Moneymakin'! The BFRO Bigfoot Expeditions Thread.

[CORed]

That Mountain Monsters show is the quintessential BLAARG. One of the guys builds a trap every episode. Guess how many monsters they have caught, after 3 seasons?

I'm thinking of a number between -1 and 1.

 

[tsig]

That Mountain Monsters show is the quintessential BLAARG. One of the guys builds a trap every episode. Guess how many monsters they have caught, after 3 seasons?

The right trap for bigfoot would be a spirit catcher.

 

[HarryHenderson]

Trapper John Tice from Mountain Monsters: “It would terrify 99.9999999% of the American population, but for me, I’ve been out there my whole life,” he says of the woods...

Despite being just another rocket scientist with his own reality show, his math lays out a different story, A deeper darker dim-witted story. His math works out to where not even John Tice's entire person is not terrified of them. Probably just his lower legs and feet that aren't. That's probably so when the rest of him sees Bigfoot he can scream "Feet, do your thing!"

US population (as of 2013) is 316,130,000 million people

99.9999999% of them is 316,129,999.7 million people. In conclusion, only 0.3 persons on the entire US are not terrified of Bigfoot.

 

[The Shrike]

Harry for the win!

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

lol.

Back to the BFRO Expeditions. There is an Iowa Expedition in 2015:

http://www.bfro.net/news/roundup/iowa.asp

They have some very clear pictures of bear, deer, and a mountain lion. That's the bigfoot evidence - pictures of other animals.

I lived there for 20 years. Hunted, fished, camped like a maniac. Kept a death toll on my wall - it was a huge poster with all the different categories of fish and game. I had to rent a meat locker at commercial freezer storage facility because I was killing so much stuff.

So I noticed that the way they do these fake expeditions is that they have people in motels or at a public campground but don't do anything until night. Then they go out for a few hours making idiotic calls and tree banging. $300-$500, so over $100 an hour per person for the actual "hunting" part of it, and you pay for all your supplies, accommodations, and dependz for when you wet your pants. Obviously this is the only time you can be out there when there are not a lot of other people using the park.

It reminds me though of a tip I'll pass on to people who live near cities in a mixed rural environment like that. After a fresh snow, but while the clouds still have a well-defined base, they reflect the lights of a town so well and the fresh snow does so in return that it is almost like broad daylight out in the woods. The animals are so unaccustomed to people being out at night in the woods that they not only drop their guard, but I had small herds of deer rush right up to me several times. They weren't even looking at me - just rushing up to what they expected was another deer and so stunned that I wasn't they'd skid to a stop and stare in disbelief right in front of me. I had them just ten feet away tearing corn off stalks, paying absolutely no attention to me. Coons, fox, coyote - everything is out there and if you are halfway decent at a wounded rabbit call they'll just about jump in your lap.

Bigfoot was pretty handy for me in those good old days. Always had a coffee mug and a big Bob Marley fattie to share.

 

[Pterodactyl]

That Mountain Monsters show is the quintessential BLAARG. One of the guys builds a trap every episode. Guess how many monsters they have caught, after 3 seasons?

Great drinking game:

Every time Trapper refers to the episode's monster as a "son of a bitch" take a slug of Early Times.

 

[The Shrike]

VLAARGers. Other than that these folks seem far more self-aware than bigfooters, they're in a subculture in which they adopt standards of language, belief, behavior, and dress. They do not break character. Are these a better model for understanding BLAARGers?

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

It was a nice find. The problem is it goes in a different thread. What we are discovering is that alternate reality games are a much wider phenomenon than we understood.

We see a parallel with what they call "tabletop" or pencil and paper fantasy games vs. much more costly LARPing games. There is even an insurance industry product for LARPing because of the injuries that happen in LARPing.

Posting on a forum is the "tabletop" version of the bigfoot game and these expeditions are one of the live-action forms.

One of the interesting questions is how different the bigfoot game is in its careful screening process of participating gamers. If you look at the registration process for the bigfoot expedition game, they are exceptionally afraid of outsiders. Other alternate reality gamers don't seem to be so afraid.

 

[HarryHenderson]

...One of the interesting questions is how different the bigfoot game is in its careful screening process of participating gamers. If you look at the registration process for the bigfoot expedition game, they are exceptionally afraid of outsiders. Other alternate reality gamers don't seem to be so afraid.

A good point. Likely for the same reasons Don "Dan" Meldrum doesn't hold any question and answer forums for the general public. All persons wishing to enter the kingdom of Bigfoot must be vetted to ensure they're a "receptor" of the Kool-Aid™. I'm not sure if they realize it or not, but their coughing up a real Bigfoot would be so much more profitable and entail so much less physical and mental gymnastics for literally everyone.

 

[Checkmite]

Are we still obstinately insisting that bigfoot fantasy roleplay is some form of 'alternative reality gaming' despite the fact that actual ARG's have actual game elements and do not involve things like character play-acting, as I have already explained in another thread?

 

[abaddon]

Are we still obstinately insisting that bigfoot fantasy roleplay is some form of 'alternative reality gaming'

Why not? Because...

despite the fact that actual ARG's have actual game elements

BLAARGing seems to have that in copious amounts, and...

and do not involve things like character play-acting, as I have already explained in another thread?

BLAARGing seems to have any amount of that too. So now what?

 

[Resume]

The LARPers don't like it when their activity is associated with bigfootery.

The ARGamers, ditto.

We're between a light saber and a dragon here.

 

[The Shrike]

Indeed. It doesn't make much sense to me to apply a rigid and pedantic definition to a category of human leisure time in which it's reality that takes the vacation.

 

[HarryHenderson]

Are we still obstinately insisting that bigfoot fantasy roleplay is some form of 'alternative reality gaming' despite the fact that actual ARG's have actual game elements and do not involve things like character play-acting, as I have already explained in another thread?

In our defense, we deliberately neglected to consult the Royal Council of Eggheads and Douchebags™ definition of "Alternate Reality Gaming".

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Are we still obstinately insisting that bigfoot fantasy roleplay is some form of 'alternative reality gaming' despite the fact that actual ARG's have actual game elements and do not involve things like character play-acting, as I have already explained in another thread?

I very much appreciate your input, and I am sure others do as well.

But I also quoted to you where leaders in this arena are objecting to the very thing you are doing, which is restricting the definition.

These expeditions are definitely an alternate reality game, and only a component within the over-all game. It is both the organizers AND the players saying it is not a game. You don't like that, but so what?

You don't seem to understand how much an advantage it is to have a game that can be played in perpetuity by millions of people. It is a vastly more popular game than the ones you are familiar with, and by virtue of being the most popular one by FAR makes your definition silly for restricting it to the least-popular games in existence.

This game also pre-dates the ones you are familiar with by decades.

 

[HarryHenderson]

To foggy the pedant's notions even further, here's just the first two paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry on Alternate Reality Gaming:

"An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and uses transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions.

The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real time and evolves according to players' responses. Subsequently, it is shaped by characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and collaborate as a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium."

Perhaps it's just some crazy confirmation bias of mine, but I'm gonna need further convincing that's not like 98% of what we've decided BLAARGing is.

 

[Checkmite]

I very much appreciate your input, and I am sure others do as well.

But I also quoted to you where leaders in this arena are objecting to the very thing you are doing, which is restricting the definition.

These expeditions are definitely an alternate reality game, and only a component within the over-all game. It is both the organizers AND the players saying it is not a game. You don't like that, but so what?

You don't seem to understand how much an advantage it is to have a game that can be played in perpetuity by millions of people. It is a vastly more popular game than the ones you are familiar with, and by virtue of being the most popular one by FAR makes your definition silly for restricting it to the least-popular games in existence.

This game also pre-dates the ones you are familiar with by decades.

The term "alternative reality game" has a definition. You (plural) picked the term because you thought it made for an amusing acronym in combination with the others and that's really the only thing important to your purposes; but "alternative reality games" are actual things; they have existed in a very consistent form for some time and that fact needs to be realized and respected. Further, there are terms which already much better describe the activity you're badly trying to shoehorn into the acronym.

The term also is nonsensical on its face. There's no such thing as "Live Action Alternative Reality Gaming", "bigfoot" or otherwise. All ARG's are "live action"; it would be like referring to the sport of swimming as "wet water swimming".

It's not a matter of what I "like" or do not like. You are now making retrospective trips to some ARG sources to search for information that you think can be interpreted in a way favorable to your use of the term; but you are failing in that regard, and having to invent rationalizations.

For instance, you continue to misconstrue the "denial that it is a game aspect" despite having already been corrected on it. And you misconstrue alternative reality gamers' resistance to stone-etched rules or formulae for the creation of their games for resistance to any acknowledgement that all (yes indeed: every one) ARGs that have ever been constructed and run have certain things in common that make them alternative reality games, as opposed to other kinds of activities. To wit:

1. They are created by a person or team of persons who writes the story and creates the game elements, and facilitates the game in real-time. Your "bigfootery", to tell from your definition, has no "game masters" or creative facilitators, only "players" who make things up by themselves for themselves as they go along.

2. The game actually has game elements intended to be used by the players - clues, codes, or puzzles, the correct decipherment of which allows the game's story to progress as planned and leads to the next plot coupon. Codes in particular are very common, although including them isn't some kind of rule - every ARG to this point has involved codes of some kind; the game attracts amateur cryptography fans more than any other type of player. Contrarily your "bigfootery" has no pre-planned plotline, and "players" create and place clues for themselves that they pretend to "find" in order to attract notoriety, clues which don't require decipherment and don't advance any plot. And no episode of bigfootery has ever involved decoding a cipher.

3. ARGs begin. There is a First Clue or inciting incident. In ARG lingo this is called a trailhead. This first clue is put in a place where it can be discovered by potential players. Once it is, deciphering the clue initiates the player into the game and provides information leading to the next clue. In your "bigfootery", players don't discover the first or any clues - they plant them, and then "pretend to" discover them.

4. The creative team does not use the word "game" during the game. However, players do, constantly, they're fully aware they're playing a game and freely admit so. Players also do not portray "characters" or play roles. In your "bigfootery" the players/creators pretend to "believe in bigfoot" and insist everything that's happening is real, with nothing but your claim that they don't really believe to say otherwise.

5. ARG's end. The story comes to a conclusion in which the antagonist or their plans are defeated or waylaid, or perhaps they succeed. Either way, the plot comes to an end. Your "bigfootery" does not end, because bigfoot can never be definitively found nor disproven, and therefore anyone can go out to the woods anywhere at any time and pretend to look for bigfoot. You might be right, that that flexibility and replayability gives your bigfootery certain advantages over ARGs, or you might not. But what it doesn't do is make bigfootery an ARG.

Despite all this, you are of course free to "invent" a game in which two teams of players bounce and pass a large rubber ball amongst themselves and then score by throwing the ball into elevated baskets, and call this new game "baseball". However, you should expect to encounter people who will take time to point out that 1) the name "baseball" is already used for a game that's nothing like you describe (and no, "it uses a ball that spends some time in the air and you score points so it's basically the same" isn't an effective rebuttal); and 2) the game you describe already exists, and it's called "basketball".

Everything you try to describe using the term "BLAARG" seems to simply be LARPing, if your theory is true. But I don't think it is. I think the position that nobody actually believes in Bigfoot and everybody who says they do is just "playing" your "game" is neither provable nor falsifiable, and is therefore basically useless in an empirical sense. There are certainly some people who don't really believe in bigfoot but pretend to, and plant clues and so forth; these are - as I already mentioned in the last thread - already called "charlatans". It's a fine word and there's no need to invent another.

Contrarily there are certainly plenty of people who believe that Bigfoot possibly or probably does exist. These beliefs may have been (likely were) influenced by the activities of the charlatans but that is irrelevant; the fact is there are many people who claim a genuine belief and no positive reason exists to claim they are lying. Some of these people go out into the woods hoping to find bigfoot, and genuinely misinterpret environmental cues and wildlife sounds and photographic artifacts for possible bigfoot evidence. There is also already an established and functional term for this behavior as well - it's called legend-tripping, it's not limited to bigfootery, and is a subject of some academic consideration.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Your "bigfootery", to tell from your definition, has no "game masters" or creative facilitators, only "players" who make things up by themselves for themselves as they go along.
.

No.

The game master for the Iowa Expedition is on the link I gave above.

The rules are posted there. This particular game is in a secret location in Iowa, and there are facilitators.

The rules are quite strict. The players cannot commandeer the game.

There is a beginning, and an end, announced on that link. Would you care to trouble yourself looking at it?

These "expeditions" fit your restrictive definition perfectly.

We just understand them as sub-games within the overall context. They do begin, they do end, they have a game master and facilitators.

 

[Castro]

Okay, now where is the monkey?

 

[The Shrike]

I think the position that nobody actually believes in Bigfoot and everybody who says they do is just "playing" your "game" is neither provable nor falsifiable, and is therefore basically useless in an empirical sense.

Good. We all agree on that. Is there some kind of a strawman force field around this concept?