Dec 29, 2025
Listening to a podcast about a cryptid, im revisiting my question about how many of the indigenous stories these people are playing Run Around In The Woods about are just native people fucking with white people, and then the woman who translated for one of the āprimary sourcesā was quoted as saying āyeah my auntie was just fucking with those peopleā
Me:
#obviously a lot of these stories have basis in traditional stories and religion. Sasquatch and her kin go way back and mean a lot to people#all up the west coast.#however. Sasquatch is a very different thing from the ābigfootā that has crews of idiots pretending to scare themselves in the hinterlands#are chasing#and I just imagine. if I were going about my day. and a bunch of strangers from another culture shoved a camera in my face#and started asking about the Spooky Scary Monsters up in them there hills.#I might be inclined to just tell them whatever to make them piss off.#thereās also an issue of Social Signals That I Am Joking/Telling Tales being culturally specific#like think about āoh yeah it happened to a friend of a friend of mineā. if you had no cultural context for that you wouldnt necessarily#instantly clock that as āI am signally you that what is about to come out of my mouth is bullshit with at best a sprinkling of truthā#you might just be like Ah Yes. this is the story-starting phrase. I am about to be imparted some wise and beautiful folklore.#itās also always gonna be unclear how many of the dominant/western culture-aligned people actually believe it in the moment or ARENT#picking up on those signals bc thereās big money in pretending to be scared of ghosts and setting up trail cams for three days.#anyway. I hate cryptid stuff I think itās the dumbest part of the Spooky Shit Fandom.#(it is all bullshit but the cryptid shit is boring bullshit)#are there species we donāt know about? absolutely!#do some legendary beings have basis in the natural world? yes!#is āthere is a literal species of Big Hairy Human in the forestā the point of why these stories were told? FUCKING NO.#and I think actually nonwhite people should keep lying about it to make idiots sleep in the brush and get eaten alive by insects#bc itās funny#bramble bramble
