All the NOPE
December 21, 2016 11:09 AM   Subscribe

 
this is awesome. the article's headline is truly unfortunate tho:

This Deep Sea Fisherman Posts His Discoveries on Twitter and OH MY GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE

if a genie gave me three wishes, I would probably waste one of them on eliminating this idiot meme-phrase from the internet's lazy response lexicon. fucking appreciate the badassery of nature or GTFO
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:15 AM on December 21, 2016 [45 favorites]


The image in the 1st link is of a ghost shark, I think?

Anyhow, these are cool as hell. Nothing here is even remotely as frightening as a bunch of glorified primates with internet access.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:15 AM on December 21, 2016 [29 favorites]


This is like that cursed images twitter except irl.
posted by phunniemee at 11:15 AM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


why would he touch these with his bare hands oh lordy
posted by GuyZero at 11:16 AM on December 21, 2016 [16 favorites]


the article's headline is truly unfortunate tho:

This Deep Sea Fisherman Posts His Discoveries on Twitter and OH MY GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE

if a genie gave me three wishes, I would probably waste one of them on eliminating this idiot meme-phrase from the internet's lazy response lexicon


Also, the writer apparently doesn't know how fire and/or seawater works.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:17 AM on December 21, 2016 [30 favorites]


I know we're supposed to be afraid of these sea monsters but I think they are neat looking and feel badly that they were just going along, minding their business, when their end came.

Of course, their business was probably killing smaller fish and eating them, so there are limits to my sympathy.
posted by maxsparber at 11:18 AM on December 21, 2016 [25 favorites]


I know the writer, by the way. Matt Novak, who also does Paleofuture. Used to hang out with him quite a bit in the Twin Cities.

I'd try to defend his use of the Kill It With Fire thing, but I remember going over to his place and he had just a ton of Disney cartoon shorts, and I'm a Warner Bros. dude, so I was never going to completely understand him.
posted by maxsparber at 11:22 AM on December 21, 2016 [21 favorites]


I was going to wildly guess the first image is that of a goblin shark but nope, goblin sharks are less typical looking creatures.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:26 AM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


eliminating this idiot meme-phrase

we could end its life, figuratively immolating it, if you will
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 11:26 AM on December 21, 2016 [63 favorites]


"kill it with fire" just sounds like maybe he was in college sometime in the past 5-15 years, kind of how a lot of people get stuck on only ever listening to the music they liked when they were 16.
posted by rhizome at 11:30 AM on December 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Guys, those are just hard-working sea creatures who were going about their business. It's like taking pictures of people on their morning commute and going "scary, right?" Yeah it's scary; they are on the way to work!
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:40 AM on December 21, 2016 [9 favorites]


Definitely not a goblin shark (aka the xenomorphs of the deep).
posted by xthlc at 11:45 AM on December 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I can't believe this place is so full of apologists for The Unholy Demon Horrors of the Deep. Yeah, kill it with fire seems a bit silly in this context but I fully support nuking them from orbit, just to be sure.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:51 AM on December 21, 2016 [10 favorites]


I think maybe I've been living next door to the world's biggest ratfish fan for too long -- most of those creatures looked pretty familiar to me.

The variety of life on this planet is much wider, and much weirder, than we generally imagine. And that's a good thing!
posted by Nerd of the North at 11:57 AM on December 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm with Slarty. ...And why do some have so many TEETH? Really, way more than seems necessary.
posted by scratch at 11:59 AM on December 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I was so close to making this my first FPP but then got cold feet >__>
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:00 PM on December 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


And the humanness of that first one's face (?)...oh, the humanness.
posted by scratch at 12:00 PM on December 21, 2016


I can't believe this place is so full of apologists for The Unholy Demon Horrors of the Deep
Innsmouth has had great internet access ever since some idiot submariner laid transatlantic cable right on top of Y'ha-nthlei.
posted by roystgnr at 12:01 PM on December 21, 2016 [10 favorites]


Aww... they're little Innsmouth babies.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:02 PM on December 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


I can't believe this place is so full of apologists for The Unholy Demon Horrors of the Deep.

Well, I was promised a cabinet position in the Dread Kingdom of Prophecy, when the Horrors of the Deep Will Wash Over the Land in a Tide of Blood, so despite whatever I may have said in the past I believe they offer a bold new vision for the future.
posted by invitapriore at 12:02 PM on December 21, 2016 [18 favorites]


Sorry, Soren! I was very surprised nobody'd done this one already.
posted by scratch at 12:03 PM on December 21, 2016


There is a post on Tumblr going around that says something like - we don't explore the deep oceans because we've all collectively agreed we're better off not knowing what's down there.

I'm terrified of the water. Like I side eye pools if I'm totally by myself even because I'm pretty sure when I'm not looking, the invisible great white in the deep end is going to pull me under and eat me.

I'm totally good with never knowing what the heck goes on down there. Megalodons? Mermaids? Plesiosaurs? Don't care, leave it alone. Let it be happy in the water because if you piss it off, it might climb up on land.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 12:03 PM on December 21, 2016 [12 favorites]


Me too, 80 Cats. ME TOO.
posted by scratch at 12:06 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Go home God/Evolution, you are drunk. (but these are interesting to look at)
posted by jeribus at 12:07 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


So, you're Barb in this scenario, 80 Cats? You forgot demogorgon.


Also, I kinda love most of these.
posted by Sophie1 at 12:09 PM on December 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I love all of them, and wish he would send them back home. Some are obviously very deep dwellers that have been disfigured by rapid decompression. I'm done with ogling nature, whether it's for cuteness or this. Leave it the fuck alone already.
posted by jetsetsc at 12:11 PM on December 21, 2016 [11 favorites]


I love water and have been an avid swimmer since before I could talk buuuut I would much rather view the creatures of the deep from afar. From a very far. I'm much happier in a swimming pool, tbh. Little fishies are fine BUT WHAT IF ONE OF THESE THINGS IS ALSO DOWN THERE SWIMMING AROUND MY FEETS??????
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:12 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


I would like to burn with fire the interface needed to see these evil creatures. Is there a way to see them that doesn't involve clicking on a cropped picture and opening a new window with a Twitter feed?
posted by chavenet at 12:20 PM on December 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


igne natura renovatur integra
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:22 PM on December 21, 2016


Scientists estimate that upwards of 64% of deep-sea life resemble creepy genitalia
posted by beerperson at 12:28 PM on December 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


BUT WHAT IF ONE OF THESE THINGS IS ALSO DOWN THERE SWIMMING AROUND MY FEETS??????

I guess it depends on how many thousands of feet long your legs are?
posted by GuyZero at 12:31 PM on December 21, 2016 [15 favorites]


my beautiful perfect babies I love all of them can I keep them can I keep them pleeeeeeease

Biology, marine and otherwise, is awesome. I heard Nature is already working on a fire-proof spider, by popular demand.
posted by byanyothername at 12:32 PM on December 21, 2016 [20 favorites]


I've already started planning out how to use these for my Lovecraft woodprints. That first one will look great in John Dee's robes.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:34 PM on December 21, 2016 [6 favorites]


Let's see how you look when the ambient pressure changes by a couple orders of magnitude.
posted by zamboni at 12:35 PM on December 21, 2016 [27 favorites]


The one looked like some kind of drippy praying mantis made of black slime until I realized that was its mouth, and then the picture looked at me and said, "I've just got my own way, dude."
posted by Mister Moofoo at 12:37 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


if a genie gave me three wishes, I would probably waste one of them on eliminating this idiot meme-phrase from the internet's lazy response lexicon.

If you did, we would just switch to suggesting that the reader should take off and nuke the site from orbit, as that is the sole method that provides certainty.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:53 PM on December 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


Cuuuuuuuute!
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:57 PM on December 21, 2016


...And why do some have so many TEETH?

All the better to kiss you with, my dear....
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:59 PM on December 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


robocop is bleeding: "I've already started planning out how to use these for my Lovecraft woodprints. That first one will look great in John Dee's robes."

DAMN IT! I came in here to state R'lyeh is rising. Stupid beat-me-to-the-punchline person!
posted by Samizdata at 1:00 PM on December 21, 2016


i mean i love the ocean, i love swimming, i love even the baby octopus that angrily inked me one day at punta galera bc apparently i dropped a big rock on its house, but i could live for 10,000 years in the most landlocked place on earth and still recall with perfect clarity the unimaginable horror of having something unseen brush my leg in deep water oh my god
posted by poffin boffin at 1:01 PM on December 21, 2016 [12 favorites]


anyway this post is missing the eldritch horrors of the deep tag
posted by poffin boffin at 1:01 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


"Kill it with acid" is more apt, and literally true anyway.
posted by MillMan at 1:09 PM on December 21, 2016


Teeth should not have teeth

TEETH SHOULD NOT HAVE TEETH
posted by schadenfrau at 1:10 PM on December 21, 2016 [18 favorites]


anyway this post is missing the eldritch horrors of the deep tag

Well, it's missing a coherent title or description, so what's one more tag?

<img src="zoidberg_feel_bad.gif">
posted by zamboni at 1:11 PM on December 21, 2016


Re: KILL IT WITH FIRE

Maybe he means "Boil it in a nice soup, I want to eat it?"
posted by blue_beetle at 1:13 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


The thing with all the teeth is a frilled shark I'm pretty sure.
posted by Pyry at 1:13 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


No monsters here. Most are pretty small, a few inches long at most. Some of the shallower living, lighter-colored fishes might be a couple of feet," Professor James Childress, who researches the biology of deep-sea animals at University of California Santa Barbara, told Seeker.

Really there is nothing here. Just a fisherman posting a few crappy pictures of relatively shallow living deep-sea creatures," Childress commented, not withholding his criticism of Fedortsov's photography skills. "They are very badly photographed. A shame to give it any attention as there are much better pictures and sites for deep-sea animals."
posted by zamboni at 1:17 PM on December 21, 2016 [7 favorites]


Thanks for the extra context Zamboni. I now can imagine that if you go down another few hundred meters it gets even more horrific!
posted by Braeburn at 1:22 PM on December 21, 2016


Pretty sure one of those is related to Admiral Akbar.
posted by theora55 at 1:22 PM on December 21, 2016


Most are pretty small, a few inches long at most.

Yeah, we couldn't tell from the fact that he was holding most of them in his hand. We thought his hand might be, like, six feet wide!

Really there is nothing here. Just a fisherman posting a few crappy pictures of relatively shallow living deep-sea creatures

Childress then walked off, muttering, "All my fucking life I've been studying these critters and no one gave a shit, but one fucking Russki fisherman gets a fucking Twitter account..."
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:25 PM on December 21, 2016 [25 favorites]


Is there a way to see them that doesn't involve clicking on a cropped picture and opening a new window with a Twitter feed?

I'm not sure what you're using, but I'm on Firefox on an Android, and as long as I'm patient, tweets always load in-page.
posted by greermahoney at 1:29 PM on December 21, 2016


I can't find the Instagram feed where he posts pictures of them after he cooks them.
posted by goatdog at 1:34 PM on December 21, 2016


Case Nightmare Green would go well with a side of tartar sauce.
posted by JohnFromGR at 1:36 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


This one is a pycnogonid! They're kind of amazingly weird and totally worth reading about. They have open circulatory systems and their gut goes up into their legs!
posted by Akhu at 1:42 PM on December 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


It's funny - when I look at these, I find them kind of reassuring. Sure, they have scary monster teeth and so on, but when you see things like that in horror movies they're evil and they eat people. These are just fish. They look scary, but it's only because we think that certain things look scary, not because we're responding to their innate evil and danger.

It's also kind of marvelous - we go to all this effort to tell stories about horrible slimy evil aliens with horrible teeth and work hard to create strange creatures that will surprise and astonish, but nature is full of marvels that aren't part of human good/evil narratives. That's pretty neat. It's nice to feel like the universe doesn't revolve around humans.
posted by Frowner at 1:44 PM on December 21, 2016 [13 favorites]


They have open circulatory systems and their gut goes up into their legs!

I've been attending a lot of catered office holiday parties this week and honestly this seems like an excellent idea.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:47 PM on December 21, 2016 [7 favorites]


scratch: And the humanness of that first one's face (?)...oh, the humanness.

Do it have a human face, or did we humans copy its face?

It's also kind of marvelous - we go to all this effort to tell stories about horrible slimy evil aliens with horrible teeth and work hard to create strange creatures that will surprise and astonish, but nature is full of marvels that aren't part of human good/evil narratives. That's pretty neat. It's nice to feel like the universe doesn't revolve around humans.

Exactly.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:55 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


That is a weird Twitter timeline. Horror, horror, legged horror, Pinterest wedding cake, horror, inspirational message, horror, bulbous horror.
posted by maryr at 1:57 PM on December 21, 2016 [10 favorites]


There's just something about deep sea creatures... A while ago, there was a post on the Blue about this squid that had elbows. I watched the video and I've never had such a genuine chill run up my spine from seeing something that registered as WRONG. It wasn't even that it was gross or icky, it just seemed alien in a way that triggered something in my lizard backbrain.

So unless aliens are of the Star Trek kind (people with different head ridges) a career in xenobiology is right out for me.
posted by charred husk at 1:59 PM on December 21, 2016


Doesn't a lot of the NOPE come from the fact that these creatures are meant to live at extreme pressures? Apart from the sea-spider most of the creatures look bloated. Eyes popping out. Personally I think this is fucked up. I imagine a human in a similar situation would look like Baron Harkonnen.

I hate spiders due to a bad series of bites as a kid* but I don't get upset when I see them in bushes or outside, they just aren't allowed in my bathroom.

*It crawled up my back biting along the way, in my special meditation sitting chair in my bedroom while I was playing NES. So my safe space. About 10 bites.
posted by kittensofthenight at 2:06 PM on December 21, 2016


The Moscow Times article linked in the buzzfeed article was more informative and less hyper.

Love the pics. I wonder why these pictures are so viscerally terrifying. What actually makes bulbous eyes and slimy skin so universally scary?
posted by Omnomnom at 2:08 PM on December 21, 2016


That is a weird Twitter timeline. Horror, horror, legged horror, Pinterest wedding cake, horror, inspirational message, horror, bulbous horror.

The thread about Donald Trump is thataway --->>
posted by beerperson at 2:10 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


> I'm terrified of the water. Like I side eye pools if I'm totally by myself even because I'm pretty sure when I'm not looking, the invisible great white in the deep end is going to pull me under and eat me.

If it helps, it's a tiger shark, not a great white. And there's only the one of them, so whatever pool you're looking at is probably not the one with the shark in it.

Also, MetaFilter: Horror, horror, legged horror, Pinterest wedding cake, horror, inspirational message, horror, bulbous horror.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 2:24 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's nice to feel like the universe doesn't revolve around humans.

Funny, the universe's indifference to humans was exactly the kind of thing that Lovecraft found so terrifying. I'm with you, though, Frowner. A universe that gives a crap about us and only us would feel kinda petty.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 2:40 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm no biologist, but I seem to recognize a few of those beasts as coming from extreme depths where the water pressure is so intense it's hard to fathom (ha, ha). Assuming they were accidentally snagged, bringing them up would cause their bodies to expand, deform and in other ways be injured by the comparative lack of pressure at the surface and that would contribute to their horrible appearance. Poor things.
posted by kinnakeet at 3:58 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Naaaah, I seen alla these in Jacques Coustaeu specials on PBS when I was a kid. But...I thought that the pressure change as they were brought up to the surface basically turned then inside out. Is that not so?

(How can he touch those nasty things with his bare hands?!)
posted by wenestvedt at 4:09 PM on December 21, 2016


That is a weird Twitter timeline. Horror, horror, legged horror, Pinterest wedding cake, horror, inspirational message, horror, bulbous horror.

Read metaphorically, that's what every day on Twitter is like for me.
posted by maxsparber at 4:45 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


CW: nightmare fuel

I legit thought this was going to be, like, some remix of clips from Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries.

The gasping eyeless fellow in the first pic has been at the top of io9 for a couple of days, and I must confess I won't be sorry to see him move on. (He always reminds me of the Pale Man.) I do feel bad for all the fishies though. They're all creepy as hell, but some of them don't look evil and are even kind of cute in an absolutely hideous way.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:57 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


such an idiotic reaction to life, and your own cousins.

don't worry, fools, humanity is killing things with fire
posted by eustatic at 5:18 PM on December 21, 2016


These are so amazing. When I see creatures like this, I just think how wide and varied the things I don't know are. I will never be able to see all the things, and so new things fill me with wonder and delight.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:53 PM on December 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Really there is nothing here. Just a fisherman posting a few crappy pictures of relatively shallow living deep-sea creatures," Childress commented, not withholding his criticism of Fedortsov's photography skills. "They are very badly photographed. A shame to give it any attention as there are much better pictures and sites for deep-sea animals."

Wait, he's shaming people for being interested in pictures that he feels are subpar? I think he's the guy that comes to the party and tells you how much your TV sucks.
posted by bongo_x at 8:13 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


Right? It's cool that the guy posting these pictures is some fisherman from Murmansk, not a fancy marine biologist. Sorry his camera work is crappy but he is primarily, ya know, a fisherman.

And I think these pictures are awesome!
posted by pintapicasso at 10:25 PM on December 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


I propose we trade "Kill it with fire" for "Feed it to the Russian's fish."
posted by notyou at 11:17 PM on December 21, 2016


tfw the angler fish is the least creepy-looking thing in the slideshow...
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 1:16 AM on December 22, 2016


I think he's the guy that comes to the party and tells you how much your TV sucks.

No, he's the guy who come to the party and tells everyone that he doesn't have a TV.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:53 AM on December 22, 2016


The tragic subtext to this is that trawling destroys deep sea ecosystems.
posted by constantinescharity at 8:00 AM on December 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


All I see are a lot of dead, beautiful monsters :(
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 10:13 AM on December 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


I lived on a boat with my dad when I was 12, and we'd be sailing out in the ocean, days away from land. To pass the time I'd sit in the wheel well and look at the depth perceptor, a nifty thing that used sonar to estimate how deep the water is.

That far out in the ocean it always showed dashes (----), which meant that the water was too deep for the machine to calculate. But then, sometimes, the display would change and register a depth. 12 feet, 50 feet, 3 feet. It would do that for a while, sometimes 3 seconds, sometimes 30, and then go back to dashes.

I asked my dad what it meant when it did that and he said "something large just swam under our boat."

I'd pretend it was just a tightly-packed school of tiny little friendly fish that the sonar was pinging off of, but sometimes, like when it read "15 feet" for a few seconds, then nothing, then "15 feet" again, rinse and repeat, like whatever it was was coming back for second and third rounds, well...

The ocean is mysterious, and scarier to me than outer space.
posted by staggering termagant at 11:08 AM on December 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


The ocean is mysterious, and scarier to me than outer space.

The difference is that you can't breathe in outer space
posted by beerperson at 11:11 AM on December 22, 2016


Mostly it just makes me sad, all these wonderful creatures brought up to die. Not even for food, just bycatch, part of a process of destroying an entire ecosystem with trawling.
posted by tavella at 11:17 AM on December 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Leave them in the sea, is that so difficult to understand?
Humanity is perhaps the only apex predator that can comprehend the impact of their actions, yet we behave like the opposite is true.
I have friends and family who have stopped eating fish completely because there is no excuse for continuing the industrial level destruction of the ocean habitat. There are some people who rely on fishing for their protein, but they aren't the ones in the super trawlers!
posted by asok at 1:08 PM on December 22, 2016


The difference is that you can't breathe in outer space

No, the difference is that, in space, no one can hear you scream, but, in the ocean, whales can hear you scream from a surprising distance.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:40 PM on December 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


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