The Madness of Crowds and Bigfoot

There is enough evidence at this point to call the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage a hoax. In my twenties, I thought it was incredible footage and suspected it might be real. But years ago I watched a frame-by-frame analysis that I found pretty convincing. What stood out to me was the shape of the feet. They looked flat-bottomed, more like boots than anything you would expect from a primate or any other animal.

Now Roger Patterson’s son, Clint, says his mother admitted the whole thing was fake and that he saw his father burn the suit. More recently, test footage has surfaced that appears to show Patterson and Gimlin working out how to shoot the scene. I have not watched that footage myself, so take that for what it is worth.

But I did watch a committed believer who had seen it, and he came away basically heartbroken. He was convinced it was fake.

Here is a quick Substack overview:

All the details in one place: New doc shows the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film was hoaxed.

Here is the YouTube video from the streamer I mentioned:

What interests me about all this is not just whether the footage was fake. It is how people process evidence once they have decided they want something to be true. I can almost guarantee that some believers will take this debunking as confirmation that the original footage is genuine. In their minds, this is exactly what a cover-up would look like. They will say it proves there is a coordinated effort to discredit compelling evidence of something modern Westerners cannot bring themselves to accept as real.

That is how a lot of people think now. They decide what they want to believe first, and then go looking for material to justify it. You can see this dynamic all over the place, especially with conspiracy theories. Even saying that will discredit me with some people. They will respond, “All the conspiracy theories turned out to be true,” which is nonsense. A few did. Most did not.

But the broader mood really has changed. It used to be that if you thought a conspiracy might be true, people treated you like a crank. Now, in many circles, questioning a conspiracy is taken as proof that you are just a normie with your head in the sand. It is a strange times.

It's okay to question all this weird stuff right now. Keep your head.