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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   24730 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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There is a recent trend on TikTok and social media where people are asked if they would rather be stuck in a forest with a bear or a man. Surprisingly, (or perhaps unsurprisingly to some of you), many people, especially women, are saying they would rather be stuck with a bear than a man. When men are asked this question and the script is flipped to "would you rather your daughter be stuck in a forest with a bear or a man", a lot of men seem to respond with bear rather than a man as well.

Here is a link to a Today.com article about this topic: https://www.today.com/news/bear-or-man-woods-tiktok-trend-rcna149611

It has a live poll, and at the moment the split is 28% with a man, 65% with a bear, and 7% in between.

That's 68% of respondents that would be more comfortable being stuck with a bear than a man. 68%! Unfortunately, there is no breakdown of who the respondents are, the best I could do is look at the average demographics for people who go to Today.com, which is 61.39% female and 38.61% male. Assuming the readers of this article has a similar demographic breakdown as the average person going to the website, and that all female readers chose a bear, that means that a solid chunk of men also are more comfortable being stuck with a bear than another man in the forest.

I found another poll on a women's forum asking the same question - the split there is 15% male, 85% bear at the moment.

So all the evidence seems to point that your average woman would rather be stuck with a bear than a man.

Here are some general arguments for why women are choosing bear over men, trying to not strawman to the best of my ability:

  1. If a bear attacks you, people will believe you, if a man attacks you, people will not believe you.
  2. Many women get attacked/assaulted by men every year, bear attacks on humans are extremely rare.
  3. You don't know if the man will attack you or not, but a bear is predictable.
  4. Men are scary.
  5. Bears might not attack you. Bears are more afraid of you than you are of them!
  6. Men have said negative things to me or about me. A bear won't do that.

The way news and social media are spinning this is that this reveals just how dangerous the world is for women, that women live their day-to-day lives in constant fear of the men around them because of how dangerous the world is to them. Frankly, I cannot relate to this view, perhaps because I am a man, but I also think this view can only develop when society, social media, entertainment, and the news are constantly bombarding you with all these negative notions about men. Your average woman is safer, far more liberated, has more rights, and meets more people than at any point in history (and especially compared to the entire scope of human history), and yet fear and hatred of men are more prevalent than ever before.

If anything, what this question reveals is just how warped women's views of men are and how negatively men are depicted in society.

It also reveals how people poorly use statistics to rationalize their stances. They will look at the raw number of bear attacks to the number of assaults/rape/sexual on women and then assume the two can be directly compared without any adjustment. Oh, only 1 person dies to a black bear each year in the US but but 5000 women are murdered each year, that means I'm 5000 times more likely to be killed if I were in a forest with a man than with a bear. Nearly everyone encounters at least several if not hundreds of men per day, and most people won't even encounter a bear in their lifetime. If women encountered the same number of bears as the same number of random men they encountered in their day-to-day lives, those numbers would be very different.

In reality, women encounter hundreds of men every day and not a single one of them rapes or assaults them. I'm not saying their fears have no basis in reality, or that they don't take actions that increase their safety, but do they have any idea what percentage of men would actually attack them?

The average man is far more likely to be of help if you're stuck in a forest because they would likely help you get out of the forest. No doubt women have received plenty of help for free throughout their lives on the basis of being a woman, and yet they still fear the idea of a man more than a bear. I'm going to try to put some estimates on the likely outcome for each scenario:

  1. Man helps you: 50% | Bear helps you 0%
  2. Man attacks/rapes/assaults you: 0.1 - 5% | Bear attacks you: 25%
  3. If the man chooses to assault you, you die: 10-50% | If the bear chooses to assault you, you die: 95%

You may disagree on the percentage, but even if you were extremely generous to both ends for the other perspective it would be extremely difficult to justify the percent chance of the negative outcome being better for the bear instead of the man. So in all situations, you are far more likely to get a better result with a man than a bear.

It would be interesting to see how people would respond if you asked them would you rather be stuck in a forest with a bear or a black man. Would the fear of being thought of as a racist overcome the fear of men?

I'm not sure whether it's better to respond with a furry fandom joke, a Baldur's Gate joke, or with a Vintage Story joke.

You're walking in the woods. There's no one around, and your phone is dead. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot him...

It's @SkookumTree, on his way through The Hock!

Who’s that behind him? Is that… Candlejack? Man I haven’t heard of him in a long t

This trend is actually propaganda by the bear mafia to increase optics for bears.

Seriously though, bears are portrayed more positively than men are in media and entertainment. I can't recall the last time I saw a bear portrayed as a threat or a cause of a dangerous scenario in a movie/tv show/game. But you have plenty of cute, cuddly teddy bears, bears as cartoon characters, sexy bears in Baldur's gate, etc. Or if the bear is an enemy that's because it's a bear rider in a video game and frankly speaking that is awesome.

They will absolutely wreck you in Vintage Story, to the point where they're more feared than most of the not!zombie enemies. Only the Bells, as mob-summoners, are really worse; even the T3 and T4 drifters can do comparable damage, but they're much slower, where your best hope when being chased by a brown bear before getting iron or steel armor involves trying to pit trap or outswim them.

Thems Fighting Herds has Huggles, who acts as the final boss for each arcade mode run, and is frankly unfairly hard. There's a bonus mode version you can play as that's even more overpowered, though it's intended for the rest of a multiplayer fight to team up against whoever gets to play the bear.

The Elder Scrolls have pretty consistently had bears as some of the most dangerous enemies, to the point where they could out-match some lesser dragons in Skyrim.

I've had Tribal runs in Rimworld wrecked by an early-game bear manhunter, though I dunno if that was vanilla or a mod. The Long Dark has some dangerous bears, though once you've got a good rifle setup and prep they're kinda loot pinatas.

I guess maybe Five Nights at Freddies, for a loose enough definition?

But yeah, they're definitely often treated as far less threatening or dangerous than they should be, even in some survival-themed games.

I can't recall the last time I saw a bear portrayed as a threat or a cause of a dangerous scenario in a movie/tv show/game.

The only quick example I can think of is The Revenant, which was from a while ago.

Well, Cocaine Bear is just from last year.

Another Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey got released in March too.

The Revenant had a brutal bear attack, but that’s pretty much the only one I can conjure off the top of my head.

Bears are still pretty common foes in video games - including Baldur's Gate 3, where the "sexy bear" in question is an Elf druid, Halsin.

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