Honestly, so many people should just listen to this song

https://youtu.be/tbud8rLejLM

sinfulnoodle:

quasisnipr1048:

luidilovins:

et-regina:

rivendellrose:

mugges:

Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!” 

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!” 

Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D

Biology majors: it’s dead bodies guys. Corpses.

Listen I hate this take on the uncanny valley so fucking much because many subpsecies of homonids lived in the same areas but some of them got along well enough to coexist and neandertals had enough desirablegenetictraits to the point where human women (see here for a blanket on female vs male choosiness) would often pass up incel homosepian for the chad neandertal.

Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.

Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than otheringbymeans of the sucess of social groupsandthe need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpeanfabrication and it’s been proven timeandtimeagain to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here,here,here) and the financial benifits of the exploitationofcolonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)

You know what’s older than racism?

You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?

fucking rabies

You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.

Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.

Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.

Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.

Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.

After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.

Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.

healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.

But yeah rabies is more likely the reason for the uncanny valley effect thanks for coming to my goddamn ted talk.

Reblogging this version bc of sources and I personally think this makes for much more interesting (and terrifying) lore than any other post in this thread.

Holy shit. I never thought of the “zombie virus” to be this take. It makes total fuckin sense. Shit

Today I found this on the app store. What an absolutely disgusting thing. This is is a spit in the face to human dignity that needs to be eradicated.

Tumblr NSFW Takedown

So I’ve been pretty quiet and I wanted to kind of say my piece. So here’s this, that no one really asked for.

I’m relatively new to Tumblr, but I’m by no means young. I was around when IRC and BBS were all the social media options. I met my first online friend on Napster. We’re still friends today.

That is to say… I didn’t go to Napster looking for friends. I was looking for a complete collection of Sailor Moon OSTs. But I made a friend. A lifelong one, based on common interests. Even though Napster is long gone I appreciate it for the part it played in my life.

I think Tumblr only needs to die if you guys let it. There’s still a community of people with common interests who came here for content but found each other. You can still have a following through Tumblr for the things you do outside it, lots of people do. Artists, Sex Workers, Survivors and the LGBTQIA+ communities, we need to help and support each other to have our own place/places on the internet. Tumblr can still be a community that supports these things if we continue to support these things, whether we can post them or not doesn’t take away our ability to support it here.

I do intend to take tomorrow as a day off Tumblr in solidarity. It is also a protest to say something very specific:

@staff I would rather see Pornography than White Supremacist Propaganda. I would rather see Nudity than Hate. It makes me more uncomfortable to see Racism than Sex.

I hope we can come back on the 18th with a new resolution to try and actually make Tumblr a better community for everyone. If that requires a ban on nsfw content, we can work together to support moving to other platforms and using Tumblr as a fanbase, but it absolutely can’t be a better community with hatred and racism rated as less harmful than nudity.