Thoughts on horror stories/camp fire tales/creepypastas

Started by Munch, March 18, 2018, 03:13:57 PM

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Baruch

Aka Alfred Hitchcock, The Rope 1948 and Strangers On A Train 1951.  And the psychological innuendo of Rear Window 1954.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Munch

'Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners' - George Carlin

Cavebear

My cats love to catch bunnies.  Well, young ones anyway.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Deidre32

Horror taps into “could this actually happen?” And that’s what scares me. lol
The only lasting beauty, is the beauty of the heart. - Rumi

Cavebear

Quote from: Deidre32 on April 05, 2018, 02:26:41 PM
Horror taps into “could this actually happen?” And that’s what scares me. lol

That's where the horror genre fails me generally.  I can't take most horror films seriously.  I watched all those with mixed emotions.  I laughed at the premises, but I did seriously admire the creativity of how they killed multiple victims

What worries ME is that we might someday meet some alien species from outer space and NOT be "the baddest ones around".  And the more you meet, the more likely it is that you will find "the badder guys".  Some sextuple-legged tentacled land shark that thinks faster than we can.

It won't be "Independence Day.  It will be they day the Incans met the Spanish, and we won't be the Spanish,  And the difference will be 10X more unequal.  It won't even be a contest.

Or we are the most intelligent life in the universe.

Guess which is more likely?
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Deidre32

Quote from: Cavebear on April 07, 2018, 02:04:28 AM
That's where the horror genre fails me generally.  I can't take most horror films seriously.  I watched all those with mixed emotions.  I laughed at the premises, but I did seriously admire the creativity of how they killed multiple victims

What worries ME is that we might someday meet some alien species from outer space and NOT be "the baddest ones around".  And the more you meet, the more likely it is that you will find "the badder guys".  Some sextuple-legged tentacled land shark that thinks faster than we can.

It won't be "Independence Day.  It will be they day the Incans met the Spanish, and we won't be the Spanish,  And the difference will be 10X more unequal.  It won't even be a contest.

Or we are the most intelligent life in the universe.

Guess which is more likely?

Or maybe we are the least intelligent, and the bad guys, and all the other aliens are more benevolent than us. Maybe they are afraid of us, but the movies project that we should be afraid of them. lol
The only lasting beauty, is the beauty of the heart. - Rumi

Hydra009

#66
Quote from: Deidre32 on April 07, 2018, 12:19:42 PM
Or maybe we are the least intelligent, and the bad guys, and all the other aliens are more benevolent than us. Maybe they are afraid of us, but the movies project that we should be afraid of them. lol
Our media about aliens is like 90% alien genocide, so they might be a little put off by that.  In addition to our propensity for incredible violence, pathogens explode out of our noses all the time, we reproduce like rabbits, and we bounce back from almost any injury/illness.

Humans are incredibly violent, irrational, and resilient.  And they're also insatiably driven to explore and expand.  People have embarked on what were basically suicide missions to explore every corner of our planet long before they invented drone technology to do it safely.

We're the kind of people who have to hide the exact location of the world's oldest tree from ourselves, lest someone cut it down.

Aliens would definitely be at least a little worried about us.

Deidre32

Quote from: Hydra009 on April 07, 2018, 12:40:39 PM
Our media about aliens is like 90% alien genocide, so they might be a little put off by that.  In addition to our propensity for incredible violence, pathogens explode out of our noses all the time, we reproduce like rabbits, and we bounce back from almost any injury/illness.

Humans are incredibly violent, irrational, and resilient.  And they're also insatiably driven to explore and expand.  People have embarked on what were basically suicide missions to explore every corner of our planet long before they invented drone technology to do it safely.

We're the kind of people who have to hide the exact location of the world's oldest tree from ourselves, lest someone cut it down.

Aliens would definitely be at least a little worried about us.

I wonder if other alien civilizations are as easily offended as humans are? Or are they more drone like? Is there a race for power always going on, and what is their currency, if they have one? Are they like ants, entirely altruistic, or are they individuals, with dreams and goals like us humans? Those types of things would be interesting to learn.

The only lasting beauty, is the beauty of the heart. - Rumi

SGOS

There are no good aliens.  They're OK if they stay on their own planet, but I don't want them in my neighborhood.

Unbeliever

Quote from: Cavebear on April 07, 2018, 02:04:28 AM
That's where the horror genre fails me generally.  I can't take most horror films seriously.  I watched all those with mixed emotions.  I laughed at the premises, but I did seriously admire the creativity of how they killed multiple victims

What worries ME is that we might someday meet some alien species from outer space and NOT be "the baddest ones around".  And the more you meet, the more likely it is that you will find "the badder guys".  Some sextuple-legged tentacled land shark that thinks faster than we can.

It won't be "Independence Day.  It will be they day the Incans met the Spanish, and we won't be the Spanish,  And the difference will be 10X more unequal.  It won't even be a contest.

Or we are the most intelligent life in the universe.

Guess which is more likely?
Theres's also the possibility of n-dimensional critters coming through portals to farm us for our bio-fluids, as in the mini-series Invasion: Earth.

But I figure we're the smartest things going now - not in the whole universe, necessarily, but at least in our neck of the cosmos, our galaxy, maybe even the whole local group. It's even possible that we're the first really smart life forms to evolve in the observable universe, it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. I expect that eventually others will come along, but we may well be it for the time being.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Unbeliever

Quote from: Deidre32 on April 07, 2018, 12:52:53 PM


I wonder if other alien civilizations are as easily offended as humans are? Or are they more drone like? Is there a race for power always going on, and what is their currency, if they have one? Are they like ants, entirely altruistic, or are they individuals, with dreams and goals like us humans? Those types of things would be interesting to learn.


Another thing I wonder about is how much long term thinking they do. If they think on really long time scales, then they might realize that eventually the easily-harvested resources of the galaxy will run out, since there's only a finite amount of the stuff. If they decide they'll need it all for themselves, they may want to obliterate any competition they might have from other tech-life, like, say, us. Or we may end up doing that ourselves, if we can think about that far in the future.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

SGOS

Quote from: Unbeliever on April 07, 2018, 01:25:52 PM
But I figure we're the smartest things going now - not in the whole universe, necessarily, but at least in our neck of the cosmos, our galaxy, maybe even the whole local group. It's even possible that we're the first really smart life forms to evolve in the observable universe, it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. I expect that eventually others will come along, but we may well be it for the time being.
How about the possibility that other more intelligent life in the galaxy came before us, but has since gone extinct?  I read someplace that the fate of all life is to become extinct.  Well, at least somewhere between 99 and 100 percent of all species.

Unbeliever

#72
Yeah, species on Earth only last an average of about a million years, but once a civilization colonizes a large part of its space environment, especially a big chunk of its home galaxy, it should be much more difficult to kill it all the way off. So if they were there in that capacity, they should still be there, and they should be here, as well, which is what prompted Fermi's question: where are they?
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Hydra009

Quote from: Deidre32 on April 07, 2018, 12:52:53 PMI wonder if other alien civilizations are as easily offended as humans are? Or are they more drone like? Is there a race for power always going on, and what is their currency, if they have one? Are they like ants, entirely altruistic, or are they individuals, with dreams and goals like us humans? Those types of things would be interesting to learn.
Humans are descended from apes who cooperated within a tribe and yet also formed murder gangs attack members of other tribes and sometimes also brawled within the tribe for dominance.  So human nature swings wildly between peacefulness and incredible violence.

I expect aliens, especially herbivores, to lean far more towards cooperation.  Maybe more communal and less individualistic than humans, but just as prone to self-reflection and long-term planning as humans.  Probably less religious.

I guess it all depends on how often and the magnitude at which intelligence evolves in the galaxy.  From our own planet, we know that human-like intelligence is pretty rare.  But humans also have a propensity to build human-like machines.  Run similar scenarios on hundreds, maybe thousands of different planets in the Milky Way alone, and you get some pretty amazing islands of intelligence.  And islanders eventually set sail...

Baruch

Quote from: SGOS on April 07, 2018, 01:43:17 PM
How about the possibility that other more intelligent life in the galaxy came before us, but has since gone extinct?  I read someplace that the fate of all life is to become extinct.  Well, at least somewhere between 99 and 100 percent of all species.

Good thing ... what about Apatosaurus or T-Rex blocking highway traffic, because the tree-huggers want them protected?
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.