Filed under: History, Humor, Intelligence, Movies, Science/Technology | Tags: Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg, Triceratops
This picture was posted on Facebook, and many viewers were outraged that at a time when there is so much going on in the world, some idiot hunter was slaughtering, um, peaceful rare animals. If you recognize the face of the man, Steven Spielberg, and the animal, Triceratops, all becomes fairly clear. The director posed with a prop from Jurassic Park. The Daily Caller summed up the rage of some of the commenters:
“That’s Steven Spielberg, director of Jurassic Park!” one user wrote.
“I don’t care who he is he should not have shot that animal,” another responded.
“Steven Spielberg, I’m disappointed in you. I’m not watching any of your movies again ANIMAL KILLER,” commented another.
“Disgraceful. No wonder dinosaurs became extinct. Sickos like this kill every last one of them as soon as they are discovered. He should be in prison,” another followed up.
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American Elephants 
Um, do you really believe all of those comments were serious?
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Comment by Subsidy Eye July 13, 2014 @ 12:58 amI quoted only three, and yes they were. There was a longer one in the original article from a young woman who was very serious and quite profane. People believe in UFOs and Sasquatch, and being snatched up into a UFO, and ghosts, and seances and a whole host of weird patent medicines. People have some really strange beliefs. Fairies, Leprechauns, magic. The Triceratops prop really looks like a dead thing, with glazed eyes and sunken skin. Would have been a more convincing picture if Spielberg was holding an elephant gun. And don’t get me started on PETA.
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Comment by The Elephant's Child July 13, 2014 @ 1:25 amHmmm. I wonder what is to be made then of this study undertaken by a Stanford University professor, which found that “the lower bound on the population reporting voter impersonation [in the 2012 election] is nearly identical with the proportion of the population reporting abduction by extraterrestrials.”
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Comment by Subsidy Eye July 13, 2014 @ 2:43 amHey, Subsidy, long time no laugh at.
So, you’re going to use a posting about Spielberg posing in front of one of his movie props and people freaking out because they think it’s real, and use that to segue to a paper written by an openly partisan professor who very likely wrote the conclusion for his paper before he even did the research to back it up (yes, I’ve read this paper before, and I once again find it amazing how many people don’t question why a supposed research paper shows only supporting data and is dismissive of any other conclusion (this paper, and others like it, tend to ignore the actual examples of voter impersonation where people have been arrested and charged). It reads to me that he may have had *gasp* an agenda in mind).
Ignoring the whole attempted correlation/causation aspect of your post, yes, people do react that way to stuff like that. It may sound like I’m stating the obvious, but people with no sense of humor about a subject frequently do go off half-cocked sometimes, and even when it’s pointed out to them that may have over-reacted (“It’s the prop to a movie!”), you notice that there is usually no apology, no retraction, and a lot of times no indication that they even know they’ve just made fools of themselves.
Personally, I think the whole thing was hilarious. So did most of these people:
http://www.fark.com/comments/8332891/Disgusted-Facebook-users-express-outrage-over-animal-rights-violations-after-seeing-an-old-photo-of-Steven-Spielberg-with-a-felled-triceratops
It started as a Facebook gag in response to that Texas cheerleader posting her hunting photos. You can always hope people are just being sarcastic or snarky or tongue-in-cheek, but sometimes, it just isn’t the case.
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Comment by Lon Mead July 13, 2014 @ 3:52 am