Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

[Comrade Quixote]

Calling looking for Bigfoot LARPimg is akin to calling creationists Creotards, or Catholics "bull worshipers"--a childish way to attack the people involved without addressing any substantive point.

And *********** insulting to LARPers too thank you very much.

 

[Resume]

And *********** insulting to LARPers too thank you very much.

Why?

 

[Comrade Quixote]

Live Action Role Play is a game (or rather a collection of games) that's no more dishonest than tennis, or baseball or any other pastime. None of the RP systems that I know of have any interest in convincing people that what happens during games is real.

I think all but the most hardened believers would admit that there is at least some fraud and deception in bigfootery. As such I think it's insulting to equate a bunch of harmless geeks playing a legal and honest game with.... whatever the hell organised bigfootery is, I'm not sure how I could describe it in a single sentence, but at the very lease it's self deluding and partially dishonest.

 

[Resume]

Live Action Role Play is a game (or rather a collection of games) that's no more dishonest than, tennis, or baseball or any other pastime. Nope of the RP systems that I know of have any interest in convincing people that what happens during games is real.

I think all but the most hardened believers would admit that there is at least some fraud and deception in bigfootery. As such I think it's insulting to equate a bunch of harmless geeks playing a legal and honest game with.... whatever the hell organised bigfootery is, I'm not sure how I could describe it in a single sentence, but at the very lease it's self deluding and partially dishonest.

Fair enough. But being insulted seems a bit much.

I suppose I could use a different term but that doesn't obviate the fact that many bigfoot enthusiasts are indeed role-playing.

 

[William Parcher]

the speculation is that they're all lying

There it is again. The strawman that won't go away.

 

[Mudcat]

A hunter didn't recognize a ghillie suit?

I didn't recognize my vice-principal once upon a time and thought I saw a ghost.

BTW, wearing a ghillie suit during gun deer season is a good way to get yourself dead. And is illegal (in most states) without a certain amount of blaze orange. Story doesn't ring true.

I don't know how much of the story is true and how much of it is memory and imagination playing tricks, and is just one reason I don't put stock in eye witness testimony of Bigfoot. Especially when the story is being related years after the actual event.

There it is again. The strawman that won't go away.

It's your position, not mine. If that isn't what you're saying then try clearing the air.

 

[William Parcher]

We've discussed this several times with jerrywayne and others. Nobody is saying that all Bigfooters are lying.

 

[Northern Lights]

We've discussed this several times with jerrywayne and others. Nobody is saying that all Bigfooters are lying.

I'm not lying.

 

[dmaker]

Perhaps you are not lying NL, but I do believe that you are duping yourself into a mediocre conviction. Your actions do not ring true, imo, of someone who is utterly convinced that there are 9ft hulking, dangerous primates lurking in your woods. You do not alert authorities, you do not panic, you do not seek fame and fortune by dedicating yourself to the collection of conclusive evidence. The latter task should not be so difficult since you and your group seem to be able to conjure up encounters with some regularity. Also casually sitting around a campfire and concluding that a 9ft monster stalked you in order to toss a piece of candy your way does not sound like the behavior one would expect someone in that situation to exhibit. Panic would seem more likely, not " oh, look, bigfoot just tossed me a treat"

IOW, I don't think you are being honest with yourself. I do not believe that you truly believe for one moment.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I work with a man at school. To protect his identity I shall call him 'Steve'. He is former military, former police, former corrections officer, former hunter, and current conceal carry gun owner.

lol. Might as well post a big signboard: tall tale coming. FIVE qualifiers before the story starts: A hallmark of non truth-telling. The fact you resort to secret "evidence" is a huge giveaway too.

It was August of 2003 and he was taking one step of the last hunting trips he would ever take. He was tracking deer into a clearing, but instead of that he saw something else. Something quite unexpected. A stone's throw away, standing over a fresh deer kill, was a Bigfoot.

It was tall, literally larger than life, bulky, and covered in saggy hair that was brown in color.

In disbelief he took a double take... And saw it was really another hunter in a ghillie suit.

First of all: "literally larger than life" is ridiculous exaggeration that is false on English language grounds alone.

Start with telling the truth here, and evidence others can actually see. What state is this? Was the hunter carrying a bow or a rifle? Standing over a deer kill is a moment in time. If it is a clearing, and he is headed into it, then there is no "double take". He is looking at something he is approaching and the human reaction to seeing something right in front of you is NOT TO LOOK AWAY.

A double-take is for example when driving past a girl with no bra on, you hope that's what you saw when you weren't concentrating on looking at it because you were driving. Just a quick glance. But now you can turn to look real careful because these could be 38 DD's. So for the "double-take" framing to be true, we need him doing a primary task, like driving by, and the tracking of the deer up ahead the secondary task, inadvertent to the first. But the deer is the primary task. And he is looking straight at it.

This description is most likely false. A more realistic description is someone noticing something and formulating in their mind what it is as they are looking at it. What a normal person does when the initial impression up ahead is a shocker is to STOP AND STARE.

I've been a hunter all my life. His senses will all be focused like a laser on the path ahead, tracking this deer. In a clearing a person standing over a deer stands out like a beacon. He has the deer to estimate the size of the man. That is what you would compare it to if you were telling the truth. e.g. "He made the deer look like a mouse". If it was a legal (full grown) deer then I disagree that this man could have appeared extraordinarily large unless he was an extraordinarily large man to begin with, and that still places him well within the size of "life" as you put it.

Way too much wrong with this story. You aren't fooling us. Or he isn't, anyway. You may be really gullible, but we aren't.

I won't dispute that it's speculation but as speculations go it isn't as cold as the speculation is that they're all lying, or worse. Wouldn't you agree?

We are not speculating. We have been relentless about having people just like you prove what they say. Show us the evidence of truth-telling. We are SURPRISED that nobody can bring us examples where it is clear someone is telling the truth. No exaggerations, no silly allegory like what you are doing above.

WE are the ones looking at stories, the BFRO reports, etc. - not YOU. You are the one who is not only speculating but proving to be quite eager in tale-telling yourself.

There is no identity to protect in your story. That is laughable on an anonymous internet forum. So the real question is why you need to start being deceptive right away. My goodness this is overwhelming in terms of deceptive signals.

 

[carlitos]

I work with a man at school. To protect his identity I shall call him 'Steve'. He is former military, former police, former corrections officer, former hunter, and current conceal carry gun owner.

The story he relayed to me, as best as I can recall, is as follows:

It was August of 2003 and he was taking one step of the last hunting trips he would ever take. He was tracking deer into a clearing, but instead of that he saw something else. Something quite unexpected. A stone's throw away, standing over a fresh deer kill, was a Bigfoot.

It was tall, literally larger than life, bulky, and covered in saggy hair that was brown in color.

In disbelief he took a double take... And saw it was really another hunter in a ghillie suit.



I won't dispute that it's speculation but as speculations go it isn't as cold as the speculation is that they're all lying, or worse. Wouldn't you agree?

I would agree that this is bad fiction. Tell this tale around a campfire, not on this forum.

 

[tsig]

I'm not lying.

When bigfoot chucked the candy why didn't any of you save it for possible DNA testing?

 

[captain koolaid]

Perhaps you are not lying NL, but I do believe that you are duping yourself into a mediocre conviction. Your actions do not ring true, imo, of someone who is utterly convinced that there are 9ft hulking, dangerous primates lurking in your woods. You do not alert authorities, you do not panic, you do not seek fame and fortune by dedicating yourself to the collection of conclusive evidence. The latter task should not be so difficult since you and your group seem to be able to conjure up encounters with some regularity. Also casually sitting around a campfire and concluding that a 9ft monster stalked you in order to toss a piece of candy your way does not sound like the behavior one would expect someone in that situation to exhibit. Panic would seem more likely, not " oh, look, bigfoot just tossed me a treat"

IOW, I don't think you are being honest with yourself. I do not believe that you truly believe for one moment.

Don't underestimate NL! I reckon he's bad. What would you do when your camp is being circled by monster wild wood apes? You'd probably wet yourself. Not NL. He goes to bed. You can't fake that kind of fearless, dude. NL's the sort of bad mother I'd want on my Bigfoot expedition.

 

[rockinkt]

lol. Might as well post a big signboard: tall tale coming. FIVE qualifiers before the story starts: A hallmark of non truth-telling. The fact you resort to secret "evidence" is a huge giveaway too.
<snip>
My goodness this is overwhelming in terms of deceptive signals.

Exactly ABP! His post is a text-book case of deception. The only thing Mudcat forgot was the "swear to gawd" or "as gawd is my witness" crap that these tale tellers usually sprinkle their fabrications with.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Exactly ABP! His post is a text-book case of deception. The only thing Mudcat forgot was the "swear to gawd" or "as gawd is my witness" crap that these tale tellers usually sprinkle their fabrications with.

So that we are not accused unfairly:

Liars overemphasize their truthfulness. “To tell you the truth…” “Honestly…” “I swear to you…” Oh, if only it were so! When people use these bolstering statements to emphasize their honesty, there’s a good chance they are hiding something. Learning to baseline someone’s normal behavior is important in situations such as this: You want to listen for normal or harmless use of such phrases. There’s no need to add them if you really are telling the truth, so be on guard.

We have baseline on the person in question above. He doesn't do this in any other place. So this is gold right here. But it is also this flag:

Liars use long introductions but skip over main events. When a liar wants to build credibility, she will pad her story with as much factual content as possible. The Israeli researcher Avinoam Sapir found that deceptive individuals will add more detail around the prologue of a story, but gloss over the main event where the deception comes into play. Careful listeners can pick up on this lopsided storytelling style and use the BASIC method to zero in on the missing details with specific questions.

This is classic 'footer strategy: more than 30 words of prologue that are all reasons why this person couldn't be lying. But in the main event there are crucial aspects missing.

As a hunter, seeing another hunter, my first huge detection of glossing over is blaze orange and a weapon. The guy is supposedly in a clearing. So therefore he cannot have just leaned his rifle on an adjacent tree. The actions of the hunter looking over the deer are glossed over. You mean he was leaning over this deer the entire time? No movement? Like he is a statue?

All we have is this fraction-of-a-second picture in an event that lasts for a far, far longer time.


http://liespotting.com/liespotting-basics/words/

 

[The Shrike]

Gotta agree, when "former law enforcement" or "former military" etc., are added to create the illusion of truthfulness in a story it has the opposite effect on me.

I'll never understand why people might think that people trained in something that requires carrying a gun become somehow infallible. Pick up a newspaper and check out the stories of the wrongly incarcerated, wrongly shot, wrongly bombed into oblivion. It's easy to see that gun-toters, regardless of training, are no more or less fallible in memory, perception, or honesty than anyone else.

Why bigfooters still fall for this tripe after former law enforcement officer RICK DYER is just astounding.

 

[William Parcher]

There's no reason why police or military people can't have fantasy hobbies.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I'll never understand why people might think that people trained in something that requires carrying a gun become somehow infallible.

It is a fascinating science. If you ask them directly, they will not only agree - but they will be able to recite cases of cops raping, cops stealing, cops lying, etc.

That is why this is such an insight. Because the compulsion to do it is so strong that people do it even when they know it adds nothing to credibility. It is very much like fidgeting when people lie. They can't help themselves.

Being a cop would be relevant here when we are talking about suspect interrogations. A good detective is going to first lay out some simple, nonthreatening questions to get a baseline on someone. Then when they get to the crime they're looking for all of these signals.

I think rockinkt has a background in this. It is exactly the right science to use on this question.

 

[LTC8K6]

I'm not lying.

Do you accept the idea that it's very hard to believe the Good N Plenty story?

Do you consider it calling you a liar when I say I don't believe that story?

 

[Northern Lights]

When bigfoot chucked the candy why didn't any of you save it for possible DNA testing?

It was 2009 and I was literally out for the second time, so I wasn't concerned with collecting anything. I was out for the experience. If something like that happened now, I would act differently.

Don't underestimate NL! I reckon he's bad. What would you do when your camp is being circled by monster wild wood apes? You'd probably wet yourself. Not NL. He goes to bed. You can't fake that kind of fearless, dude. NL's the sort of bad mother I'd want on my Bigfoot expedition.

I love the way you've heightened the perceived level excitement by using words like "monster" and "wild", but unfortunately in my experience, nothing threatening has ever occurred to me.

Do you accept the idea that it's very hard to believe the Good N Plenty story?

Do you consider it calling you a liar when I say I don't believe that story?

Yes, I do accept the idea that my GnP story is very hard to believe and I too have trouble reconciling the timeline, but nevertheless, it did happen as I've stated. Whether you believe my story isn't something I concern myself with and realistically, I have no control over. All I can do is tell you what occurred and let you decide. If you choose to not believe me, I have no issue with that position.