• @LemmyKnowsBest
        link
        4811 months ago

        Okay but have you ever seen a dead body? There is no energetic feeling at all, it’s just an inanimate object at that point. Most people who see dead bodies are not afraid from seeing the dead body, if they are afraid it might be because they’re wondering how the person died and if they themselves might be in danger.

        Diseased bodies, yes, I remember when my son was really young, maybe 1-year-old, he got a scary flu and the look in his eyes was uncanny and it was terrifying, that alerted me something was very wrong. Thankfully he recovered, that was 20 years ago, he’s fine.

        • @NABDad
          link
          English
          3911 months ago

          Thankfully he recovered, that was 20 years ago, he’s fine.

          Or that’s just what it wants you to think.

        • @AWistfulNihilist
          link
          29
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          Native Americans had the term skin walker to denote animals in human form or vice versa.

          There’s the obvious explanation we accept, with almost no evidence that it was referring to witchcraft or shamanism. Maybe a rogue god.

          But what if it’s a way to dehuminize someone to make them easier to out-group. A person from another tribe, a person who’s committed a grievous sin, like murder.

          Is it describing a mythical creature, or the soullessness of the expression of a murderer. Or “rheumy eyes” of the sick. Something you need to desperately escape to keep your group whole.

          • @LemmyKnowsBest
            link
            14
            edit-2
            11 months ago

            true, some people who are up to no good, you can see it in their eyes.

            Perhaps even scarier though is when people are up to no good but you can’t even tell, like remember there was a serial killer in the late 1970s early 1980s who ended up on a nationally-televised dating game show before anyone knew he was in the middle of a several-years-long killing spree. He looked like a perfectly normal harmless charming guy like anyone else just wanting to find a date.

            IIRC The woman chose him as her date, he won the dating game show, but after initially getting acquainted with him, she decided to stop everything and NOT to go on a date with him. She dodged a bullet there.

            • Flying Squid
              link
              1111 months ago

              He’s still kind of creepy when he’s on The Dating Game. The problem is that whole show is designed for men to be creepy and for women to give them that opportunity, so it’s not exactly the best metric. Anyway, here he is-

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq0JSl6W74E

              • @LemmyKnowsBest
                link
                5
                edit-2
                11 months ago

                Oh thank you, so I read the YouTube comments and they say there have been interviews with everyone else who was on the show who said the murderer guy was really creepy. So that’s good, people got bad vibes from a serial killer.

                Update: in 2021 at the age of 77, the serial killer died of natural causes while incarcerated in prison.

    • Zoidsberg
      link
      fedilink
      6911 months ago

      Competing early humans (neanderthals, etc.) would be my guess. I’ve also heard it makes us not want to go near corpses.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        3911 months ago

        Competition from other hominids and genetic disease.

        Or, more likely, just the Uncanny Valley not being that big of deal in general.

        It’s fun to meme about it but it’s not like people are running screaming from the theater because the CGI was off, it just doesn’t look right sometimes and our brain doesn’t like it because it doesn’t fit the patterns it’s had reinforced over a lifetime.

        • @NABDad
          link
          English
          1611 months ago

          You don’t run from the theater because you know it’s not real. If one of those CGI characters showed up at your front door, you might run.