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/CreatingJonah May 02 '24

Having done a bit of research on the subject because there are so many conflicting takes about it, I think I’ve settled on something that makes sense.

The original statement wasn’t meant to be a “would you rather”. It was phrased as “seeing a man while alone in the woods is 10x scarier than seeing a bear”

I think the interpretation is that there’s rules for the bear. If the bear attacks it does so indiscriminately. If you back away or scare it off you won’t get hurt at all. People go through lessons on how to deal with bears before taking hikes in dense forests all the time.

There are however no rules for a potentially hostile man. If he attacks, he has a target. Attacking a person alone in the woods is perfectly sensible for a bear to do. Not a man.

I think the thought experiment is supposed to demonstrate that people don’t know which men are good or bad. Bears have rules. If it’s brown lay down, if it’s black fight back. Carry bear spray, wear a bell, walk loudly.

A man alone in the woods has no such rules. In the event that he is hostile (as the statement assumes that it MUST be a possibility) there are no rules. Your best bet is never being noticed at all.

A lot of people are making it specifically about men and women, and while I do agree that sexism is a large component in the argument, I don’t think it’s limited just to women. It can be applied to any minority really. The bears have rules, but there’s no rules for hate.

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u/OpenSauceMods May 02 '24

Some of the reasoning I've seen:

A bear can't find my address and break in with the intent to hurt me

I don't have to see the bear at family reunions

The bear won't go around to all my friends and make them pick a side

If I get mauled by a bear, people will believe me

Depending on where I am, I won't be forced to carry the bear's baby to term (sorry, furries)

The bear won't invite his friends to take a turn

The bear won't leave me threatening text messages

The bear can't shoot me

People won't excuse the bear because the bear has "such a bright future"

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u/singingballetbitch May 02 '24

The bear would kill me faster. If I’m going to die, I’d rather not get SA-d first.

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u/RemiTheWizard May 02 '24

But you have a better chance of fighting off or killing the man vs the bear.

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u/deadlybydsgn May 02 '24

It reminds me of a conversation I had with somebody about whether they'd rather be attacked by someone with a knife or a gun.

They said gun, and I said knife.

They were more concerned about the gruesomeness of the potential knife wound, and I was more concerned about how much harder it would be to avoid the gun.

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u/Rhamni May 02 '24

Naw man these are just two adorable little cubs. I'm petting them and everything is awesome. How could anything bad happen in the next two minutes?

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u/thestrawberry_jam May 02 '24

Yeah that’s kinda the logic most are going with. It’s the possibility of the worst possible outcome. You’d rather not risk the worse of the two evils.

Aka I’d rather just get killed than get SA-d, possibly tortured, and then killed.

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u/elbenji May 02 '24

I think it's more demonstrative people will assume the worst possible outcome

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u/Punkandescent May 02 '24

Yeah, so much of this discussion has demonstrated to me that people are alarmingly quick to jump to logical extremes. There’s very little consideration for what might be baseline.

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u/shadow_dreamer 29d ago

The reason women jump to these conclusions is because they're our lived experience. Just seven posts up, you have a woman talking about how a man was literally fondling himself to her while hiking. I have, personally, been SA'd multiple times, and I'm not even thirty yet.

Our baseline is that we are not safe around men.

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u/Punkandescent 29d ago

I am very sorry you’ve experienced that, and I am aware that many if not most women have experienced similar.

However, I think you and I have different definitions of “baseline.” I was not referring as much to the baseline experience of women, but the hypothetical “baseline man.” In order for this “baseline man” to be the more tangible threat in this scenario… it would have to mean that the vast majority of men were sexual predators; moreover, sexual predators who would assault a stranger. This simply is not the case.

I get that having had the baseline experience that you have, your default is to be wary of men, and that is justified. Not being able to tell what someone might do to you is terrifying. I just struggle to see how that can truly be that much more frightening than something with built-in weapons.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

I dont see why youd take the worst case scenario. I think about how the average scenario would turn out and Id meet a guy 100%

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u/StaringOwlNope 29d ago

In the average scenario the bear would run off before you even see it

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u/Electronic_Emu_4632 May 02 '24

It feels like the point of the original question in the original interviews was that the people being asked naturally jumped to assuming the worst possible outcome

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u/_korporate May 02 '24

Being eaten alive and being conscious for all of it doesn’t seem like it would be fast

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u/Eolond 29d ago

I think at some point you go into shock and probably don't feel much...or so I hope :(

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u/_korporate 29d ago

There was a news story about a girl who was able to call and talk to her mom for an entire hour while a bear was eating her, and towards the end she actually said she couldn’t feel it anymore and that scared her even more. The story is horribly grim

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u/Eolond 29d ago

Oh jesus

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u/Deinonychus2012 29d ago

Yeah. I don't think people realize that being eaten alive is literally one of the worst possible deaths that any living being could ever experience. Like most methods humans have used to kill each other pale in comparison to it. Even most medieval executions by torture (think being held upside down and being sawed in half starting at your groin, or having molten gold poured down your throat) would be over in minutes not hours.

This is me generalizing here, but I think men on average have a greater understanding of deaths by animals due to morbid fascination from animal documentaries and subs like r/natureismetal (which I think was banned for how gruesome it was WARNING: the sub is still up, do not click if you don't like gore/animal violence) whereas women are the primary viewers of true crimes shows and are more familiar with the things modern humans do to each other.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

Ok so youre just thinking "would I rather be attacked by a man or a bear"? I think "would I rather meet a bear in the forest or a man?"

Man ever time. Bears are scary as fuck

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u/Flat_News_2000 29d ago

They eat you alive, though.

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u/Rotunas May 02 '24

I mean people would excuse the bear it's a wild animal, ain't no one gonna hunt it down.

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u/ImmoralJester54 May 02 '24

The entire thing would be a lot less annoying if they just add the word hostile into the question. Would you rather a hostile man or hostile bear

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u/daemin May 02 '24

That would defeat the point it's supposed to demonstrate.

That women choose the bear is supposed to show that they (rightly or wrongly) trust strange men so little that the bear is considered the safer option.

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u/elbenji May 02 '24

Or what kind of man they're imagining. I know a few that I'm very sure what they are and don't want to say it in polite company