Not just humans - I think it’s not unusual to see a sick animal, notice that it’s “moving wrong”, and feel a revulsion that motivates staying away from it. It’s a very handy instinct if, for example, that animal might have rabies…
Edit: I agree with you, I’m just expanding on what you said.
IIRC Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans coexisted for some time, so it could be not about things that aren’t human, but humans that are different. To this day, xenophobia and ethnocentrism are common attitudes.
Yea but homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis definitely interbred. A lot. A measurable chunk of modern human DNA is neanderthal in origin. The uncanny valley being there to spot sick and dead people is more likely.
Could also have been cannibals, a lot of folklores talk about people who aren’t really people that kill and eat people. Some versions of the tale of the wendigo feature whoever encounters them in their human forms noting that they knew they must be wendigo because they looked like normal people but something just felt wrong about how they behaved.
Uncanny valley could be at play in the ick you feel when you can tell for no apparent reason that someone’s a psychopath or dangerous in some other way, the unconscious response to the things your brain noticed that you didn’t.
…they knew they must be wendigo because they looked like normal people but something just felt wrong about how they behaved.
Humans have a pretty good knack of recognizing things without understanding the cause. Wendigo sounds kind of like a cannibal who got a prion disease, with the unusual physical behaviors.
Sir/ma’am, this is a meme subreddit, most people are here to just be silly. And there’s also the fact that not everyone has seen every meme and done the work to debunk it, as apparently you have.
Diseased humans and their corpses. I can’t believe this meme still gets posted regularly.
Not just humans - I think it’s not unusual to see a sick animal, notice that it’s “moving wrong”, and feel a revulsion that motivates staying away from it. It’s a very handy instinct if, for example, that animal might have rabies…
Edit: I agree with you, I’m just expanding on what you said.
IIRC Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans coexisted for some time, so it could be not about things that aren’t human, but humans that are different. To this day, xenophobia and ethnocentrism are common attitudes.
Yea but homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis definitely interbred. A lot. A measurable chunk of modern human DNA is neanderthal in origin. The uncanny valley being there to spot sick and dead people is more likely.
Could also have been cannibals, a lot of folklores talk about people who aren’t really people that kill and eat people. Some versions of the tale of the wendigo feature whoever encounters them in their human forms noting that they knew they must be wendigo because they looked like normal people but something just felt wrong about how they behaved.
Uncanny valley could be at play in the ick you feel when you can tell for no apparent reason that someone’s a psychopath or dangerous in some other way, the unconscious response to the things your brain noticed that you didn’t.
Humans have a pretty good knack of recognizing things without understanding the cause. Wendigo sounds kind of like a cannibal who got a prion disease, with the unusual physical behaviors.
Sir/ma’am, this is a meme subreddit, most people are here to just be silly. And there’s also the fact that not everyone has seen every meme and done the work to debunk it, as apparently you have.
Did you take a wrong turn somewhere? This isn’t Reddit.
Oh, I thought this was Reddit!
I thought this was America!
Subcommunity*
*Community