Zombies: Fiction created by a society that doesn't have anything REAL to worry about.

[Vice]

The hype for "zombies" is flat out annoying me. It's becoming mainstream, and many people are putting elaborate levels of thought into a fictional "zombie apocalypse".

Do these people have anything REAL in their lives to worry about? Or have they become so complacent and sheltered that they have invented an event to fantasize about to fulfill their need to feel like they can solve some kind of problem?

I've seen books, bumper stickers, and general conversation geared towards this bullsh*t. I don't hear ANYONE talking about the financial crisis in Europe, the rumored street riots in Spain that are not deliberately being televised, and the fact that a similar event may happen in the United States.

Maybe me living in a largely blue-collar town has something to do with it: blue collars usually don't focus or care about larger issues because they think that "others" will take care of it, and that it really doesn't affect their daily lives of mediocrity that consists of going to work, getting home playing video games, getting b*tched at by their cow of a wife, (or, if she's somehow attractive, probably cheating on him and thinking about filing for divorce after she's milked his benefits and found a better guy, which isn't too hard) and then going to bed to start the cycle over again. Then they punish their livers on the weekends so they can forget how meaningless and mundane their lives are.

Thankfully I'm moving back south: where the women care about themselves and the weather isn't sh*t. Stuck here for three years, and you can't exactly leave when you want because my job doesn't work like that. Enough about me.

I remember reading an article that had a map of the world, with each country having higher numbers of zombie searches on the internet a darker hue of red. Naturally, the US was the deepest of red, followed by Canada, parts of Europe, and Australia. Other parts of the world were pink, and some parts were flat out WHITE. I'm citing this from memory, so I may have left out some details.

Is this just another example of what Roissy calls "Goodbye America"?`

 

[Upside]

I wouldn't put too much into it. It's like the aliens fad in the 90's. You had the vampire fad in the 2000's. Now, you have a zombie fad from ~2010+. Next, it'll probably be a ghost fad. No one wants to think about politics and work all the time. It's boring. I'm not into the zombie thing, but I get a kick out of it when people bring it up.

On that note, I'll be going to a zombie pub crawl getting drunk and meeting peeps in a few months. It isn't all bad.

Riots, financial collapse, etc is all so boring to hear about because it gets talked about all the damn time. If I see a riot in my city then I'll give a ****, but into then it's only news fodder to me. The problems existed in the 70's and they will exist now and forever in our lifetimes. I deal with money for my job, I don't want to hear about it after.

 

[ArcBound]

It's simply what the culture finds interesting at the time.

If you think about it, the rise of all culture comes from free time...Humans get batsh!t bored so we invent and play music, make art, come up with fictional stories. Zombies are simply in at the moment, wait 10 years and it will be something else.

 

[FairShake]

You sound fun.

 

[Warrior74]

Zombie Walks are fun. This thread is not.

 

[Vice]

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/hyundai_s_zombie_apocalypse_car

Sh*t like this.

Whatever, this is the hill I'll die on. I'll be entertained by silly sh*t like this when I am fortunate enough to not have enough challenges in my life.

 

[Deep Dish]

Zombies are an element within the superstition engine which runs somewhere in our brains. Zombies also hold anthropomorphic appeal. If you look at Gallup polls which find 80% of people hold at least one paranormal belief (probably 98% if you included ‘god’), the most popular beliefs have a connective nexus to affecting our lives, if only it were true. Horoscopes would tell people who they are, astrology would give people a sense of determinism to their lives; telepathy would give communication and connected understanding; gods would give poetic justice; ghosts and zombies avoid existentialism and gives us immortal life. Superstitious beliefs are selfishly motivated and have positive correlation with an external locus of control.

The Internet should also be credited with accelerating the spreading of cultural memes. Since when has people’s love of bacon been newsworthy of praiseworthiness?

Indigenous cultures do believe in zombies. Although our cultural fascination for the import may only be for fun and exploitation by Hollywood, it does quench the zombific appetite for magical thinking.

 

[SharinganUser]

Zombies, like any other monsters, are representations of our base fears and can actually provide an anthropological look into what people feared at the time.

In the old days, people thought that the 50ft woman was scary because there was a lot more sexism back in the day. If they released that kind of movie today, the feminazis would go ape-****, the kids would ask her why she wasn't taken down with a railgun, and the men in the audience would be wondering how they would fvck her. It's just not scary for anyone.

Zombies on the other appeal to several different fears that people have, namely the fear of becoming like so many of the brain dead sheeple that hang around malls and suburban neighbourhoods, much like zombies do in the movies.

With that in mind, when new fears arise, new monsters and scary stories will rise in popularity.