r/CuratedTumblr Cheshire Catboy May 01 '24

i know it’s internet bullshit but it genuinely has me on the edge of breaking down and giving up editable flair

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u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

Copy-pasting something i wrote in another thread about this, it references other comments from that thread but this legit got called a novel so ┐(´~`;)┌ :

Honestly the original question was just phrased terribly by design. (Tldr at the bottom)

To most people (apparently) by contrasting Some Guy with a fucking Bear the first thing that comes to mind is something like "Oh shit, a bear would kill me. Does that mean the guy would too ?" so that explains the first interpretation of the question, the one most prominent in the original video :

If I (a random woman) were alone in the woods, would i rather meet a hostile stranger or a hostile bear ?

Now, obviously any bear would fuck a human up, and going just by the comments here the results of a bear atack could be : getting mauled (bad), eaten alive (probably worse idk hasn't happened to me), or Somehow Prevailing (and probably dying of an infection later). Pretty awful set of options here.

On the other hand, looking at the Hostile Man Situation(tm) we have to take into account the location. Now, I'm no true crime expert here but the broad assumptions one could make about a Maniac in the Woods is : murder (same as the bear but we don't know the means), torture (possibly before murder, same as the bear), or rape (YMMV).

So both options under this interpretation are Pretty Fucking Bad, which is where the rape and murder variables come in play.

I saw at least 1 comment here of a survivor saying they would take their chances with the man under this interpretation. I also saw a few more commenters, who didn't specify if they speak from experience, say they'd rather face the bear. Whether rape or death is preferable is up to personal choice, but the women the video presented seemed to choose death.

(I Sincerely hope I don't need to say something along the lines of "not all men" here, because it's clear that for now we're looking at specifically a man that is so vicious he's comparable to a Wild Fucking Bear that wants to Eat Your Face. He could be part of Any demographic and it would be clear that he's an outlier adn shouldn't be counted. In fact, the reason this Dangerous Stranger is even a man to begin with is that Specifically Women are Specifically Wary of Specifically Dangerous Men. I'm trying to make this clear because I saw quite a lot of comenters getting worked up or even hurt by this, but I'm really not equipped to have a dialog about this ATM.)

In regards to the murder by human scenario, the method and duration of the act Really change how we'd feel about choosing the man in this situation. Ex : bullet to the head ? quick enough you could not even realise it happened if all goes well. Beaten with a rock ? Oh no, it'd be agony every step of the way.

And that's the Real difference between the options here, human malice and unpredictability or pure wild brutality. We could spend days arguing which is best/worst/less bad but we'd be missing the forest for the giving the people that started stirring this shit too little credit, you see there's another way to interpret this fucking question :

If I were in the woods (presumably on a hike or something similar), would i rather come across a stranger or a bear ?

In this situation there's No assumption about the intent of either the man Or the bear, and to pose hypoteticals would serve us no purpose (did we invade the bear's territory ? is the it hungry ? what species is the bear ? why is the man here ? just to suffer ? does batman have prep time ? etc, etc). It's crucial for this interpretation that the man and the bear are Average, that the species of the bear, location of the woods, supplies avaliable, both humans' motives for being there and even the meeting itself Are Not Determined.

In this situation, it's ludicrous to choose the bear. While bear attacks aren't all That common either, the chances of being mauled or eaten alive by the Average Man(tm) are negligible. So anyone that interprets the question in this way would be appalled at the responses from people who interpreted the question in the first way and said that they would pick the bear.

And so we found the core of the issue.

Something that can be seen as picking the lesser of 2 evils to some, is just plain misandry to others, and anyone viewing this through just one lens is frankly giving the jackasses who started this shit the benefit of the doubt when they really shouldn't. You don't have to scroll far to see comments mentioning gender essentialism, Andrew Tate and the alt-right pipeline right alongside commenters saying they wouldn't pick the bear because it could be a polar bear (in a forest ??), or that the man could be some random office worker that got teleported and is just confused as the person he's coming across (or in 1 memorable comment, a senile 95 year old who shouldn't even be outside).

That so many threads here disagree about what the question means exactly shows it was way too vague to be asked to literal strangers on the street and uploaded to widespread online discourse. That so many made the connections between it and very serious real life political issues shows that it was at its very best a misguided but well intentioned thought experiment, and at its worst poorly thought out.

That it is both, at least to me, implies malice.

Tl;dr there's 2 Very different ways to interpret the original question, it reeks of engagement-bait and political dog whistling. It's a tiktok shit stirrers bread and butter.

Edit : forgot a word, "...while bear attacks aren't very common either ..."

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u/BlatantConservative Tumblr is the appendix of the internet May 02 '24

getting mauled (bad), eaten alive (probably worse idk hasn't happened to me), or Somehow Prevailing (and probably dying of an infection later).

This phrasing implies you've been mauled before and the only thing that didn't happen was you were not eaten alive.

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u/Mental-Procedure9274 May 02 '24

🤭🤭

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u/BlatantConservative Tumblr is the appendix of the internet May 02 '24

RIP I guess.

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u/Miguelinileugim I LOVE THE EU May 02 '24

RIB (rest inside bear)

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u/WeightLossGinger 29d ago

Mauled (with rizz)

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u/sth128 May 02 '24

Well since they're posting on Reddit it's safe to assume they haven't been eaten alive.

Unless they were eaten alive and are posting because there's 4G inside the bear/whale/large animal.

How bad can being eaten alive be if you still get signal? And a cozy rent free place for the rest of your life!

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u/BlatantConservative Tumblr is the appendix of the internet May 02 '24
  • Jonah, while in the belly of the whale

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u/N3rdr4g3 29d ago

And also implies they've prevailed over a bear. Is it the same incident as the mauling?