Why do people want to believe in Bigfoot?

[Carlos Allende]

3 minutes ago, Alien Origins said:

Could it be that Bigfoot is a metaphor for peoples deep seeded fear of the unknown?

That would be cool. And then that guy on Coast-to-Coast who claimed to have shot one would just have opened some kinda David Lynch-style narrative.

[Minimalists]

2 hours ago, Carlos Allende said:

That would be cool. And then that guy on Coast-to-Coast who claimed to have shot one would just have opened some kinda David Lynch-style narrative.

Maybe..But never been a big fan of Coast to Coast.

Edited August 26, 2018 by Alien Origins
Add a word.

[Carnoferox]

56 minutes ago, Alien Origins said:

Maybe..But never been a big fan of Coast to Coast.

I always preferred to call it Hoax to Hoax.

[ChrLzs]

On 8/24/2018 at 6:53 PM, Agishe said:

I don't care who Jaime Maussan is.

Well it's your choice to associate with and promote the claims made by fraudsters.  Afaicr, Maussan has never actually promoted anything real...

On 8/24/2018 at 6:53 PM, Agishe said:

Especially after the story with the mummies.

The one where the origin was FOUND, the DNA was human, and we know exactly what they were?  Seriously - pick another hobby.

On 8/24/2018 at 6:53 PM, Agishe said:

I say it again: Witness. Surveillance Camera..

For deity's sake:

Witnesses knew each other.  No other reports ever presented, despite the hundreds of surveillance cameras that *should* have caught this.  One of the images shows a *static* scene, to which the UFO was added.  Are you really this bad at checking info?  Do you *ever* think carefully about the dreck that gets vomited up before you?

Proven HOAX.

 

Next time:

DO RESEARCH.

And consider whether posting offtopic rubbish that has been proven to be hoaxes, helps or hinders your 'cause'..

[stereologist]

6 minutes ago, ChrLzs said:

Well it's your choice to associate with and promote the claims made by fraudsters.  Afaicr, Maussan has never actually promoted anything real...

The one where the origin was FOUND, the DNA was human, and we know exactly what they were?  Seriously - pick another hobby.

For deity's sake:

Witnesses knew each other.  No other reports ever presented, despite the hundreds of surveillance cameras that *should* have caught this.  One of the images shows a *static* scene, to which the UFO was added.  Are you really this bad at checking info?  Do you *ever* think carefully about the dreck that gets vomited up before you?

Proven HOAX.

 

Next time:

DO RESEARCH.

And consider whether posting offtopic rubbish that has been proven to be hoaxes, helps or hinders your 'cause'..

Until your post I had imagined it might have been possible that Maussan was not associated with a hoax. Sometimes our imaginations can mislead us.

[+DanL]

Why would people WANT to believe in Bigfoot?? Why WOULDN'T people want to believe that there was still a little mystery and excitement left in the world. With the exception of Africa and the popor bears in the north man has almost wiped out all of the major predators that might at one time preyed on people. You are more likely to be hurt by overly friendly cows that you are to be injured by a large predator in the 48 states of continental USA. 

The grizzly bears are all but wiped out except in a few National parks. The mountain lion numbers are so small that even in the places where they still live you could easily go a lifetime and never see one. The wolves in America are peaceful creatures and there has not been an attack on a human by a healthy wolf in the last century. 

Why do people ride roller coasters, jump out of perfectly good airplanes or jump from high places with a rubber band tied to their butts??? Because it makes them feel more ALIVE. It is fun to be scared a little bit every now and then. Bigfoot is a perfect playmate for our imaginations. He is big hairy and scary looking as hell but you also have to realize, there are almost no reports of injury done to people by this big monster. He waddles into sight, sometimes makes loud noises, may toss a few rocks in your direction but doesn't generally hit anyone, He peeks in windows but never kicks in the door or even breaks the windows. For all of his frightening appearances he is less dangerous than an ill tempered shetland pony. 

The THOUGHT of Bigfoot as a possibility can turn a quiet walk in a park or woodlands trail into a little bit of an adventure. We pay big bucks to add a little excitement to our mostly dreary lives. Toss out your scepticism, allow yourself to admit the possibility, no matter how unlikely, that this big scary looking but mostly harmless beast might be out there. Go take a walk in the woods and keep your eyes open for a chance to be one of those that get to see him as he runs away. It is FREE and harmless and a little taste of adventure. What's the harm...

 

[Agishe]

22 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

Next time:

DO RESEARCH.

And consider whether posting offtopic rubbish that has been proven to be hoaxes, helps or hinders your 'cause'..

Having no evidence "PRO" and no desire to heat up the situation, I thought that I had already closed the situation when I wrote this post.

I thought that I wrote fairly clearly, but probably I was mistaken

...

Mummy DNA etc...

Maybe it would be better to read the post entirely, before teaching others?
And even better - the entire conversation, and do not judge by short lines.
I said it "I don't care who Jaime Maussan is. Especially after the story with the mummies" with a negative connotation to Maussan.

22 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

No other reports ever presented, despite the hundreds of surveillance cameras that *should* have caught this.

As I see, skeptics have done a good RESEARCH and we have hundreds of pictures from these cameras, with evidence that at specify moment there is no object. Where are they all?

22 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

Seriously - pick another hobby

There is only one valuable advice that is worth giving:
It sounds: "Never give advices"

Edited August 27, 2018 by Agishe

[stereologist]

Can't believe anyone is still talking about the Jerusalem hoax video.

[Minimalists]

3 hours ago, Agishe said:

Having no evidence "PRO" and no desire to heat up the situation, I thought that I had already closed the situation when I wrote this post.

I thought that I wrote fairly clearly, but probably I was mistaken

...

Mummy DNA etc...

Maybe it would be better to read the post entirely, before teaching others?
And even better - the entire conversation, and do not judge by short lines.
I said it "I don't care who Jaime Maussan is. Especially after the story with the mummies" with a negative connotation to Maussan.

As I see, skeptics have done a good RESEARCH and we have hundreds of pictures from these cameras, with evidence that at specify moment there is no object. Where are they all?

There is only one valuable advice that is worth giving:
It sounds: "Never give advices"

Quote

I said it "I don't care who Jaime Maussan is. Especially after the story with the mummies" with a negative connotation to Maussan.

Apparently you don't...I am quite certain the negative connotation regarding Maussan was most likely well deserved.....

[Podo]

People want to believe in sasquatch because it is mysterious, mainly. Anyone who has spent time living in the shadow of vast uninhabited woodlands, or tractless mountains, or vast deserts, will tell you that it feels very possible for mysterious things to be lurking in the sand wastes, the deep forests, the high mountains, or the ocean's depths. As rational adults we know it not to be true, but the urge is strong. The stories are fun, but unfortunately some people take it too far.

[Agishe]

3 hours ago, Alien Origins said:

Apparently you don't...I am quite certain the negative connotation regarding Maussan was most likely well deserved.....

Yes, I'm using Google Translate (  (I'm reading freely, but do not speak)

Was there a positive connotation to the Maussan's mystification with the mummies? (And it seems to me, from there it was clear that I know about DNA)

And it turns out, behind hoaxes with UFOs, mummies of aliens, corpses of extraterrestrials (Boyd Bushman case), and probably behind Patterson's film ...

Edited August 28, 2018 by Agishe

[ChrLzs]

2 hours ago, Agishe said:

Yes, I'm using Google Translate

Well, that explains a lot but doesn't excuse your insistence that it is the rest of us that is at fault when you (allegedly) get 'misunderstood'.

Frankly, I think that even before it reaches GT, it is already gibberish..  Bye.

[openozy]

On ‎26‎/‎08‎/‎2018 at 12:44 AM, pallidin said:

Actually, THAT is a long-standing myth.

It is not true AT ALL.

Wild chimpanzees, for example, have been video-recorded roaming around in small groups, beating the crap (usually unto death) out-of a hapless chimp that is not part of their gang.

I've seen these videos, and I can tell you that chimps can be viciously brutal towards one another for no apparent reason.

Feral pack-animals, such as canines will sometimes attack another creature just for "the hell of it"... no provocation, hunger or territorial issues.

So to suggest that humans are the only species which "kills just to kill", is patently false. How that myth got started and spread who knows, but it's flat-out wrong.

Good post BTW; welcome to UM.

 

You'll find there is a reason for chimps to kill,mainly territorial.Foxes kill an entire fowl flock as their opportunists and take out as much food as they can,not for fun or sport.feral dogs may appear to kill for nothing,but its probably their domestic genes coming through,like my terriers killing a barn full of rats,not for fun, because its the job humans bred them for.So I'm inclined to believe we are apart from other animals with this.

[+DieChecker]

I think people are, after 5000+ of organized religion, that we are hard wired to believe in the unbelievable. Especially if we FEEL like we had a personal experience.

That's probably part of the equation.

[Agishe]

1 hour ago, ChrLzs said:

Frankly, I think that even before it reaches GT, it is already gibberish..  Bye.

Highly Likely? Bye.

[Podo]

On 8/27/2018 at 11:35 PM, Agishe said:

Highly Likely? Bye.

What is your native language?

[Agishe]

8 hours ago, Podo said:

What is your native language?

Russian. I'm not RF resident.

[Robotic Jew]

Saw this last night...thought it would fit nicely here:

 

"Counter-intuitively, the more people who report seeing Bigfoot, the less likely he is to exist. Why is that? Because what these people report seeing is something that should leave tangible, verifiable evidence. As the category of anecdotal evidence rises while other categories of evidence remain non-existent, the more likely it becomes that those reports are due to the many errors we know anecdotes are prone to than an actual unknown creature.

This becomes an ever stronger likelihood as humans get better and better at detecting the types of evidence Bigfoot should produce. The more people who carry smart phones, the more trail cams put into the forest, and the more drones that fly around in the sky, the more we would expect reliable evidence to make itself known. Despite all these advances, reliable categories of evidence remain negligible while anecdotal reports rise on a weekly basis.

And so it becomes harder and harder to imagine explanations for this lack of evidence. There just aren't any good plausible explanations left, so cryptid enthusiasts are forced to reach for desperate explanations like a psychic interdimensional Bigfoot that can turn invisible, or a grand conspiracy to suppress the evidence. Such explanations may serve to immunize the hypothesis from falsification, but they don't actually make the idea of Bigfoot any more likely. Despite the popular aphorism, this is just one example of a situation where absence of evidence does indeed suggest evidence of absence.

Hypothesis are tested by the predictions they make about the world. The hypothesis that Bigfoot reports can be explained by Bigfoot being a real creature predicts that we should find tangible evidence of Bigfoot. He's seen all over the world, in very high concentrations in some places, and has been steadily spotted for decades. The idea that Bigfoot are some scarce race of creatures hiding in the deep forest no longer fits. In report after report, he's said to be in backyards, looking in windows, and running across roads. With each report the expectation of physical evidence grows.

Contrast this with something like the giant squid. People were reporting giant squid sightings for decades before we found actual evidence. The difference is that the sightings were rare and squid were seen in the deep ocean, and so it was reasonable to think that physical evidence would also be rare. If hundreds of people were reporting seeing giant squid in rivers, lakes and swimming pools, the expectation of evidence would be much greater. 

The hypothesis that reports of Bigfoot can be explained by the well documented and well understood pitfalls of human experience predicts that anecdotal evidence is all we will ever have. It predicts that Bigfoot reports will steadily come in while physical proof will always remain at the level of background noise. With each report of Bigfoot that fails to produce evidence, this hypothesis gains more weight.

So, it's not merely the number of sightings, it's the fact that sightings come with details, and each detail works to more specifically define the creature we are looking for. The reports don't just tell us that there is an unknown creature that people sometimes see, they tell us this creature is not particularly hard to encounter, that he likes to antagonize campers and home owners, and seems to purposely and cleverly avoid documentation. It tells us he exists in these places without making any noticeable impact on the environment, understands technology he's never before come into contact with, and somehow avoids ever leaving any scat, dead bodies, or other detritus. Each report actually changes the hypothesis and forces it to become more convoluted, leaving us to choose between a fantastically complicated marvel of evolution, or a mundane explanation of human psychology."

 

Credit -- I ****ING HATE PSEUDOSCIENCE Facebook Page

[+DieChecker]

I was recently doing Google searches to see what kind of Bigfoot reports there were out there in the recent past. I think I found maybe a half dozen in the last six months. Not sure if that counts as a lot, or a little... In reference to the post above.

Maybe my google kung fu is rust though. Anyone else find piles of BF sightings/reports for this year?

Edit: This site says there has been at least 11 this year...

https://www.strangerdimensions.com/bigfoot-sightings-2018/

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by DieChecker

[freetoroam]

7 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

I think I found maybe a half dozen in the last six months. Not sure if that counts as a lot, or a little... .

It is not a lot and it is even less if it is the same people making the reports.

[+DieChecker]

11 minutes ago, freetoroam said:

It is not a lot and it is even less if it is the same people making the reports.

Appears at least some of them were reported by "Bigfoot Researchers", who tend to try to make their living off seeing/hearing/smelling BF and making youtube videos about it.

[Ezra1964]

I will give you my take. I have seen quite a number of accounts from people who "appear genuine" and "reliable". I have no proof that these people saw what they say they saw. I choose to believe because the thought of a large ape that we haven't yet cataloged is not out of the realm of possibility. I ask back, why the push to insist that these things aren't real? Some people push just as hard in the opposite direction with yet again the same lack of evidence.

[Myles]

21 hours ago, Ezra1964 said:

I will give you my take. I have seen quite a number of accounts from people who "appear genuine" and "reliable". I have no proof that these people saw what they say they saw. I choose to believe because the thought of a large ape that we haven't yet cataloged is not out of the realm of possibility. I ask back, why the push to insist that these things aren't real? Some people push just as hard in the opposite direction with yet again the same lack of evidence.

As a parent, I don't want my children to get sucked into believing in things that there isn't any evidence of.   I don't let them watch shows like Ancient Aliens that leave out info that would crush what they are trying to spew.   The world is full of wonderful creatures that really DO exist.  

[stereologist]

21 hours ago, Ezra1964 said:

I will give you my take. I have seen quite a number of accounts from people who "appear genuine" and "reliable". I have no proof that these people saw what they say they saw. I choose to believe because the thought of a large ape that we haven't yet cataloged is not out of the realm of possibility. I ask back, why the push to insist that these things aren't real? Some people push just as hard in the opposite direction with yet again the same lack of evidence.

For me it is the lack of evidence and the lack of evidence in crowded places where BF is reported.

One of the most active areas in Ohio is Salt Fork state park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Fork_State_Park

When you look at the map you see that a significant part of the park is water. Still a good part is wooded and away from amenities such as the gold course and marinas. The park is surrounded by broken woods and farm fields.

http://parks.ohiodnr.gov/Portals/parks/PDFs/parks/Maps/Salt_Fork/saltforkparkmap.pdf

Here is a google maps link to check it out yourself

https://www.google.com/maps/search/salt+fork+state+park/@40.1138217,-81.5232465,13.01z?hl=en

Here are the BFRO sightings. Two sightings this year.

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_county_reports.asp?state=oh&county=Guernsey

Here is a list of wildlife in the park.

http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/saltfork#tabr3

Of the 17,000 acres there is 3000 acres of water. That leaves 22 square miles of area to search for BF. You cn probably skip the marinas and golf course. A small BFRO group could search the entire park in a month or less. Either BF is there or has left evidence or the numerous Salt Fork reports are just stories.

[~Onyx~]

4 hours ago, stereologist said:

For me it is the lack of evidence and the lack of evidence in crowded places where BF is reported.

One of the most active areas in Ohio is Salt Fork state park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Fork_State_Park

When you look at the map you see that a significant part of the park is water. Still a good part is wooded and away from amenities such as the gold course and marinas. The park is surrounded by broken woods and farm fields.

http://parks.ohiodnr.gov/Portals/parks/PDFs/parks/Maps/Salt_Fork/saltforkparkmap.pdf

Here is a google maps link to check it out yourself

https://www.google.com/maps/search/salt+fork+state+park/@40.1138217,-81.5232465,13.01z?hl=en

Here are the BFRO sightings. Two sightings this year.

http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_county_reports.asp?state=oh&county=Guernsey

Here is a list of wildlife in the park.

http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/saltfork#tabr3

Of the 17,000 acres there is 3000 acres of water. That leaves 22 square miles of area to search for BF. You cn probably skip the marinas and golf course. A small BFRO group could search the entire park in a month or less. Either BF is there or has left evidence or the numerous Salt Fork reports are just stories.

Yes, but what if he's stuck in some obscure sand trap on the 17th? Surely he'd have been overlooked.