Moneymakin'! The BFRO Bigfoot Expeditions Thread.

[LTC8K6]

Despite the age of the report, no, it was more likely done by members of the local tribe in the past to make it easier to hunt. I'm sure bears and other critters took it over in the subsequent years.

It was the most current report that was readily available to me without going to the board.

But anyway, these expedition notes don't reflect any serious attempts to locate an elusive large primate, imo.

It's just a bunch of people camping out, with a bunch of gear, and vehicles, making more noise than campers usually do. With occasional claims of seeing something, or occasional claims of close encounters:

I was in my vehicle in the back parking lot of the campsite. I was too tired to drive back to my remote camp just coming off trails. Anyway, I fell sleep in my SUV. I awoke, my face toward passenger side window....I was sitting in my reclined bucket seat. Wow, I see a BF as stepping to my right by the brush-line by this parking lot. It stood still...it took my breath away, took four mins to compose my breathing (caught it all on my audio recorder). It was about 40' away, from measurements later. It slowly changed to a forward position in micro movements. It then lowered leaning forward and rocking side to side. I saw mostly a silhouette, but rough outline of hair, did not see eye shine, seemed like cone head. I did not want to light up my phone camera to alarm it during this event. I finally reached for my thermal, but did not keep a good eye on it while doing this....before I knew it, it was gone when I lowered the window. I was the only witness in my vehicle, wondered if I dreamed it. But, I caught the event on my recorder talking to myself on what I was seeing, had thermal footage of what I tried to catch. Later in my recorder, while asleep, one hour prior, here something striking my SUV 9 times, last one pretty hard. Another Exp member was in her vehicle with her husband, about the same time, 4am time frame, she heard a howl that woke her up. She also heard something moving thru the brush by the parking lot. I am not positive where she was parked. I left early later that morning in rush, dismissing it all, so never checked for footprints. I went back later and took measurements. I placed my SUV in the same spot for reference. 40' away from BF...it was 9' tall.

That was from the Texas "expedition".

http://s2.excoboard.com/BFRO/150505

 

[Checkmite]

You mean go on moving the goalposts?

You just made a really big deal about there being no game master or facilitators, no beginning or end...

once this is disproven you don't want to acknowledge so and just find more things to try disagreeing with.

Firstly there are indeed a couple of other shortcomings to your "bigfoot legend-tripping is an ARG" theory, but there's no need to go into all of them when you can't address the ones you've already been presented with.

And secondly, you did not "disprove" that your bigfootery has no "game master"; game masters facilitate an ARG, but that doesn't mean that any facilitator of any activity is therefore a "game master" and that any activity which has facilitators is an ARG. You are attempting to make a point via technicality; emphasizing the letter while blatantly ignoring the spirit.

Likewise with the beginning and ending. You're special pleading here: claiming that individual expeditions begin and end "just like ARGs" (ignoring for the moment that I was referring to both the game itself and the game's plot); but yet when asked about the required storyline, you refer to some larger "thing" that obviously already exists before any expedition is organized and evidently persists long after the expedition goes away. In other words, the expedition itself does not actually have an individual original plot that begins and ends with the expedition. Again, like a game of golf, it's a set of actions made within a framework of rules that may turn out differently each time - which one might argue makes it a game, but is missing too much to make it an ARG.

There were other things in the list I gave. It wasn't a "pick any two and it becomes an ARG" list.

The thing totally absent from your last post is any alternate reality in the examples you want to match with bigfoot - golf, school, or mammoth cave tours. It isn't anything like those because they have no alternate reality.

The players very much are advancing the story line. We have first-hand reports from participants here and they are much more informative than your speculation.

Whether bigfoot exists or not is a question of scientific fact. The gathering of evidence to prove or disprove bigfoot's existence isn't a "storyline". The question of bigfoot's existence was first posited long ago, before ever anyone formed the "BFRO" or began organizing bigfoot chase-cations. The idea that "bigfoot does exist" is an hypothesis, not a "story" made up for the purpose of a game.

People believing that bigfoot exists are making a conclusion without any credible supporting evidence but that's not an "alternative reality" in the same vein as an original creative work produced for an ARG. You may as well claim that someone who decides to fish in this particular spot or buy a lottery ticket with those particular numbers because he's "feeling lucky", is entertaining an "alternative reality" and therefore playing an ARG. If the first man catches a fish after all and takes it home and eats it for dinner, does that dinner take place in the "alternative reality" of the ARG, or in "real reality"? If the second man wins the lottery drawing, does the money end up in his real bank account, or some "alternative reality" bank account? If you are about to argue that "the difference is, fish and lottery winnings are real while bigfoot is not", you are again question-begging because the only thing there is to say that all or even most of the participants in these expeditions know for a fact there is no bigfoot and they are just pretending to believe in the creature, is your unfalsifiable assertion that it is so.

 

[Checkmite]

There is a story with a Bigfoot Hunt.
It is that if you go into the woods, and act like you are looking for Bigfoot, and pay $300, and don't yell "Fake" when someone sees eyeshine, you will probably get to experience Bigfoot, and possibly hook up with the female Bigfooter.

If you play an ARG, like live action dungeons and dragons at a farm, Pay $50 and you act like you are a Level 12 Human Paladin, and portray the character properly, and don't turn on your party, then you will probably get to Kill Orcs or Evil Wizards, and possibily hook up with the female Level 10 Half-Elf Fighter/Theif, with the pointy ears.

That's LARPing, not an ARG. In an ARG you don't portray or act like anything; generally speaking you're just you, using your computer (or phone, etc) to receive and solve codes and ciphers.

 

[Pterodactyl]

As a bystander to this debate, I believe Checkmite has done a good job of illustrating where Bigfooting falls short of actually being an ARG. However, I think ABP's assertion that Footery at large extends beyond the realm of a LARP is accurate.

My opinion, Bigfootery is unique in this way and can't adequately be summarized by any of the clever acronyms posed thus far.

 

[Drewbot]

That's LARPing, not an ARG. In an ARG you don't portray or act like anything; generally speaking you're just you, using your computer (or phone, etc) to receive and solve codes and ciphers.

Yes. My bad. I am referring to LARPING.

But still, dat half-elf...

 

[Checkmite]

Understood; I've had similar thoughts...

 

[The Shrike]

My opinion, Bigfootery is unique in this way and can't adequately be summarized by any of the clever acronyms posed thus far.

Concur. I have no skin in this game but I agree that none of the terms we've discussed really captures what we're seeing.

Checkmite, I'll just point out that it's not just bigfoot belief that spawned the BLAARG hypothesis. There is a category of people who call themselves "knowers" who are notorious for claiming bigfoot encounters with nothing to show for them. The challenge is to try to describe what they're doing. They could be . . .

1) actually experiencing acorporeal bigfoots
2) hallucinating
3) suffering from delusions
4) claiming such experiences but know full well that they are fabricated.

It's the #4s we're trying to wrap our heads around, and there are multiple hypotheses for why people might do that, including some kind of a live-action make-believe in which participants interpret their world with the beginning premise that there are bigfoots in it. Under this umbrella, some people do assume specific roles and in some cases there are discrete events from which people presumably return to their day jobs come Monday.

 

[Northern Lights]

Concur. I have no skin in this game but I agree that none of the terms we've discussed really captures what we're seeing.

Checkmite, I'll just point out that it's not just bigfoot belief that spawned the BLAARG hypothesis. There is a category of people who call themselves "knowers" who are notorious for claiming bigfoot encounters with nothing to show for them. The challenge is to try to describe what they're doing. They could be . . .

1) actually experiencing acorporeal bigfoots
2) hallucinating
3) suffering from delusions
4) claiming such experiences but know full well that they are fabricated.

It's the #4s we're trying to wrap our heads around, and there are multiple hypotheses for why people might do that, including some kind of a live-action make-believe in which participants interpret their world with the beginning premise that there are bigfoots in it. Under this umbrella, some people do assume specific roles and in some cases there are discrete events from which people presumably return to their day jobs come Monday.

Thank you for including #1 into the options, I truly appreciate it.

 

[Checkmite]

It's the #4s we're trying to wrap our heads around, and there are multiple hypotheses for why people might do that, including some kind of a live-action make-believe in which participants interpret their world with the beginning premise that there are bigfoots in it. Under this umbrella, some people do assume specific roles and in some cases there are discrete events from which people presumably return to their day jobs come Monday.

The fish-story is probably something that is as old as storytelling itself. At its root, it's just another form of creative expression - the painter paints, the sculpter sculpts, the storyteller...well, tells. Like paintings and sculptures, stories whether verbal or written can be realistic, or expressive, or exaggerated, or abstract. I imagine bigfoot probably started out as one of these kinds of tall tales. A few hunters tell a story about being violently besieged in their cabin by a troupe of bigfeet and if the story is good enough, makes a good enough impression on listeners - like a particularly striking painting - they and their story become notorious. It's a worthy goal all by itself for some. In some ways it's what the storyteller or creative writer lives for.

Of course there are many who are just in it for the money. Especially as bigfoot and other legendary things gain popular traction, and it becomes easier for people to be able to donate or otherwise give away their money on impulse in our digital age, some people will do what they can to get an edge that puts them in the path of more money.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

People believing that bigfoot exists .

This is one of our biggest problems in communicating.

It was a tremendous insight for us to come to the understanding that the bulk of the phenomenon is people who do not believe. All the way back to the beginning.


Since you are rejecting the published ARG material urging us not to be restrictive as you are in what is an ARG, we just aren't going to come to an agreement.

 

[Checkmite]

This is one of our biggest problems in communicating.

It was a tremendous insight for us to come to the understanding that the bulk of the phenomenon is people who do not believe. All the way back to the beginning.

It's an unfalsifiable assertion.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

It's an unfalsifiable assertion.

Not true at all. What you are showing is that you haven't been reading or at least paying attention to bigfoot threads because a lot of the material is exactly that: showing how radically inconsistent their behavior is with their claims about belief.

It isn't up to us to repeat everything all over again for you since you don't want to read it yourself. But one general observation is that the first thing people do when they are on the cusp of capturing bigfoot is leave the area, just like the Finding Bigfoot show. That is inconsistent with belief and consistent with non-belief. The loudest alleged believers right now claim to be a habitat preservation organization, filed as that for tax status, and have not nominated one square inch of habitat for preservation with any government agency, any private preservation group, or done so themselves in more than a decade. That is inconsistent with belief and consistent with non-belief. Etc. It is mountains of evidence we have discussed at great length.


Go read the threads though instead of acting like we have to start from scratch with you and waste our time.

I am just very glad that we are demonstrating why your assessment is so out of step.

 

[Checkmite]

Not true at all. What you are showing is that you haven't been reading or at least paying attention to bigfoot threads because a lot of the material is exactly that: showing how radically inconsistent their behavior is with their claims about belief.

It isn't up to us to repeat everything all over again for you since you don't want to read it yourself. But one general observation is that the first thing people do when they are on the cusp of capturing bigfoot is leave the area, just like the Finding Bigfoot show. That is inconsistent with belief and consistent with non-belief.

Of course television shows are obvious imposture. "Most" or "the bulk" of bigfoot believers, however, are not involved in television shows; and I'm not sure I'm willing to agree that it is necessarily the goal of "the bulk" of believers who partake in personal or group non-television "bigfoot excursions" to physically capture a bigfoot. That might be an assumption you make because it would fulfill your personal threshold for proof; but it's not likely that believers looking for bigfoot in the woods are doing what they do to make you happy, but rather to fulfil their own thresholds for proof, and they may not share your priorities. Indeed, for many believers, actually capturing a bigfoot might be a notion they would take exception to.

Considering that they already believe that bigfoot exists, having heard sounds they interpret as "bigfoot calls" or found hairs they can't immediately identify or possible feet or "body casts", taken photographs with suggestive blobs in them - the things that, to you, suggest they are "on the cusp of capturing" a bigfoot - these things will easily serve to positively reinforce someone's bigfoot belief. In their point of view they have made contact - that's mission accomplished. "Leaving early" might not seem "consistent with belief" to you, but it is perfectly consistent with a need to be back at work tomorrow morning.

 

[Castro]

Proving scientifically the existence of bigfoot is a proclaimed goal of bigfootery. Footers want to be taken seriously by science. At least, that's what they say and they often accuse scientists to be too close-minded (or too lazy) to see the "truth" and find evidence of the elusive giant monkey. That is an aspect of the game.

 

[The Shrike]

^So is the very real prospect of wealth and fame should they be correct and manage to get a photo. If I see Bigfoot in my ostensible quest to find Bigfoot, I am not leaving until I get the goods. When people leave after their so-called encounters, it's a sign that they are pretending to believe.

 

[Resume]

^So is the very real prospect of wealth and fame should they be correct and manage to get a photo. If I see Bigfoot in my ostensible quest to find Bigfoot, I am not leaving until I get the goods. When people leave after their so-called encounters, it's a sign that they are pretending to believe.

Another issue could be, whether consciously or not, proponents realize that sticking around after these fleeting encounters wouldn't yield the goods anyway. Checkmite used the term "threshold of proof" and I submit that threshold is the point where their belief can sustain with the thinnest veneer of evidence; why stick around and find out that tree knock was actually two aspens clacking together in the wind? Why question your fellow footie campers only to find they were joking around and the joke is actually on you? Actual bigfoot believers certainly realize this belief cannot withstand deep scrutiny which is why so very few venture here. All IMO, of course.

 

[Drewbot]

Proving scientifically the existence of bigfoot is a proclaimed goal of bigfootery. Footers want to be taken seriously by science. At least, that's what they say and they often accuse scientists to be too close-minded (or too lazy) to see the "truth" and find evidence of the elusive giant monkey. That is an aspect of the game.

There is now a new group of Footers.
These are the ones that think they are communicating with Bigfoots, and when asked why they don't confirm Bigfoots existence, they say they do not want to confirm the Bigfoots. In fact, they say that confirming Bigfoot exists, will be certain death to the Bigfoots. They have absolutely no desire to collect DNA or Hair samples.

Here are some quotes from the Bigfoot Community Facebook page.
The quotes below are written by the same person who wrote this book
http://www.amazon.com/Forest-Friends-The-Night-Discovery/dp/1506101658

if you think money would help the BF, i am afraid you got another thing coming. they are better off without human interference. they care more for the earth than all humans put together..and they have already been proven to exist.

that is just it. I have been changed once I made contact with the BF People or rather after they made contact with me. What I have now and am experiencing is worth way more than money. That is why I try to share with others that want to hear. I also share with a select few that want to see and experience.

 

[dmaker]

Another issue could be, whether consciously or not, proponents realize that sticking around after these fleeting encounters wouldn't yield the goods anyway. Checkmite used the term "threshold of proof" and I submit that threshold is the point where their belief can sustain with the thinnest veneer of evidence; why stick around and find out that tree knock was actually two aspens clacking together in the wind? Why question your fellow footie campers only to find they were joking around and the joke is actually on you? Actual bigfoot believers certainly realize this belief cannot withstand deep scrutiny which is why so very few venture here. All IMO, of course.

I completely agree. That is why so much of the alleged bigfoot evidence is not testable. You cannot test a tree knock, or an anecdote, or a stick structure, or a suspected track, or out of focus and ambiguous photos or video. But you sure can insist that its bigfoot.

Testable evidence has always lead to egg on the face of footery.

 

[Donn]

Let's call them what they are: Beleavers.

 

[Castro]

There is now a new group of Footers.
These are the ones that think they are communicating with Bigfoots, and when asked why they don't confirm Bigfoots existence, they say they do not want to confirm the Bigfoots. In fact, they say that confirming Bigfoot exists, will be certain death to the Bigfoots. They have absolutely no desire to collect DNA or Hair samples.

They are smarter than the ape/pro-kill camp imo. They don't need to find new excuses to explain the absence of evidence anymore. It's an easy way out. The problem is why do they even talk (and write books) about bigfoot if they want to protect him from the public? They'd better keep their secret secret.