Christmas Eve from JB's Twitter (no news, just fun)

[Dina]

Definitely after PT. It has some spoilers.

[KurtinStGeorge]

I think that goes a long way to making my point. A bunch of people believe in supernatural things, but don't talk about it because they don't want to be teased, and I'm not just talking about religious beliefs. In 2017, only about 25% of Americans said they didn't believe in ghosts, according to one poll.

But then you have other people who not only believe, they will go to great lengths to tell you about their beliefs or tell you their story of supernatural encounters.

I used to work with a person who; during an after-work converstaion, went into great detail about a ghost encounter she once had and why she knew it wasn't a hallucination or a prank.  This dispite the fact she had previously told me she had been a heavy drinker and drug user at the time of her encounter.   

Just this past Summer I met a man who is retired, whose hobby is to travel to various parts of the country with large forrests where he finds animal trails and places video cameras, set to film in very low light conditions and has them set up to start recording when motion sensors pick up movement.  (He must have lots of recordings of possums, owls, coyotes, the occasional mountain lion or bear.)  He collects animal fecal matter and sends it to labs for DNA tests.  As you might guess he's looking for evidence of Bigfoot. (As a side note I asked him he if was part of that TV show (Finding Bigfoot, I think) that looks for Bigfoot.  He was somewhat dissmissive of the show but he didn't go into details and I didn't press him for his reasons.)  He told me and several others; this was at a dinner party, that just a few weeks before he was in a forrest (in Kentucky, I think) where he was out at night checking his cameras and a Bigfoot came up right behind him, "I could feel his breath on the back of my neck."  He said a friend who was helping him, came looking for him, calling his name and the Bigfoot ran off, and even though he spun around to take a flash picture the only thing his cell phone camera got a picture of was disturbed leaves moving on low hanging tree branches.  He told us that he was next going to someplace in the Pacific North West to check out the latest "convincing" sightings he had heard about.

(I didn't laugh and I was very polite; because you never know how a mentally unbalanced person might react if you tell them that you doubt the CIA has satellites that can look inside their head and that can secretly control them.  However, I did say he was lucky it wasn't a bear that had come up behind him, because black bears aren't usually agressive but if you were to incur on their territory or if they felt threatened things could go bad fast.)
 
Anyway the point I want to make is that while fewer people may say they believe in things that go bump in the night, the ones who do can be very vocal about it.  Plus, with the internet, cable TV and social media, it's easier than ever for these people to spread their messages of experiencing supernatural encounters.   

[Mr. Death]

The important thing, though, is not that they said it.

I'm guessing you didn't go and search for the ghost or bigfoot yourself, or tell people the story as if you believed it to be true, no matter how sincere those other folks were.

[forumghost]

Exactly. The thing to note here (at least re; the masquerade) is not their belief in their stories, it's the fact that by your own admission you dismissed them because clearly the first was just the result of Drug/Alcohol abuse and the second was, in your own words "a mentally unbalanced person".

The masquerade works in the dresden files because people don't want to know, and those that do are dismissed out-of-hand as nutters.

[123Chikadee]

The reason the masquerade bugs me in Dresden Files is because of the idea that everyone acts so uniform about the whole thing. I mean I'm glad that certain creatures and beings can use their abilities to skate by undetected, which makes sense to me. So does not telling people about your experiences due to being ridiculed. Though, I imagine if you went on the internet, you could find a safe place to talk about your experiences.
Where are the people who, when they encountered the supernatural they ran towards it because they wanted to understand it? I get that some would die, but all of them doing so just seems unlikely. Sure they'd get dismissed as out of hand nutters, but what if they offered proof? And not that bad lighting shaky cam, we can't see anything, let alone being in high quality stuff. Are ghost hunters not a thing in this verse and if so, they've never run into the genuine article?
I just want a Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson to break the masquerade with science. LOL, is that too much to ask?

[Mr. Death]

Where are the people who, when they encountered the supernatural they ran towards it because they wanted to understand it?

Dead or enslaved, mostly. Or, if they're very, very, very lucky, the supernatural thing they ran toward recruited them and brought them into the masquerade.

Sure they'd get dismissed as out of hand nutters, but what if they offered proof? And not that bad lighting shaky cam, we can't see anything, let alone being in high quality stuff. Are ghost hunters not a thing in this verse and if so, they've never run into the genuine article?

What proof? The ectoplasm that evaporates to literally nothing in seconds?

I just want a Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson to break the masquerade with science. LOL, is that too much to ask?

Well, kind of yes. Supernatural creatures have thousands of years of experience and knowledge on how to stay hidden.

Tyson tries to "prove" Faeries exist? One of them gets to him, glamours him, and at best he's reduced to being on par with the "Aliens" *hand gesture* guy.

Or they kill him.

The supernatural creatures aren't just dumb animals waiting to be discovered. They're intelligent, amoral, devious, organized and deadly creatures that do not want to be discovered and take steps up to and including murder and mind-rape to keep it from happening.

[123Chikadee]

Yeah, all the stuff you're saying is true. I'm just getting frustrated with how one-sided this all is in favor of the supernatural. I'm waiting for the moment in the series that's the equivalent of Chitauri opening up a wormhole in the sky and invading Manhatten and the subsequent defense of the world by the Avengers. Then humanity could actually get the show on the road in stopping baddies.

[Bad Alias]

(I didn't laugh and I was very polite; because you never know how a mentally unbalanced person might react if you tell them that you doubt the CIA has satellites that can look inside their head and that can secretly control them.)

This is my favorite part of your story. It's very true. Those people can be scary. Also, why was he checking trail cameras at night? (Because he was crazy).

Where are the people who, when they encountered the supernatural they ran towards it because they wanted to understand it?

They're with the Venatori or on the Paranet. Most people wouldn't try to prove they exist because if they learned enough about it, they would be scared of the consequences of saying loudly and convincingly "look at this [supernatural thing]" because some supernatural thing would likely kill them/turn them into a thrall. Dresden was concerned that the White Council, the nominal good guys, would get rid of people who learned about them. Also, that is exactly what Susan was trying to do. Basically no one believed her, and it didn't work out well for her. And if all else fails, the government will disappear whatever hard evidence, and witnesses to the hard evidence, does manage to make a big splash.

The masquerade in the Dresden Files is more convincing to me than in any other story I've come across.

[123Chikadee]

I think maybe another reason that it's driving me nuts is because of how many times it's been reiterated that getting humanity involved is the equivalent of the nuclear option. I just want the narrative to put its money where it's mouth is.
To me, the masquerade for DF is at times both convincing and not in parts. I think, anyway, that a lot of my back and forth on that stance is that this is set in the 21st century and we have cameras everywhere and our level of technology and weaponry is getting farther along. We're also practically attached to our phones, which have become almost like swiss army knives in terms of function.
I know, I know, magic shorts out technology, the finer and more complex the faster. Why though-aside from being psychosomatic I can't see much reason-why wouldn't the reverse be true? We've seen from Butters that a level of magitech is possible, so yeah I wanna see more of that.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I think it wasn't a good idea writing wise to have magic short out tech if it the story was urban fantasy set in the 20/21st century. Though you can't always predict what/how things will advance in real time, I just think it could be easy to underestimate how some pieces of technology can become ubiquitous to a society. And I know this is probably unfounded at least for this series, but the idea that magic trumps technology and hardly ever in the reverse just feels like an author going, 'magic wins! Neener neener neerer take that stupid science!' but wow, this got off topic, sorry bout that. 

[forumghost]

I mean, why would the reverse be true?

Magic disrupts technology not because Magic is Better (the entire reason Jim invented the mechanism is because Harry having a cell phone would make life too easy) but because wizards lets of ambient mojo that messes with/disrupts stuff in the world around them, and the current iteration of that is "tech breaks easier".

[123Chikadee]

Well, no reason for it to, but I just wish we were given a reason why it isn't.
Oh, with Jim I know that to be true. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that. I just got Harry Potter flashbacks and I think it's become a knee-jerk reaction for me.
Although I don't agree with that particular writing choice, but it's not my series, so.

[Dina]

Also, when Harry began, technology was quite different. I mean, we didn't have as many phones and our phones didn't have cameras and a thousand apps. I suppose it's difficult to keep with the times.

[123Chikadee]

Very true. Advancements can be very difficult to predict. I mean, this series started out in the year 2000 right?

[Dina]

Yes.

[123Chikadee]

Yeah ok, I just wanted to make sure. Thanks.