with something like "I wish it were something that simple." Sent chills down my spine, prime spooks.
I listened to most of this last night, because I was curious - a serious investigator who doesn't jump to conclusions and sticks to the facts? That's refreshing!
So, OK, I agree that he does a pretty good job of not speculating on causes ("It's aliens/bigfoot/the government/the bigfoot alien government!"), but I guess I remain unconvinced that there's anything extraordinary here? Maybe I need to check out one of his books or something, to see more details and discussion. Based on what he said on that show - and I realize that he's just giving a surface summary due to time constraints - it just seems like the human mind seeing patterns and attempting to find common causes, and thinking that things that are merely as-yet-unexplained are actually mystically-mysterious.
Without more elaboration, statements like "it makes no sense for [missing person X] to have done [weird act Y]", "how could they have gotten to [point Z]?", and "the dogs lost the scent" don't sound very compelling to me. I would imagine that there are multiple reasons why dogs can lose the scent, and they don't all have to do with Unnatural Forces lifting people off the face of the earth. As for people covering large distances or doing illogical things: I dunno, man, it's pretty easy for the human brain to get confused, and to think that reality is one way when it's actually another way. You keep walking in a circle while being convinced that you're walking due north, and slowly start freaking out when you see the same boulder over an over. That's not weird; that's literally the human condition. Misinterpreting reality is something that is hardwired into our brains. When you're in the woods and are losing your shit because you're lost, hungry, and you're pretty sure you just heard the howl of the chupacabra, you're going to start making mistakes and taking unnecessary risks. Even people with training and the right equipment are human, and will eventually be worn down.
And on the subject of the government apparently knowing all about this and doing nothing/covering it up: He says that when a person goes missing there's a well-publicized search and rescue effort for about a week, and then after that those efforts Mysteriously Stop. But, like... is it maybe because people out in the wild probably won't last more than a week, and search and rescue efforts cost time and money and manpower that could be more effectively spent elsewhere at that point? Like you can keep these 30 people and 2 helicopters on task looking for what is now probably a corpse - or you can switch them over to this new missing person, who is still probably alive. He also makes it sound like his research efforts are being thwarted; I can believe that, but I'm more inclined to believe that this is the work of bureaucracy and/or ass-covering, not something sinister.
Lastly: He talks about this being some weird force with a 90+% success rate - but that's only if all of these cases are actually connected. Ten people around the country walking into the woods and disappearing without a trace could be the work of this mysterious force, or it could be ten different people walking into ten different woods and disappearing for ten completely different reasons. He might not be jumping to conclusions on what this unifying cause is, but I feel like he might be jumping to conclusions that there is a unifying cause.
I should make it clear that I am super-ignorant about national parks, search and rescue, etc etc, and this dude probably has a much better idea about how all of this works. I am absolutely open to having my mind changed - but based on this short summary, I don't feel like there's anything particularly strange here. I appreciate this narrative as mythology, as The World Is Weirder Than You Think storytelling (which is why I love urban legends and conspiracy theories so much), but I remain unconvinced that there's actually anything weird going on here.
This is all pretty spot on, really. Search and rescue is costly (even when it uses mostly volunteers), risky, and unlikely to save a life after a certain point. People can cover a LOT of ground, and every step you take increases the area that has to be searched to find you and the odds that you won't be. If the searchers assume you walk even 5 miles a day, are planning to be gone for a weekend, and the search doesn't even get called called in until they day after you don't show up where you're expected, you have a search area of over 1200 square miles. Now, they generally start at last known position and work out in a well determined and reasonable way, but...gee, I WONDER how people get lost and are never found?
Incidentally, that's part of what made the Blair Witch Project work for me. There's a scene where scary wood witch shit in the night makes them nope the fuck out. They're already lost at this point t, but for once someone in a horror movie does what they're actually supposed to do. If you can't stay put once lost instead of wandering around trying to find someplace familiar, put running water on one side and follow it downhill. It's basically impossible to fuck that up - you can't circle back (because water runs downhill) and at worst it feeds into larger bodies of water which will eventually mean civilization of some kind and probably pretty quickly.
And they do that! But then they wind up....exactly where they started. Which is completely impossible.
It's so much better in horror when people react competently and it goes spooky sideways than when people just act stupidly.
The cases that weird me out are the ones involving really small kids ending up in odd places, miles away from where they disappeared. And occasionally shoeless, but with no damage to their feet!
The no damage to the feet thing makes a lot more sense when you realize that a small child may only weigh like 35-40 lbs tops. That is a significantly smaller amount of force being distributed down on their feet on rough objects than say, a 170lb man. Kids are also not going to be able to move with as much momentum as a grown person, and are less likely to be tripping over irregularities in the terrain, simply because they won't be taking large enough steps to notice them. They'll just move slowly and consistently and be able to cross much rougher terrain than you would imagine because they don't have as much mass slowing them down and a much much lower center of gravity.
The no damage to the feet thing makes a lot more sense when you realize that a small child may only weigh like 35-40 lbs tops. That is a significantly smaller amount of force being distributed down on their feet on rough objects than say, a 170lb man. Kids are also not going to be able to move with as much momentum as a grown person, and are less likely to be tripping over irregularities in the terrain, simply because they won't be taking large enough steps to notice them. They'll just move slowly and consistently and be able to cross much rougher terrain than you would imagine because they don't have as much mass slowing them down and a much much lower center of gravity.
I didn't think about that! That makes a lot of sense.
The other thing I thought amusing about the descriptions of specific incidents was one incident where a 3-year-old girl went missing, and was later found by some people in the company of some dark humanoid shape that stood up and left when those people were approaching. The girl then described the incident by saying that "the doggie ate [her] hat".
- This incident is from the 1800s. I'm not saying that people in the 1800s were credulous fools, or that facts didn't exist prior to the Information Age, but I'm also not necessarily going to put as much stock into a rando 1800s report of a dark humanoid shape as I am in a, say, 1990s report of a dark humanoid shape.
- A 3-year-old saying that a doggie ate her hat does not mean that a robo wolf-man abducted her and then ingested her hat for tissue sample analysis.
- A dark humanoid shape that runs away when adults approach is not necessarily the wolf-man. I can think of several reasons why a dark humanoid shape might run away from a lost little girl when adults approach.
I'm also very curious about the overall statistics. How many people visit national parks, overall? What percent goes missing? What percent goes missing under mysterious circumstances? What percent of both categories is eventually found?
Like if one percent of one percent goes missing, there's no reason for the government to Warn The Public About National Parks. That's not sinister; that's statistics.
Posts
Oh fuck off.
Metz is talking about himself, cool your jets.
The thing that weirded me out about that one was how fucking prevalent it was. Like, there was a show! The show should have corrected that mistake. I've seen video of the show pronouncing it, and it's clearly Stain. Fucking clear as a summer's day. And I watched that shitty show as a kid. A lot.
But no. And everyone I asked personally (because huh, this was mildly weird) remembered stein too. I've seen articles from magazines from when I was a kid where the text says "Stein", right next to pictures saying (again, clearly) "Stain".
I'm not saying it means anything. I'm just thinking that the scale for that one was fucking odd.
Why I fear the ocean.
I remember those books as a kid, and it was always Bearenstein Bears in my head.
But part of that was my parents reading the books to me as a little kid, then I never looked super close at that word after I learned to read.
But apparently it was all wrong.
Or I'm from the stein dimension.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
But I have no fucking clue.
Is this old woman a crone?
The Sinbad genie movie, despite insistence to the contrary, really does just sound like people being kind of racist in confusing him with Shaquille O'Neil but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
I listened to most of this last night, because I was curious - a serious investigator who doesn't jump to conclusions and sticks to the facts? That's refreshing!
So, OK, I agree that he does a pretty good job of not speculating on causes ("It's aliens/bigfoot/the government/the bigfoot alien government!"), but I guess I remain unconvinced that there's anything extraordinary here? Maybe I need to check out one of his books or something, to see more details and discussion. Based on what he said on that show - and I realize that he's just giving a surface summary due to time constraints - it just seems like the human mind seeing patterns and attempting to find common causes, and thinking that things that are merely as-yet-unexplained are actually mystically-mysterious.
Without more elaboration, statements like "it makes no sense for [missing person X] to have done [weird act Y]", "how could they have gotten to [point Z]?", and "the dogs lost the scent" don't sound very compelling to me. I would imagine that there are multiple reasons why dogs can lose the scent, and they don't all have to do with Unnatural Forces lifting people off the face of the earth. As for people covering large distances or doing illogical things: I dunno, man, it's pretty easy for the human brain to get confused, and to think that reality is one way when it's actually another way. You keep walking in a circle while being convinced that you're walking due north, and slowly start freaking out when you see the same boulder over an over. That's not weird; that's literally the human condition. Misinterpreting reality is something that is hardwired into our brains. When you're in the woods and are losing your shit because you're lost, hungry, and you're pretty sure you just heard the howl of the chupacabra, you're going to start making mistakes and taking unnecessary risks. Even people with training and the right equipment are human, and will eventually be worn down.
And on the subject of the government apparently knowing all about this and doing nothing/covering it up: He says that when a person goes missing there's a well-publicized search and rescue effort for about a week, and then after that those efforts Mysteriously Stop. But, like... is it maybe because people out in the wild probably won't last more than a week, and search and rescue efforts cost time and money and manpower that could be more effectively spent elsewhere at that point? Like you can keep these 30 people and 2 helicopters on task looking for what is now probably a corpse - or you can switch them over to this new missing person, who is still probably alive. He also makes it sound like his research efforts are being thwarted; I can believe that, but I'm more inclined to believe that this is the work of bureaucracy and/or ass-covering, not something sinister.
Lastly: He talks about this being some weird force with a 90+% success rate - but that's only if all of these cases are actually connected. Ten people around the country walking into the woods and disappearing without a trace could be the work of this mysterious force, or it could be ten different people walking into ten different woods and disappearing for ten completely different reasons. He might not be jumping to conclusions on what this unifying cause is, but I feel like he might be jumping to conclusions that there is a unifying cause.
I should make it clear that I am super-ignorant about national parks, search and rescue, etc etc, and this dude probably has a much better idea about how all of this works. I am absolutely open to having my mind changed - but based on this short summary, I don't feel like there's anything particularly strange here. I appreciate this narrative as mythology, as The World Is Weirder Than You Think storytelling (which is why I love urban legends and conspiracy theories so much), but I remain unconvinced that there's actually anything weird going on here.
And you got Sinbad
And if you GIS Sinbad Costume you get pirates looking costumes and genie looking costumes. And Sinbad had a show in the 90s called the Sinbad Show. And Sinbad the Pirate had a show in the 90s. And Sinbad the comedian might have dressed up like a genie or a pirate at some point in his career, either on his own show or on SNL at some point. And you might have watched tv late at night and confused the two.
I believe when I last came across the Shazaam thing someone had tracked down Sinbad dressed pretty much as a genie doing narration or introducing vignettes of something, which seems to be part of the DNA of the whole thing.
Either way it's very silly.
Come on, I know a low-grade Matrix-tweaking trial run when I see one.
Sinbad the Entertainer hosted a TV marathon for Sinbad the Sailor, while Sinbad the Entertainer was dressed as Sinbad the Sailor.
He's not Sinbad
So
that's kind of like this whole Shazamenstain thing, right?
It's about the nature of memory, in the Sinbad case.
But in the Bearenstain Bears case, somehow people started mispronouncing the name. It's probably because the two spellings have practically an identical way of speaking them.
Like, look at the video I posted and listen to the intro. The first time they mention the name, I thought for sure they were saying Bearenstein Bears. But the second time it was mentioned, if I listened real close, I realized that they said Bearenstain Bears. Hell, try saying the two names in succession quickly and casually. It's basically the same. And kids are dumb, and this is a book series since the 60s, so our parents parents were read it a certain way that caused their kid minds to hear it as Stein and they just read it to their kids that particularly way as well.
I originally found all this on this Buzzfeed Post that listed the same memory mishap biases and I think it's just people mispronouncing things and not recalling things exactly as they were when they were 10.
Chemtrails is all you had to say. Makes tons more sense now!
Unfortunately, Cobb Salad Universe Delduwath died. You are Ceasar Salad Universe Delduwath and you're now immortal until your next order.
Who profits, follow the money, trust no one, leave no evidence.
So if you subscribe to one of the less-mainstream theories about this timeline-divergence stuff, you made the right call by screwing that up, because consciousness can only follow timelines where we make decisions that don't lead to our deaths.
Cobb Salad Delduwath is now on an inescapable slide towards a confrontation with mortality. You, as TankHammer pointed out, are now immortal until another branching node.
This is all pretty spot on, really. Search and rescue is costly (even when it uses mostly volunteers), risky, and unlikely to save a life after a certain point. People can cover a LOT of ground, and every step you take increases the area that has to be searched to find you and the odds that you won't be. If the searchers assume you walk even 5 miles a day, are planning to be gone for a weekend, and the search doesn't even get called called in until they day after you don't show up where you're expected, you have a search area of over 1200 square miles. Now, they generally start at last known position and work out in a well determined and reasonable way, but...gee, I WONDER how people get lost and are never found?
Incidentally, that's part of what made the Blair Witch Project work for me. There's a scene where scary wood witch shit in the night makes them nope the fuck out. They're already lost at this point t, but for once someone in a horror movie does what they're actually supposed to do. If you can't stay put once lost instead of wandering around trying to find someplace familiar, put running water on one side and follow it downhill. It's basically impossible to fuck that up - you can't circle back (because water runs downhill) and at worst it feeds into larger bodies of water which will eventually mean civilization of some kind and probably pretty quickly.
And they do that! But then they wind up....exactly where they started. Which is completely impossible.
It's so much better in horror when people react competently and it goes spooky sideways than when people just act stupidly.
But not choosing is also a choice.
Life is choice and choice is death.
Brb committing existential suicide across all quantum multiverses.
EDIT: Which reminds me of the first short story in this collection.
Have a frogurt
Eat at Arby's
It does.
(that's bad)
The cases that weird me out are the ones involving really small kids ending up in odd places, miles away from where they disappeared. And occasionally shoeless, but with no damage to their feet!
Same reason a squirrel can fall from a tree without taking much damage. Mass changes a lot.
But I had an appointment with you this evening in Samarra
I didn't think about that! That makes a lot of sense.
- This incident is from the 1800s. I'm not saying that people in the 1800s were credulous fools, or that facts didn't exist prior to the Information Age, but I'm also not necessarily going to put as much stock into a rando 1800s report of a dark humanoid shape as I am in a, say, 1990s report of a dark humanoid shape.
- A 3-year-old saying that a doggie ate her hat does not mean that a robo wolf-man abducted her and then ingested her hat for tissue sample analysis.
- A dark humanoid shape that runs away when adults approach is not necessarily the wolf-man. I can think of several reasons why a dark humanoid shape might run away from a lost little girl when adults approach.
I'm also very curious about the overall statistics. How many people visit national parks, overall? What percent goes missing? What percent goes missing under mysterious circumstances? What percent of both categories is eventually found?
Like if one percent of one percent goes missing, there's no reason for the government to Warn The Public About National Parks. That's not sinister; that's statistics.