Let’s Get Bigfoot…By Ridiculing Anyone Who Believes in Him

By on August 13, 2012 in News 15

Picture: Ashish S. Hareet (CC)

Salon.com has published an essay on cryptozoology, UFOs and other Fortean pursuits by Busy Monsters author William Geraldi. It’s as dismissive as you’d expect it to be (and undoubtedly rightfully so, as some readers might think), and downright smug at moments.

Take Geraldi’s swipe at cryptozoologists in this paragraph on the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film:

It didn’t occur to me as a kid that the name of the creek in which the footage was shot, Bluff Creek, was a clue to Roger Patterson’s shaky relationship with veracity. Still, educated experts with the best software ever devised haven’t been able to prove conclusively that the footage is a hoax, and so grown men with a child’s inextinguishable wonder — they call themselves cryptozoologists — continue to pursue a North American apeman. Half of me wants to help these unemployable man-boys study for the high school equivalency test, but the other half quietly applauds their dopey dedication and yearns to join their rowdy jaunt.

In all, it’s a cushy little poke at the easiest of targets and another example of how the caustic attitudes of some skeptics do far more harm than good when it comes to educating the supposedly ignorant. Why would the “unenlightened” reconsider what they believe when they’re being ridiculed and scorned by those who claim to know better? Can skeptics and believers ever have a civil, constructive dialogue?

Read the essay at Salon.com.

 

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  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/5OQFBZ26C3VQ5ONGZGDBDY4BUU Mark A

    If there was a bigfoot, we would have found it by now.

    • Nuckinfutz

      Unless Bigfoot was some type of failed government experiment in breeding a race of super-strong warrior humanoids to act as a police force in the New World Order.  Then they’d just deny Bigfeet (-foots?  -feetses?) exist.

    • Success

      Correct, but who’s going to tell you that?

  • Nuckinfutz
  • Jtaylor

    cynicism never helps anyone 

  • zombieslapper

    At least those “unemployable man-boys” are having fun and, apparently, making some sort of living. Jealous much, Billy Boy?

  • little black jars

    Tulpas, Tulpas, and more Tulpas

  • Nephilim

    Actually, my roommate used to work for the Forest Service here in Washington State.  In fact while he was in their employ he was out in the woods near what is now Snoqualmie Ridge.  At the time the development of the area was just getting under way.  He saw something in the brush ahead.  He stopped, it stood up and it was huge.  Much taller than he was.  My roommate turned and headed for home without hurrying too much.  The creature followed him and kept him in sight. 

    The next day, when he went back to work he asked one of the Rangers.  “Oh, they exist.  We just don’t talk about them.”

    Even a quick look at the stories that the Native Americans tell of women and children being carried off by him/her will make you think a second time.

  • RoboKy

    Dickish Condescension:  Always the high route

  • DeepCough

    Hey, if Darwin can’t catch a break, neither can you, Sasquatch.

  • Investinourftre

    You mean Conspiracy Factists….you’re welcome.

  • Apathesis

    I hope Bigfoot is confirmed one day.  But I really doubt its existence when hunters conveniently forget to shoot at it.

  • SteadyEddy

    haha! And this on a site that regularly posts uninformed hyperbole and drivel mocking religions and those who adhere to them!  Got to love the hypocrisy!

  • Wanted

    Colin Wilson author of the Occult, Mysteries and several other books on bizarre stuff says that it is an electromagnetic anomaly in the area that causes people to hallucinate and these hallucinations seem to involve 
    ancient  primal fears. They have reports of big foot is fairly populated areas. EMFs are proven to cause hallucinations with too much exposure and there are forces we don’t even know are there yet. And if they want to find the damn thing and see if it  actually has physical form, put a bunch of those trap cameras and keep going back to retrieve the footage and replace the battery, eventually if its there, a photo will be taken. There are cameras that can recharge themselves and remotely broadcast the footage, just warm people that there are cameras in the area with signs. 

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

     I don’t much appreciate the slams on cryptozoology. Sure…there are plenty of losers in among the believers…and I’d love to see more discipline instead of just wild enthusiasm, but at the end of the day, given how often the ‘established credentialed officials’ get it wrong…its a worthwhile endeavor.

    Shit…its taken decades to finally get a picture of a cougar in Michigan (not from outside of a singles bar) that was clear enough to make officials admit they exist. The DNR had a long policy of denying or burying any evidence to the contrary…until this past few years when multiple pictures were taken with too great a clarity to deny.

    If a perfectly normal animal can be hotly debated and remain unconfirmed for decades…there is no particular reason that an unconfirmed creature in remote areas can’t be getting dealt the same treatment. Having said that…all I would expect is a better quality of proof than usually gets provided. I can’t say I believe absolutely in anything…except constant inquiry…which eventually gets results. I just wish both sides would adopt a little more of the attitude of inquiry…and less of certainty.