Humans Are Weird

Quite a few have been saying:”But what about laughing?”, in the comments of my ‘Weird Human Reactions to Fear: the Singing Edition’ post. My question is: do you know why humans laugh when shit gets real?

Laughter is our brain’s Blue Screen of Death.

Where a computer would throw up an error and possibly crash, our brains go:”well, shit”, and hit the big red button labelled: ‘LAUGHTER (and possibly applause, but probably not applause)’. Since we need our brains 24/7, we don’t have the luxury of error messages. So our brains buy some time to figure out what’s going on by making us laugh in the weirdest situations.

Imminent doom? Laugh.

Absolutely livid? Laugh.

Distraught? Laugh.

Pretty sure you’re gonna die? Laugh.

I mean, we can’t be sure the aliens don’t have brains that work the same way, but seeing as other animals on Planet Earth don’t really have that either… that’d probably freak them the fuck out too.

Not only do the gangly bipeds sing when they’re scared, they could just as easily start laughing.

Somebody said Humans would be the Mad Scientist species to aliens- like, aliens watch Back To The Future, and they see Doc Brown, and they think yes this is a human scientist, they’re all that crazy, these humans do such insane things with science.

I would like to offer an alternative.

Humans are tough. We can shrug off plenty of injuries, and we recover pretty fast from most others. Hell, we find minor injuries amusing (Don’t tell me you’ve never laughed at someone getting hit in the balls).

Humans have a skewed sense of danger. We think baby anything is cute- tigers, lions, alligators, whatever, no matter how scary they grow up to be- and even then there’s people that would happily cuddle up to a grizzly. Even less adventurous humans keep vermin as pets, or snakes, or dogs, that apex predator sub-species we made.

We are fascinated by morbid and scary stuff. We have a whole genre designed to terrify people. Tons of fantasy revolves around deadly monsters, plenty of which involve romance with said monsters. Lots of grim dystopias in sci-fi. Even children’s stories involve grandmothers getting eaten or witches getting cooked in their own oven.

And if you’re on this site, you know all the jokes we make about depression or social anxiety, or joking about wanting to die.

We aren’t the Doc Brown species.

We’re the Addams Family Species.

Interstellar Cultural Exchange

A problem that we might have is the importance of food. There are certain things that I’m quite certain will be constant from culture to culture, and, barring the possibility of aliens taking control of  their evolution in such a way that they no longer need to eat, I think food would be one of them.

People would be careful in the beginning, but eventually some people would break more and more quarantine and contraband laws, resulting in unusual fusion which we might not be able to predict.

“What’s this apple-looking thing I’m eating?” 

“It’s actually an animal that sucks sap out of trees. Think of it as a vegetarian tick.”

“What is that?”

“It’s called chocolate, want some?”

***Two Hours Later***

“I see colors!”

“Chocolate is space cocaine. Got it.”

“Human, I have made gumbo using ingredients from my planet. Would you like some?”

“Isn’t your biome arsenic-based?”

“Your point?”

“Want some chips?”

“Are you insane human!? That has SALT in it! Are you trying to kill me!?”

You know that one post about humans being really durable compared to aliens and that one about humans being really cute to aliens?

What if they were both true at the same time. Like the aliens decide to take their human on a landing mission because they get so exited and it’s so cute but then a storm hits and they crash. And the aliens are all freaking out because they can’t be rescued without going outside to fix something but the readings say they’ll die if they do because of the storm. The leader’s all prepared to make a heroic sacrifice when the cute human just walks out the airlock to fix the thing and when they get back they’re just like “what? It’s not that bad out.”

And the aliens find out humans are made of iron on top of being adorable.

What if humans are the only species that gets "mystery" bruises? How weird would it be to aliens that we can sustain an injury that leaves a mark lasting days or sometimes weeks but don't remember how we got it?

I love it!

Humans are already terrifying enough, but then it gets injuries like contusions (which is deadly to several species mind you!) and it doESN’T EVEN KNOW WHY?!?!?!?

At first the interspecies council thinks it’s a joke. Yes, it has already been established that a human just plain won’t die (with very few exceptions, like decapitation) and contusions aren’t that dangerous for most species. That it’d be unsuccessful at killing a human wasn’t surprising, but that they some times don’t even know how they’ve gotten the contusion? No that has to be a joke.

It’s ruled as another myth until a member of the council travels with a ship with a few human crew-members. Trofaxiq the Elder had taken a stroll around the ship a few days into the voyage when he heard two humans talking.

“Maybe you walked into something?” The tall, highly pigmented one said, inspecting something on the slightly shorter, less pigmented one.

“Yeah, you know I’m clumsy, but the position’s weird, isn’t it?” The shorter one said, looking down at their own appendage.

“So maybe you got it in your sleep?” The tall one suggested as the short one spotted Trofaxiq the Elder and jabbed its appendage into their fellow human’s sternum. A less experienced Froentir would have mistaken it for an attack, but Trofaxiq the Elder knew enough about human behaviour to know it was called a ‘nudge’ and was socially acceptable. 

After the normal exchange of greetings and pleasantries, Trofaxiq the Elder eventually asked the humans what they had been discussing. The tall one, Fatima, said the short one, Lucíahad gotten a bruise, but couldn’t remember how. Unsure what a bruise was, Trofaxiq the Elder asked, but quickly came to wish they hadn’t as they saw the large contusion on the humans appendage.

Less than one rotation later, the human guide had been updated, and a suggestion had been made to add a classification so they could mark humans down as more dangerous than the previous  “extremely dangerous, do not approach in the wild”

The only problem was how useful humans could be to expeditions. In the end, the suggestion wasn’t passed, to the worry of many council members.

Variety

We as humans thrive on variety. We need variety in our food, our schedules, our lives! Without variety there is a possibility that we can die. And boy do we every come up with stuff so that never happens.We make new dishes, we constantly change up our schedules so that it is no longer repetitive, we have different types of clothing and/or different needs in a mate. Of course we have even made food that can look the same but taste completely different(or the other way around!) just to have some changes. An alien could be used to seeing a human walk by them at exactly 16:00 and accept that as part of their schedule. Now when the human wants more variety and walks a different way to get to the same spot, all the aliens that have become adjusted to that human walking by them would either be awfully confused or deeply afraid because they can no longer follow their schedule like they were supposed too. Thus, chaos reins in the ship because one human wanted some variety.

Been seeing a lot of these Humans Are Space Orcs posts around- which is good, because I love them- and I started thinking: in sci-fi stories, humans in the future often have a bit of genetic engineering- like disease immunity or faster healing or even just a lack of body hair.

And I had a thought- what if that’s just us? What if we’re the only species to engineer ourselves like that? Imagine how freaked out they’d be;

“You’re telling me that you alter your own genetic code?”

Or take it a little further- we’re the only species to use vaccines. Every other race just toughed it out and evolved past it, but humans injected ourselves with weakened diseases to make ourselves stronger. 

Or even further back, when people used to drink poison to gain an immunity- imagine that reaction:

“OH MY GROP THEY DRINK POISON TO GET STRONGER THAT’S IT FUCK THIS PLANET I’M OUTTA HERE”

You set off explosives. Recreationally. Somehow I lack the capability to be surprised by you anymore.

Aliens and Fireworks

Alien: Despite this being a Level 27-F deathworld, I have had a pleasant time here. Thank you for your persistent invites, Human-Dave. However, I am concerned. There are packs of humans gathering here at this large body of water, but isn’t it time for their circadian rhythms to knock them unconscious?

Dave: *unfolding two chairs* Yeah… But all the alcohol will do the same job soon enough. *reaches into a cooler and takes a beer out as he sits down*

Alien: Um… Are those humans over there supposed to have access to those missiles? They’re not in any uniforms; in fact, they lack the usual amount of clothing humans tend to wear.

Dave: Fireworks, man.

Alien: *as soon as they hear “fire”* Excuse me?

B O O M

C r a c k l e

C r a c k l e

C r a c k l e

*everyone at the lake begins drunkenly bellowing and chanting “USA” in disturbing unison, and someone falls off the back of a truck*

Alien: So, this is how I die.

More “wtf are humans, please leave the rest of us be” stuff:

Human reactions to fear!

No, I’m not talking about screaming or freezing in one spot and pissing yourself. I’m talking about the weirder, more specific-to-only-humans fear reactions.

Like singing.

Idk how many of you have watched people play horror video games, but a surprising amount of people start narrating what’s going on in a sing-song voice.

Imagine being an alien, walking in a horrific, dark tunnel with these weird gangly creatures, you’re all scared out of your wits and then one of them starts fucking singing.

In a dark cave. While everyone’s terrified.

“ ♫ ~We are all gonna fucking die, this is terrible and I wanna go hooooome~ ♬ ”

Throwing My Hat into the “Humans Are Weird” Thing

So what if all the other alien species evolved from Prey Species? Like, humans show up on the galactic scene and everyone is weirded out by the appearance of this species with eyes on the front of their heads and binocular vision, and crazy good senses of hearing and smell compared to everyone else.

And then it hits them.

They just made first contact with a race of sapient, intelligent Apex Predators. Eventually, after the panic dies down and the other races realize that humans aren’t going to eat them, they realize how good they are under pressure. They can hear and smell things before anyone else, are capable of going days without food if they have to, weeks with very little food. Or, they can pull off these insane feats of accuracy with their binocular vision. Or smell what dinner is from three rooms away, or hear a ship’s system failure before the alarm sounds.