+309 It's strange that humans have the ability to care more about a fictional character than an actual flesh and blood human being whom they have never met. amirite?

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Kinda pathetic really.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Not really strange at all since you actually get to know that character. They wouldn't be as much as an actual flesh and blood human you do know, but someone you don't know is absolutely nothing to you.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

You get to know absolutely no one because they don't exist. They're an idea of something unreal and words on paper. I know it makes sense in our human socially-driven brains, but if you look at it logically isn't it fucking weird?

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Dude, everything is really fucking weird if you look at it too much. Trust me, I'm an insomniac.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

You should spend less time on amirite. Trust me, I'm a doctor.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

This place doesn't keep me up. I get off of here around now (about 9pm EST). I go to bed at about 10. I just have insomnia and if I forget to take my medicine my mind goes into a kind of overdrive when I'm trying to sleep.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

It's just to do with humanisation. Whether the person in the book is a real, non-fiction person or just a fictional character, they FEEL more real because you learn about them inside and out; an oppurtunity you don't often get in real life. This is why dehumanisation is such a powerful tool in warfare, oppression, bullying, etc. I believe this phenomenon is referred to as "Dunbar's number" (or "the monkey sphere"), and you can read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/ly6vw . It's a social theory about how many "friends" a person can have whilst still considering each one to be an actual, 3D human being. Beyond that number, people start to just become hazy statistical non-entities you can't really diffrentiate. It's an interesting read, made all the more interesting by things like Facebook, where having 500 "friends" is common, while most estimates place the Dunbar's number at a highest of 230. :P

by Anonymous 11 years ago

It's nice to know I'm not the only psychology freak on this site. :P

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Yeah you're right. I was talking about this the other day with my boyfriend who was in the army and they had training to teach them to dehumanize the enemy and to think of them as just a statistic because if they thought of them having a family etc... they wouldn't be able to kill them because they would feel a connection to them. It's actually pretty scary : /

by Anonymous 11 years ago

it might be that fictional characters can't disappoint you as badly as real people can. or piss you off, or crap like that.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I think they're definitely able to. Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating to watch a character do something you know they shouldn't, and a character can definitely disappoint you as well. Though a fictional character can't exactly hurt your feelings or anything, which I think is what you're probably getting at.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

yeah, thats what i meant, but that's not disappointing to me, them doing that just adds some strange spice to a soup thats getting boring.

by Anonymous 11 years ago