Humans Are Weird

What is this planet

There’s someone who has their iPhone named “hot single horses in your area” and they airdrop people pictures of horses randomly. Nobody knows who it is. Once, during an assembly, the laptop that the projector was from had airdrop turned on, and in the middle of a presentation about bullying, it popped up in front of the entire school. HOT SINGLE HORSES IN YOUR AREA WANTS TO SHARE AN IMAGE. A picture of a horse, with text in bubble letters over it saying “available”

Stahp

Reblog of you want my friend to stop hurting herself

I’m trying to prove to her that people still care and although the temptation for self harm is strong, she can fight it and she is not alone. Please don’t scroll past, please show her you care. ~Mod Aaron

Can human young really begin to comprehend complex machinery at such a low amount of accumulated solar rotations?

First attempt at a post

In the “humans are weird” “earth is space Australia” and “humanity fuck yea” posts I haven’t (yet) seen any reworks of the old themes. So of course humans would have trouble with alien tech. Adults being snippity adults can you imagine how some future version of a millennial basher would be?

Human adult: “Gar-friggin’-fuc- hey, hey you! Yea, you, kid. Come make this thing work!” The adult hands some 8 or 9 year old kid who was busy leaving a breadcrumb trail for Sgt. Stabby to follow a piece of tech.

Alien science officer: “Human Frank, that is a finely tuned light-spectrum translation device! The podling will break it!”

Human Frank “Ah, damn kid already figured out how to work it!” And chases after the kid who is writing light messages in an alien language on the floor of the corridor for Sgt. Stabby to dance on as it cleans them off.

Alien Science Officer: “12 standard cycles. I have 12 standard cycles of training to use this device…” And just wandering off for alien whisky and to commiserate with other members of the crew.

What if another “humans are weird” thing is talking to ourselves. Like… it makes no sense? But so many of us do it. Even just muttering under our breaths. I can’t help but think that some alien species would think we’re trying to hide another aspect of our (already weird) abilities.

They can ‘throw’ stuff, and bond with nearly anything, and now they’re talking to people who aren’t even there?!? Sure, they said they were just “talking to themself” but that’s obviously just a bad excuse. They do have thoughts after all.

(Feel free to add to this, it always makes posts 38200× better)

What if a lot of alien species didn’t actually evolve as pack species, and just adapted to living in communities out of necessity? So they can still work and live together, but they don’t have all the little instincts humans have that help them work in a group.

And they are freaked out by us.

We all wear the same clothes. It’s not a uniform— we just somehow all seem to like roughly the same outfits. We fit in so naturally with the people around us that you can use a human’s clothing to tell what country and what time period they are from. Aliens have no idea how we know what clothes are appropriate— they end up having to hire humans to act as fashion consultants after several incidents where diplomats showed up wearing mismatched clothes from various time periods and countries and looking totally ridiculous.

And what about yawning? Aliens who work on human ships say they never fully get used to hearing one human yawn and then having the whole room start yawning along with them. Or telling a joke to one human and seeing humans who say they don’t find the joke that funny cracking up anyway because “their laugh is so infectious!” It’s a common practical joke to tell new nonhuman crew members about this horrible disease humans get, where they feel tired and have an uncontrollable urge to open their mouths. It’s deadly, they say, and very contagious.

New safety procedures have to be worked out for the humans because, on the one hand, you don’t have to go around telling each individual to leave. Humans will just follow the mob. On the other hand, though, you have to be careful not to spread panic, because if one human runs, they all will, and they’ll trample anyone who isn’t fast enough to stay ahead.

Aliens hear humans tell their kids not to give into peer pressure and just get really confused. “Why would they do it if they don’t want to?”

“Because their friends are telling them to do it!”

“But why do it just because they’re telling them to do it?”

“Because they’re their friends!”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

When aliens see earth movies about people being indoctrinated or turned into zombies, it takes them a while to realise that these are horror movies because, from their perspective, that’s just what humans are like.

Not greeting someone this way is a sleight to their honor.

Whenever I see a post on tumblr suggesting aliens don’t have gender, I always think–‘but what if also the reverse. What if aliens also have some fundamental social construct we don’t’.

Like, they come and meet us and they’re like ‘hey this is an awkward question but what’s your gooblebygark?’

And we’re like what.

‘You know, the… the thing. Your goobledygark. The thing that dictates whether you’re gnarfgnoovles or brubledoopes’

What. What. What the fuck, those words don’t even mean anything??? What are you talking about?

‘Look, your ridiculous human languages don’t seem to have the words for these! But they’re totally a thing, they’re like, fundamental aspects of social life for our species, just… just let us lick you so we can know what verb tense to use when we speak to you.’

What does one thing have to do with the other??? That makes no–

‘UGH, nevermind, you’re totally brubledoopes, I can just tell, I don’t even need to taste your bacterial skin colonies.’

And then another alien overhears and is like ‘holy shit, you can’t stereotype like that, that’s SO NOT COOL’

‘yeaH BUT THEY WON’T LET ME LICK THEM’

M-melting brains? I-uh I think I might need to sit down and rethink my life.

Alien: So… when harmful foreign substances enter your bodies, you increase your body temperature?

Human: Yep

Alien: You slowly burn yourselves alive???

Human: Well when you put it like that, geez

Alien: And you regularly survive this?

Human: Mostly, but sometimes people’s bodies get too hot and their brains start melting.

Alien: ….

Human: It doesn’t happen so much anymore though, don’t worry!

Alien: Don’t worry, they say. Melting brains is fine, they say.

Humans Are Weird

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

In 500 years NASA could be a travel company

Humans are weird...

I love all these humans are weird posts so I’m trying my hand at one. I’ve been thinking, humans are like, ridiculous specialists. Our brains is so big we’re born prematurely so as not to tear our mothers apart. And we’re born crazy weak and we have super long childhoods to compensate. We pack bond and bond with bigger creatures to deal with this (this is why we think babies of all species are cute, it’s basically a drive to take care of this weak little thing because our own children are so weak). So what if alien species evolved so there was one, super weak but really brilliant species, has fine motor skills, huge language skills etc, and one that evolved as a symbiote that was basically huge protective dog/ox type to do the heavy lifting. And it’s really bizarre that we don’t have this symbiosis. Like the fact that humans are a stand alone species is weird. We seem huge and bulky to the tiny intelligent species (in my head it’s basically an otter/raven hybrid) and small and delicate to the other. And they don’t get how we function alone, until they see us spilling our pack bonding instincts all over everything, hostile predators, teddy bears, roombas, even cups with little chips in them. And then it’s like, oh I see, you don’t bond really strongly to one thing you bond just a little bit to everything and wait to see what sticks.