Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Land and I'm Christian Savior. Yeah
Speaker 1: all right, everybody, you ask for it, so you got it. Um,
Speaker 1: everyone can really dig our creepy popta episode that we did,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, we expect. We did it back in October,
Speaker 1: doing our our slew of Halloween themed science the episode
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, And so if you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: that one yet, I recommend you go back and listen
Speaker 1: to it. But the basic premise was, uh if creepy
Speaker 1: pastas are short horror stories that are kind of memes
Speaker 1: written for the Internet or just based on images for
Speaker 1: the Internet, right, and we took I think three of
Speaker 1: them that were very science e oriented. It turns out
Speaker 1: a couple of these things are are basically like such
Speaker 1: and such thing happens in a mad laboratory, Chaos and sues, crazy,
Speaker 1: experience gets out of hand, people pull their skin off,
Speaker 1: people can't sleep, that sort of thing. And we used
Speaker 1: it as a springboard to talk about actual science that
Speaker 1: not so much the science behind the creepy pasta, but
Speaker 1: the science that can still if you follow the tracks
Speaker 1: of the science from the Creepy Pasta, then you can
Speaker 1: get to some some really cool studies and whatnot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we took a look at three of them and
Speaker 1: then there was a really positive response to that episode.
Speaker 1: So we have been recommended over. You know, actually this
Speaker 1: is a good opportunity to plug the ways to contact us.
Speaker 1: People have contacted us on Facebook, on Twitter, on tumbler,
Speaker 1: and then have emailed us directly asking us, hey do
Speaker 1: more creepy pastas. Uh, and specifically they wanted us to
Speaker 1: cover something called Jeff the Killer. And I was totally
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with this until it was sent to us. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh, I gotta I gotta be honest, It's not exactly,
Speaker 1: uh my favorite of the creepypostas I've read, but I
Speaker 1: can see why it's compelling, especially it's largely based off
Speaker 1: of just like a single image that looks like a
Speaker 1: photoshop kind of creepy joker thing. Yeah, and the image itself.
Speaker 1: I was sort of following the the leads. They're like,
Speaker 1: where did it come from? And it's one of these
Speaker 1: things where you know, somebody on some message board manipulated
Speaker 1: an image someone else manipulated it, and then there's there's
Speaker 1: some creepy tales about what the underlying image was. So
Speaker 1: some of that is kind of compelling in the sort
Speaker 1: of weird, creepy pasta Where did it come from? Let's
Speaker 1: touch on that just a little bit further. So Aneline
Speaker 1: Knew It's over at I O nine has an article
Speaker 1: the uh that is basically like the expose of of
Speaker 1: potentially where the image came from. And apparently some folks
Speaker 1: over at four chan did some detective work and they
Speaker 1: found out that the image that Jeff the Killer is
Speaker 1: based on is a photoshopped image of a girl who
Speaker 1: was being bullied. Uh. Was she being bullied on the
Speaker 1: internet or in real life allegedly anyway, I don't know
Speaker 1: to what extent that all, and and killed herself due
Speaker 1: to the bullying. This is the again another story. There's
Speaker 1: been no evidence to bring this up other than that
Speaker 1: that there seems to be some connection and they they
Speaker 1: brought up the photo and yet does it looks like
Speaker 1: it's the original photo that this was photoshopped off? So
Speaker 1: even the origin story of this image, this manipulated images
Speaker 1: kind of kind of goes into like the creepier arthor
Speaker 1: side of the Internet, which I think adds to its
Speaker 1: it's appeal. Yeah, um, yeah, I get it. I mean
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's necessarily true or not. I'm
Speaker 1: like pretty sure Jeff the Killer itself is not true,
Speaker 1: and we are not going to if you want to
Speaker 1: read it, you know, stop the podcast, Google Jeff the Killer.
Speaker 1: It's on the Creepy Pasta site. But the gist. You
Speaker 1: want me to just throw the summary out there right now?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I will. I do want to mention that
Speaker 1: that this is one that, like some of the creepy
Speaker 1: pastas out there, it's gotten to the point where authors
Speaker 1: will step forward or authors or saying I wrote this
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. This is one that does not
Speaker 1: seem to have an attributed author. If I'm wrong on that,
Speaker 1: let us know and we we'll give you know, proper
Speaker 1: credit where it to do. But this one seems to
Speaker 1: this is an older one. It seems to just they're
Speaker 1: different versions of it. Most of them are not not
Speaker 1: not not not the most well crafted bits of fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as with most creepy apastas, the the idea I think
Speaker 1: is interesting with the prose execution kind of falls apart
Speaker 1: a little bit. And I think that's part it, right,
Speaker 1: because it's like, this is something it must be true.
Speaker 1: It's written so poorly, right, it's like the Wikipedia stories. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like it was written by five or six
Speaker 1: different people who have come in and kind of punched
Speaker 1: up certain sections drop And that is kind of the
Speaker 1: magic of the true creepypasta. You know, it shouldn't read like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a beginning horror rider is just dumping his
Speaker 1: his whole draft on the internet. Yeah, that's true. Um So, okay,
Speaker 1: this is the premise of Jeff the Killer. Uh So,
Speaker 1: there's this character named Jeff uh and he's a teenager
Speaker 1: and he uh is like subject to leeing. He and
Speaker 1: his brother. There's there's some implication in the version that
Speaker 1: I read that there's like a switch that goes off
Speaker 1: in his brain that kind of like unleashes his dark
Speaker 1: primal side or something like that during this bullying. Uh
Speaker 1: And there are multiple incidents in which, like he confronts
Speaker 1: the bullies and basically beats the living hell out of them,
Speaker 1: and then they show up at like a party or something.
Speaker 1: There's another incident where they hold him at gunpoint in
Speaker 1: front of his parents and other people. Uh and and
Speaker 1: and basically torture him and it causes his face to
Speaker 1: be burned. And so following this he goes insane and
Speaker 1: joker style from the dark Knight cuts a smile into
Speaker 1: his cheeks so he has a permanent smile, and then
Speaker 1: he burns off his own eyelids so that he can
Speaker 1: always see this smile. Uh. And then he subsequently you know,
Speaker 1: this is the like an origin story myth of a
Speaker 1: serial killer who goes from house to house. Uh and
Speaker 1: before he kills his victims, he says, go to sleep.
Speaker 1: I should also add no relation to killer Mike. Yeah, none,
Speaker 1: none that I know of, though Jeff the Killer is
Speaker 1: the supporter of Bernie Sanders. It turns out okay, but no. Um.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is is that so the story sort
Speaker 1: of starts off as like a from the perspective of
Speaker 1: somebody who's about to be killed by Jeff the Killer,
Speaker 1: and then it kind of flings backwards and reveals the
Speaker 1: origin of Jeff the Killer. Um. And it so you're
Speaker 1: probably listening to this and going, where's the science? What
Speaker 1: would possibly be about those of you out there who
Speaker 1: are like these guys have gone a little bit over
Speaker 1: the deep end with the monster horror stuff. We we
Speaker 1: actually did a little bit of digging, and it turns
Speaker 1: out uh not Jeff the Killer wise. But there's three
Speaker 1: topics that we want to touch on here. Uh. One,
Speaker 1: people giving themselves permanent smiles and the science of fake
Speaker 1: smiling and how our minds react to it. To the
Speaker 1: idea of eyelid replacement surgery, which is apparently much bigger
Speaker 1: of a thing than I thought it would be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a it's a rather complex procedure and
Speaker 1: an important one in terms of reconstructive of plastic surgery.
Speaker 1: And then the third one is that there's there is
Speaker 1: a strong reality of acid attacks out there. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's it's largely common in countries uh in like Afghanistan, Cambodia,
Speaker 1: I believe, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. All of these countries have
Speaker 1: like pretty high incidents and I was shocked to find
Speaker 1: out how often this happens. So well, we'll touch on
Speaker 1: that briefly. Yeah, and that is that's going to be
Speaker 1: you know, some dark, real life stuff there at the end,
Speaker 1: but I encourage you to stick with it. We actually
Speaker 1: had a discussion about whether we should actually discuss that, Like,
Speaker 1: is it is it right to start a podcast off
Speaker 1: with something kind of light and stupid and end up
Speaker 1: in a dark and serious place. But I think so.
Speaker 1: I think it's It's a topic that's worth if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with it, it's worth becoming familiar with this topic.
Speaker 1: And this is probably one of the better opportunities for
Speaker 1: us to discuss it, because it's not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing we would do an entire episode on for this show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean I wasn't. Um. I was familiar
Speaker 1: that this was a thing that happened occasionally, like that
Speaker 1: I would hear about in the news, But when we
Speaker 1: did the research for this episode, I was shocked to
Speaker 1: find out how frequent it is. And uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it deserves, you know, some time on this episode
Speaker 1: and for people to learn a little bit more about it.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that I learned a little bit more about
Speaker 1: it doing the research. So let's uh, let's let's start
Speaker 1: off with the smiling thing. Okay, So this is a
Speaker 1: recurring motive in our fiction, the idea of a sort
Speaker 1: of creepy smile, right, um uh, it comes up over
Speaker 1: and over again. Obviously, The thing most people think about
Speaker 1: is the Joker for the Batman Villa and the Joker,
Speaker 1: which varying depictions either like the dark nightyas the Glassgow
Speaker 1: smile yeah, the Glassgow grind where it's been cut in
Speaker 1: other times as a frozen grin ye, and what he's
Speaker 1: wearing a like a face. Recently, I haven't really been
Speaker 1: keeping up. Yeah, I think I haven't read that storyline either,
Speaker 1: but my understanding is, yeah, he had his own face
Speaker 1: cut off and then sewed it back on in a
Speaker 1: smile it. But then I think they've already read contact,
Speaker 1: so he's like that was just like for a year
Speaker 1: or two or something, they but they basically wanted to
Speaker 1: like up the gross out horror factor with a Joker,
Speaker 1: and I think they've scaled back from that, probably because
Speaker 1: they have that Suicide Squad movie coming out later this
Speaker 1: summer with Jared Leto as the like punk rock uh
Speaker 1: kid rock version version of the Joker. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: creepy fake smile. We you know, we encounter that throughout
Speaker 1: our myth cycles. One of the one of the ones
Speaker 1: that I really have been impressed with. And this is
Speaker 1: a recent phenomenon dating back to around nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: and Japan's uh Nagasaki prefecture. Uh. This is uh the
Speaker 1: the urban legend of the slit mouthed woman or Kuchasaki
Speaker 1: Ona and uh basically the urban legend is that this
Speaker 1: this woman was mutilated by her husband. Um. She he
Speaker 1: like slits her the corners of her mouth. So she
Speaker 1: has this slit uh slit face and her ghost wanders around,
Speaker 1: comes up with people and ask do you think I'm beautiful?
Speaker 1: And it's apparently like a whole program of how you respond, uh,
Speaker 1: like if you say yes, she'll kill you one way,
Speaker 1: if you say no, she'll kill you another. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's very well versed in this sort of
Speaker 1: grotesque fake smile. Yeah. Yeah, so this seems to have
Speaker 1: particular resonance in Asian cultures. Um. So there's that myth
Speaker 1: I think of Ichi the Killer that MK a movie, UM,
Speaker 1: which I guess is probably part of the inspiration for
Speaker 1: where that Christopher Nolan Joker came from the idea of
Speaker 1: the Glasgow We should probably explain what a Glasgow smile is.
Speaker 1: Obviously the idea of the street gangs in Glasgow would
Speaker 1: slice your face, uh, but give you a fake it
Speaker 1: was sort of like their way to mark you. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I was surprised. I think the actor, I think
Speaker 1: his name is Tommy Flanaganda from Sons of Anarchy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he actually has like somebody did that to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had no idea he was I think a DJ
Speaker 1: back in the day because assaulted leaving the club. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, so that's a real thing. Um yeah, each
Speaker 1: of the killer And then we're gonna find as we're
Speaker 1: talking about it, like there's a big plastic surgery movement
Speaker 1: in South Korea that's connected to this sort of enhanced
Speaker 1: fake smile as well. Yeah, And of course if you
Speaker 1: want to see a fake smile, you don't have to
Speaker 1: turn to ghost stories and other cultures because they're everywhere,
Speaker 1: right the politician, the car salesman, um me. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: like you know, I try my best and I guess
Speaker 1: our stuff to believe in my promotion with those, but
Speaker 1: I'm terrible. I'm one of those people that's just terrible
Speaker 1: at smiling and photographs. And my wife teases me about
Speaker 1: it all the time that I'm like that I look
Speaker 1: even creepier when I'm trying to smile, and it's that
Speaker 1: it's that thing where I'm smiling with my mouth but
Speaker 1: not with my eyes. Yeah, it's because the smile, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, is far more complex than just that
Speaker 1: fake smile, and we can tell when somebody's fake smiling.
Speaker 1: And I mean, it gets complicated, but it basically comes
Speaker 1: down the way I always think about facial expressions is
Speaker 1: your face is a communication array. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: just about voice, it's not just about body and movements.
Speaker 1: It it's it's about you know, where your eyes are looking,
Speaker 1: what you'r what, all the expressions and micro spressions, how
Speaker 1: they're coming together to communicate with another. Uh, facial communication array. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nonverbal communications studies, Uh, outside of just body language,
Speaker 1: like the broad study of body language, facial communication is huge,
Speaker 1: and it adds a ton to how we communicate with
Speaker 1: one another outside of you know, our our verbal communications. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: think about when you're talking on the phone, It's it's
Speaker 1: much more limited compared to when you're talking to someone
Speaker 1: face to face and you can actually see the different
Speaker 1: ways they're communicating. I'm like waving in my face right now. Yea.
Speaker 1: And of course these are the problems inherent in both
Speaker 1: podcasting and email communication, especially So essentially though, there are
Speaker 1: two types of smiles then you can think of as
Speaker 1: the fake and the genuine smile. So first you have
Speaker 1: the doucheen smile. And this is named for French physician
Speaker 1: Gillama Duchen, who in eighteen sixty two conducted a slew
Speaker 1: of experiments essentially electrocuting people's facial muscles into outrageous grins.
Speaker 1: See like, we didn't really have to go too far
Speaker 1: from Jeff the Killer through science to get to something
Speaker 1: just as creepy electrocuting people's faces into smiles. Yeah, science
Speaker 1: is inherently weird. So in these cases, the electrical current
Speaker 1: activates contractions in two muscles, the voluntary zygomatic major, which
Speaker 1: raises the corners of the mouth, and the involuntary orbicularious oculi,
Speaker 1: which raises the cheeks and spreads crowth's feet across around
Speaker 1: the eyes. And that's really that's the that's the part
Speaker 1: that jin generates the idea of the real smile, right
Speaker 1: at the crow's feet and the cheeks raising up um.
Speaker 1: There's have also been research There has also been research
Speaker 1: done that patients with damage to their motor cortex and
Speaker 1: their brains left hemisphere. They can only smile asymmetrically, with
Speaker 1: the right side not moving the way it should uh.
Speaker 1: And here's the trick, though, if they laugh spontaneously they
Speaker 1: smile normally, they they'll do one of the douchen uh
Speaker 1: smiles without asymmetry. So likewise, when a patient with damage
Speaker 1: to their anterior singulate, which is part of the limbic
Speaker 1: system UH in your brain, when they try to smile,
Speaker 1: there's no asymmetry. It's symmetrical. Uh. This whole thing leads
Speaker 1: to the hypothesis that the fake smile, what is sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to as the say, cheese smile, is controlled by
Speaker 1: the mos or cortex, where the duchene smile is actually
Speaker 1: controlled by the limbic system, which is the actual emotional
Speaker 1: center of the brain. So it's two different parts of
Speaker 1: the brain interacting. And not only does our brain generate
Speaker 1: the smiles differently, but it responds to other people's versions
Speaker 1: of these smiles differently. But of course this is because
Speaker 1: so essentially we've we've outlined here that there is the
Speaker 1: genuine smile, there's the fake smile. But of course can
Speaker 1: we tell the difference are creepy smiles creepy because we
Speaker 1: can see through the con well. A two thousand thirteen
Speaker 1: study from the University of La Laguna, Spain investigated and
Speaker 1: they found it on first glance test, subjects had a
Speaker 1: very hard time recognizing that fake smile, which surprised me
Speaker 1: because there are fake smiles out there that you you
Speaker 1: look at it, and maybe it's more a matter of
Speaker 1: projecting on that person, like this politician is smiling, it
Speaker 1: must be fake. That's funny than you said, politician, because
Speaker 1: that's where I immediately go to as well. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: dead smile of certain politicians. But yeah, there's another study
Speaker 1: that was done out of North Eastern University in Boston
Speaker 1: that found that two thirds of individuals can fake a
Speaker 1: deucene smile well in a way that people can't distinguished,
Speaker 1: They can't tell whether they're fake smiling or real smiling.
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those two. I'm know I'm the
Speaker 1: one third that can't do it because whenever I do it,
Speaker 1: it looks like, you know, I'm dead inside, like I
Speaker 1: look like Jeff the Killer. Well, then there's also this
Speaker 1: I feel like there's this feeling daily interactions. Um, not me,
Speaker 1: any of it, just everyone is that fake smiles are
Speaker 1: kind of uh expected fake smiles, fake laughter. So sometimes
Speaker 1: you're you're chatting with somebody and there ha ha, they're laughing,
Speaker 1: they're smiling, and on some level I know that this
Speaker 1: interaction is either maybe not completely fake but at least
Speaker 1: punched up. Uh, And it feels okay because I expect that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is sort of the motions of every day like
Speaker 1: human beings just trying to get it along, right. And
Speaker 1: then there's sometimes maybe this says something more about me,
Speaker 1: Like every the audience is gonna learn today that I
Speaker 1: can't actually fake a smile and that I get irritated
Speaker 1: by people who do fake smiles. But like I'll be
Speaker 1: sitting there and overhearing kind of those you know, those
Speaker 1: conversations where I know one person is angry at the
Speaker 1: other person, but they're they're faking their way through it.
Speaker 1: They're smiling, they're doing the kind of fake laughter that
Speaker 1: to just kind of make their way through the conversation
Speaker 1: and get get away from conflict, right, avoid conflict. That
Speaker 1: drives me crazy. I'm conflict oriented, I guess, But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is it's it's it's every day. It's every day
Speaker 1: for human beings. Um, and it's there's tons of studies
Speaker 1: into this. Like when we dove into this, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: well that you know the Jeff the killer smile things.
Speaker 1: Sure there's gonna be a little bit of research into
Speaker 1: the fake smiles. But it was like a sea of research.
Speaker 1: I think we only script the top of it here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now to to return to that that Spanish when study
Speaker 1: I was mentioning just a second ago, they found that
Speaker 1: the longer they looked at the individual, the longer the
Speaker 1: longer one person looked at the other person, uh, taking
Speaker 1: in all the details of the expression, the more they
Speaker 1: saw through uh the ruse. However, in the cases, test
Speaker 1: subjects ultimately classified ambiguous smiles as happy, since their eyes
Speaker 1: were drawn more to the smile than to the eyes.
Speaker 1: And that probably has something to do, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: With these were both done in Western societies. There's an
Speaker 1: aversion to looking at people's eyes too long in Western culture.
Speaker 1: In facial communication as well. I used to talk about
Speaker 1: this with my students when I would I was teaching
Speaker 1: communication classes that like, if you you know, obviously you're
Speaker 1: expected to maintain eye contact for a certain amount of
Speaker 1: times so that you can convey your interests, right, But
Speaker 1: if you just stare directly into a person's eyes while
Speaker 1: you're communicating and don't unlock. It becomes very uncomfortable pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: right Uh, And so I wonder if that has something
Speaker 1: to do with it as well. But also like the
Speaker 1: crow's feet thing, right, Like that's a detail that becomes
Speaker 1: more obvious the longer that you're staring at somebody too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't stop staring at you this whole time.
Speaker 1: Yeah he didn't. He held he kept committed to the bit,
Speaker 1: and I was the only one who got to stick
Speaker 1: to it. I find myself in certain situations, Uh feel
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm playing a game of like staring
Speaker 1: chicken with someone, and I'll become super conscious, am I
Speaker 1: staring too long? It? Should I be breaking my eyes away?
Speaker 1: How uncomfortable am I? And then sometimes I think, should
Speaker 1: I just keep staring to maintain to like wine? And well,
Speaker 1: that's there's something to that as well, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in a second. Uh. But the whole thing is
Speaker 1: super confusing to our brains too, right, Like, think about
Speaker 1: our poor brains, Like it's trying to process generating these smells,
Speaker 1: but then it's trying to also process like interpreting whether
Speaker 1: these smells are genuine or not? Right, Uh, and U
Speaker 1: c l a scientist named Marco I A. Caboni, I
Speaker 1: believe it's how it's pronounced. Uh. He noted that our
Speaker 1: brains are actually, you know, wired for sociability. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: We're social animals, and if we observe another person smile,
Speaker 1: it mirrors the neurons in that person's brain. They will
Speaker 1: light up in our own brains as if we are
Speaker 1: smiling ourselves. Right, So there's that idea too, that like
Speaker 1: the smile is contagious, and then which we're we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about as well today, that the smile itself,
Speaker 1: whether it's genuine or not, generates happiness. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the the issue is is not as cut and dry.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, if the smile fake smile is
Speaker 1: cut into the person's face, yeah, you're probably gonna catch up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your brain will probably figure that one out. For the
Speaker 1: rest of us though, dealing with just normal fake smiles, Um,
Speaker 1: you're probably wondering, how can you consciously detect one? Well,
Speaker 1: we already mentioned that it's a little problematic, but according
Speaker 1: to body language expert Nicholas Freed, it you look at
Speaker 1: the crow's feet. Okay, look to look for their bottom teeth.
Speaker 1: If you can't see them, might be a fake smile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what that makes sense? Like, I guess when I think
Speaker 1: of like really emphasizing the fake smile to the point
Speaker 1: of like making it creepy on purpose, that's when you
Speaker 1: like you really like bite down on the teeth and uh,
Speaker 1: demonstrate your your your lower teeth. Yeah, I could see that,
Speaker 1: but then like you've got to keep those those eyes dead.
Speaker 1: No crow's feet. I wonder if people who know who
Speaker 1: you know, naturally through aging or whatever, just have more
Speaker 1: crow's feet are better at the faking thing. I don't
Speaker 1: know that. I'm sure there's somewhere that we missed on that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, basically, the the involuntary movements of the orbicularious
Speaker 1: oculi or key here. This can cause the eyes to close,
Speaker 1: while fake smilers often keep their their upper face very still,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't work. It might He's a media lab
Speaker 1: has developed an algorithm that allows machines to pinpoint fake
Speaker 1: happiness and frustration as well, which leads to a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of uh, you know, potential applications in our our
Speaker 1: cybernetic future. Right, you can have some sort of app
Speaker 1: in your your eyeball or your glasses that can cue
Speaker 1: you into fake. Yeah. It's it shows like the RoboCup display,
Speaker 1: Like it shows the basis face and then like a
Speaker 1: little thing comes up in It's like this person is faking. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into the faking part. Uh. There's some actual
Speaker 1: science to the fake it till you make it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know idea of making yourself happy. Yeah. A two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve study from the University of Kansas studied how
Speaker 1: smiling influences are recovery from stressful activities, and they found
Speaker 1: that a genuine smile resulted in faster recovery time and
Speaker 1: a more relaxed state. But even a fake smile can
Speaker 1: force your emotional state to follow suit. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: this is the same study. I read a couple of
Speaker 1: different studies, but I think this this is the one
Speaker 1: you're talking about. The title has Grin and Barrett the
Speaker 1: influence of manipulated positive facial expression on the Stress Response,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty hilarious title of a Tara Craft
Speaker 1: and Sarah Pressman. Uh and they is this the one
Speaker 1: where they use chopsticks? Yeah? Okay, so they use chopsticks
Speaker 1: to manipulate the facial muscles of a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: nine different participants, and from my understanding, they did it
Speaker 1: in a couple of different ways. I'd I didn't get
Speaker 1: to see any like images, and I'm assuming they must
Speaker 1: have taken pictures of video or something that went along
Speaker 1: with this. But some of them they bit down on
Speaker 1: the chopsticks. Others they like put the chopsticks in their
Speaker 1: mouths horizontally, so it was pushing uh, their their cheeks up,
Speaker 1: I think, um. But the general idea here was that
Speaker 1: they had three different positions that they put their faces in.
Speaker 1: There's the neutral expression, a standard smile, and the Duchen
Speaker 1: smile uh. And then they subjected them when they've got
Speaker 1: these chopsticks in their face, they subjected them to stress
Speaker 1: inducing multitasking activities uh. And obviously this is more difficult
Speaker 1: when you've got chopsticks shoved in your mouth. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the results were basically that those who were instructed to
Speaker 1: smile recovered from the stressful activity with a lower heart
Speaker 1: rate than those with the neutral expressions. So the Deuchen
Speaker 1: smile is the one that makes you the most relaxed.
Speaker 1: That's kind of weird. Um, regardless of how you're actually feeling,
Speaker 1: it will generate that relaxing feeling in you. And so
Speaker 1: there's lots of other studies that seem to indicate that
Speaker 1: the just smiling thing can produce a happy feeling. Uh.
Speaker 1: And from our own home based site how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, there's a article about the smiling happiness thing. UH.
Speaker 1: It says that in nine nine Robert Zajenck I believe
Speaker 1: I don't know how to pronounce that name z A
Speaker 1: j O n c q uh sounds Eastern European to me. Um,
Speaker 1: So sorry Robert. Uh. But he published a study where
Speaker 1: he had his subjects repeat vowel sounds over and over again,
Speaker 1: forcing their faces into various expressions. This is kind of
Speaker 1: like I guess like isometric exercises, um, and so to
Speaker 1: mimic a smile, they made an E sound to stretch
Speaker 1: the corners of their mouth outward. Then they also tested
Speaker 1: a long you sound, which is kind of like I
Speaker 1: guess you, which forced the mouth into about And then
Speaker 1: they reported their feelings after this, and of course, after
Speaker 1: doing the E for a long time, they felt good,
Speaker 1: and after doing the U sound for a long time
Speaker 1: they felt bad. Now, his research proposes that there's a
Speaker 1: physiological connection going on here between the facial changes and
Speaker 1: the brain activities that are associated with happiness. And he
Speaker 1: goes deep here. He says, Uh, the internal carotid artery.
Speaker 1: This is the pipe that's kind of like above your mouth.
Speaker 1: It delivers the majority of blood to the human brain.
Speaker 1: It flows through an opening in our heads called the
Speaker 1: cavernous sinus. And this contains a lot of our facial veins, right.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that when we're smiling, those veins
Speaker 1: are constricted and that cuts down on the flow of
Speaker 1: blood to our brain. Uh. And this makes the temperature
Speaker 1: in our brain drop, the blood of or at least
Speaker 1: the blood drop. The idea here is that the cooler
Speaker 1: your brain is, the better your emotions are going to be.
Speaker 1: They're going to be good emotions, according to research, whereas
Speaker 1: a war mer brain produces negative emotions. Interest. That's pretty wild. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um. His theory was basically that the reverse is
Speaker 1: also true, that that when your muscles are frowning, that
Speaker 1: increases the blood flow, which makes your brain warmer, which
Speaker 1: makes it more difficult to be happy, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess I think about like the temperature
Speaker 1: uh differences of various areas of the world where people live.
Speaker 1: There must be some kind of studies on like whether
Speaker 1: people who live in the Arctic, for instance, are uh,
Speaker 1: you know, more likely to be happy than I guess
Speaker 1: like people who live near the equator. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent they look to this
Speaker 1: area that we're discussing here, which is essentially the like
Speaker 1: the temperature constraints on the physical mechanisms of of facial happiness.
Speaker 1: I believe that that's the same mechanism that causes brain
Speaker 1: freeze to like when you're having like ice cream or
Speaker 1: popsicle or something like that. I think it. Uh. We've
Speaker 1: done research on this for an episode of brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: the video show that Joe and I write on uh,
Speaker 1: And I believe that that artery is what causes brain
Speaker 1: freeze that like the at least I think that is.
Speaker 1: You know, when you say that you and Joe have
Speaker 1: done research on this, I'm imagining you guys going out front,
Speaker 1: the two of us just eating ice cream until it
Speaker 1: hurts so much and then like putting our heads in
Speaker 1: m r I machines. Uh, if only, if only, but
Speaker 1: so it gets even crazier. Okay, so we've got chopsticks
Speaker 1: shoved in the face. We're talking about ice cream, right.
Speaker 1: What about botox injections? Oh yeah, So if you inject
Speaker 1: botox into your face, there's been research that shows that
Speaker 1: it dampens your emotional responses, specifically the ones that paralyze
Speaker 1: the small wrinkle causing muscles around the eyes, the crows feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you are interfering with the physical communication of emotion,
Speaker 1: but in this week weird sense, it's also affecting how
Speaker 1: you feel. Like we tend to think like here's the
Speaker 1: puppet master and here's the puppet and we think that
Speaker 1: everything's going on with the puppet Master is authentic and
Speaker 1: everything on the outside is just it's shadow, it's expression.
Speaker 1: But it's like the mind body connection. If everything is
Speaker 1: is is hooked together, everything is connected here. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: to the point that it not only reduces your happiness,
Speaker 1: it also reduces your depression as well. Um. So basically
Speaker 1: what they did was they showed people who had had
Speaker 1: botox injects and injections quote happy videos. So I'm imagining
Speaker 1: this is like cats or something like yeah, uh, and
Speaker 1: they recorded their emotional response to these things, and they
Speaker 1: found that, yeah, both their depression rate and their happiness
Speaker 1: rate were lowered. The effects were minder though, So I
Speaker 1: don't want to like paint the idea here that people
Speaker 1: turn into like emotionless robots when they get botox injections.
Speaker 1: But they also did a study on the botox thing
Speaker 1: at the University of Cardiff, and they found that the
Speaker 1: people would smile injections, so that this is different from
Speaker 1: the crow's feed injections. Uh, they're happier on average than
Speaker 1: people who can frown with a botox uh. Scientists at
Speaker 1: the Technical University of Munich also found that when they
Speaker 1: scanned botox recipients with f m ri I machines while
Speaker 1: those people were mimicking angry faces, they found that they
Speaker 1: had much lower activity in their brain circuits involved with
Speaker 1: emotional processing than those people who had not received botox treatment.
Speaker 1: So it is possible that maybe we would feel less
Speaker 1: pain if we weren't physically able to express it. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of an interesting turn of events on the
Speaker 1: whole botox Yeah. Yeah, you think it goes one way
Speaker 1: and then it flips the other here and then we
Speaker 1: should of course mentioned that all of this goes back
Speaker 1: to like the The granddaddy who who postulated a lot
Speaker 1: of this was Charles Darwin, and he proposed way back
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy two that facial expressions don't just reflect emotions,
Speaker 1: but they caused them as well. Uh And he actually
Speaker 1: is quoted as saying the free expression by outward signs
Speaker 1: of an emotion intensive is it? And he observed this
Speaker 1: in babies, and he said that babies that are born
Speaker 1: blind smile the same as babies that are cited. And
Speaker 1: the reason why, he thought was because at five weeks old,
Speaker 1: babies start learning to smile. And the reason why is
Speaker 1: that we learned that crying gets the attention of an adult,
Speaker 1: but smiling keeps them there. So whether you can see
Speaker 1: or not, you're able to um realize that that that
Speaker 1: has some kind of a cause and effect. Alright, one
Speaker 1: more thing I briefly mentioned this. So there's a connection
Speaker 1: between people who fight, uh and sort of like dominance
Speaker 1: in men specifically, and smiling as well. Research has been
Speaker 1: done that shows that fighters who smile authentically at another
Speaker 1: fighter before match are more likely to lose that match.
Speaker 1: Uh And and it's somehow linked smiling is somehow linked
Speaker 1: to testosterone, Like our thought of how much testosterone you
Speaker 1: have is linked to how authentic you're smiling. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so I gotta wonder, like what does that do to
Speaker 1: the whole fake smile system? Right? Does it indicate strengthen
Speaker 1: or not? Uh? And smiling also can sometimes indicate dominance, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're in a position of power, you may be
Speaker 1: smiling authentically the other person because you can, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I'm thinking, I'm instantly thinking of say brock Lesner smiling,
Speaker 1: and if it's a fake smile or a real smile,
Speaker 1: either one is terrifying if I'm in the wrong scenario
Speaker 1: with brock les Yeah. They even found that the chimps
Speaker 1: have two different kinds of smiles. They have a submission face,
Speaker 1: So this is maybe a more interesting way for us
Speaker 1: to think about our smiles. The submission face where their
Speaker 1: lips are retracted and their lips are exposed. So this
Speaker 1: is sort of like the equivalent of a dog like
Speaker 1: laying down on its back right exposing it's it's belly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they have a playface where their lower jaws dropped
Speaker 1: in the corners of their mouth are pulled back. But
Speaker 1: so they have a whole dominance thing going on as
Speaker 1: well with their smiles. So it's yeah, it's interesting you
Speaker 1: bring this all back to Jeff the Killer. Uh. If
Speaker 1: Jeff the Killer's smile is fake because he's cut it
Speaker 1: into his own face, then the fake smile won't necessary.
Speaker 1: I guess that does necessarily indicate that he's more dominant, right,
Speaker 1: because the real smile would be submissive, and maybe he's happier.
Speaker 1: I don't know, he might be. Yeah, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick breaking when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss some more smile science. We're gonna
Speaker 1: discuss some some reconstructive surgery, and uh, eventually get to
Speaker 1: this episode's more dark real world world conclusion. Hey, everybody,
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Speaker 1: website with square Space. All right, we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about killer Jeff. I mean, we're sort of talking about Jeff.
Speaker 1: We're talking about scientific topics that that stem from contemplation
Speaker 1: of this particular creepy pasta. Yeah, and we've hit a
Speaker 1: lot of the smile science. But of course, you know,
Speaker 1: some of you out there are wondering, is there any
Speaker 1: science behind carving a smile into your own face? Is
Speaker 1: there joker science? Because most depictions of it are it's
Speaker 1: pretty crude, right, it's and it's the horror of like, oh,
Speaker 1: facial mutilation. And this isn't a real smile at all.
Speaker 1: This is like the worst, right I even think, like
Speaker 1: I read like there's like one rumor that the photoshopped
Speaker 1: image of Jeff the Killer like uses like parts of
Speaker 1: a wolf's mouth. Maybe it's just a dog, but in
Speaker 1: order to make the rictus look a little bit creepier.
Speaker 1: But hey, it turns out that lots of people are
Speaker 1: doing this, not like in their own bathroom with like
Speaker 1: a carving knife or anything, but there is a whole
Speaker 1: culture surrounding the plastic surgery of giving yourself a permanent smile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just sounds familiar. It is because in August The
Speaker 1: Atlantic reported on a growing surgical trend in South Korea.
Speaker 1: Valentine angulo plastic also known as valentine mouth rejuvenation or
Speaker 1: a corner of the mouth lift. And so it's apparently
Speaker 1: called this because of the heart shape that it makes
Speaker 1: when the muscle tissues are removed at your lips edges um.
Speaker 1: If those of you out there, you know, like the
Speaker 1: cupid's bow part of the mouth that I I know
Speaker 1: this just from like drawing classes and like learning anatomy
Speaker 1: and how to draw mouth and stuff. Cupid's bow is
Speaker 1: sort of like the middle of your mouth, I guess,
Speaker 1: like that area is sort of highlighted because of the
Speaker 1: removal of the areas at the edges of the lips.
Speaker 1: Each one of these procedures costs two thousand dollars, which
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about plastic surgery, but to me,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's cheap. That's I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is it cheap? I don't I don't know. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: plastic surgery is less than I thought it was. I
Speaker 1: don't think I would I would be able to really know.
Speaker 1: Is that is that Korean? Or I think that's the
Speaker 1: Korean procedure? Yeah, see, I see, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: can't really frame that in the reference of of Korean
Speaker 1: surgical costs, but over there I feel like that would
Speaker 1: be cheap. It seems like it. Yeah, um, okay, So
Speaker 1: this brings us back to that Glasgow grin Glasgow's smile
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier. Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: little reminiscent of that, except you know, go ahead and
Speaker 1: cast away any of the more grotesque ideas here, because yeah,
Speaker 1: we are talking very slow light augmentation. Yeah, this isn't
Speaker 1: This isn't Heath Ledger's joker like, like, how do you
Speaker 1: think I got these scars? Kind of thing, like you
Speaker 1: can barely tell from the photos that I saw. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, one of the things that that comes to
Speaker 1: came to mind when I was reading about it is
Speaker 1: that it's easy for these when you have a report
Speaker 1: coming out of something that is supposedly a trend in
Speaker 1: a foreign country, sometimes things get a little blown out
Speaker 1: of proportion. For instance, I always always come back to
Speaker 1: the bagel head thing. This was where which we have
Speaker 1: an awesome post about on stuff about dot Com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a fun one. But this was in
Speaker 1: Japan where a few individuals, like a handful of people
Speaker 1: have had silicone and injected into their head and to
Speaker 1: make a forehead forehead to make a bowl. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: under the skin and then they pressed their finger in
Speaker 1: it and it kind of makes a bagel. Um. And
Speaker 1: very few people have done this, but some of the
Speaker 1: initial reporting, granted not The Atlantic but other other places reported,
Speaker 1: oh says everyone is doing this, as if all the
Speaker 1: teens in Japan are going out and having so any
Speaker 1: time I read about a surgical procedure in another country
Speaker 1: that if they trend, uh, you know, I always sort
Speaker 1: of put my warning lights on a yeah, And I
Speaker 1: do have to note, like none of the pieces I
Speaker 1: read for this I don't think they gave numbers on
Speaker 1: how many people were getting this done, but they did
Speaker 1: say that it's very popular with people who work in
Speaker 1: customer service. Yeah, like you know, flight attendants, secretary. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can imagine any situation where that that facial communication
Speaker 1: array interface with a client or a customer is vital.
Speaker 1: And these are largely people in their twenties and thirties too.
Speaker 1: I thought, probably because they're in that customer service sector,
Speaker 1: they're being told like, you're not happy enough for for
Speaker 1: the for the job or whatever, and so they get
Speaker 1: this procedure done so they can make a career out
Speaker 1: of it. Of course, there's a horrible thing to be
Speaker 1: told I'm sorry, not happy enough for this job, but
Speaker 1: the worst Like I kept thinking about that too, because
Speaker 1: that's I don't know about you, but like as a kid,
Speaker 1: I always got that like you don't smile enough kind
Speaker 1: of thing, like why don't you smile more? That sort
Speaker 1: of thing from teachers and stuff. And I know that
Speaker 1: that's uh even worse for women, Like it's such a
Speaker 1: gendered thing like, oh, you should smile more, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So I imagine that this probably plays into the angle
Speaker 1: of plastic Yeah, so, um would definitely with the twenty
Speaker 1: and thirty year olds. You're talking about people with with
Speaker 1: naturally downturned mouth corners, and they're essentially just getting things
Speaker 1: perked up a little bit. But also this surgery has
Speaker 1: applications for aging people where you have downtrent turned corners
Speaker 1: of the mouth and sort of downturned up lines in
Speaker 1: general due to just facial aging. And so one of
Speaker 1: the things that I read, I think it was a
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal blog post about this kind of surgery.
Speaker 1: They stated that this has actually been around for over
Speaker 1: fifty years in medical circles, and it was done here
Speaker 1: in the West, but apparently very few plastic surgeons over
Speaker 1: here performaive anymore. So that's curious to me. I wonder, um,
Speaker 1: why not? I wonder. I wonder what it is about
Speaker 1: Korean culture versus you know, Western culture that makes it
Speaker 1: acceptable or not acceptable. I'm sure we have listeners who
Speaker 1: are coming in or of a Korean descent who might
Speaker 1: be able to give their own two Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: love to hear more about it. And you know, um,
Speaker 1: maybe somebody out there's got one of these. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I'm just curious about the whole thing it. I
Speaker 1: have to say, like, I'm overall usually kind of dismissive
Speaker 1: of the idea of plastic surgery, but in this case,
Speaker 1: I can see, like I sort of well, I mean
Speaker 1: plastic surgery and the cosmetic this is an easy This
Speaker 1: is an easy thing to to to to fall in
Speaker 1: that line on because because I feel like in our culture,
Speaker 1: plastic surgery is often just the go to word for
Speaker 1: unnecessarily plastics. But as we're as we're discussing this episode,
Speaker 1: there's of course a larger plastic surgery that deals with
Speaker 1: with with either you know, either correcting birth defects of
Speaker 1: varying degrees or are dealing with injuries of varying degrees.
Speaker 1: But again, pla surgery in the headline sense, it seems
Speaker 1: like it always ends up referring to something that is
Speaker 1: purely um, you know, purely cosmetic. But the but anyway,
Speaker 1: the the idea of this particular surgery, Uh, it's really
Speaker 1: interesting because on one hand, it's easy to look at
Speaker 1: it and say, well, hey, you're getting a fake smile,
Speaker 1: you're manipulating the natural facial expression of emotion. But the
Speaker 1: counter argument is that, especially with age related negative lines
Speaker 1: like those are warping your natural facial expressions. Those are
Speaker 1: messing with your ability to convey your emotions through and
Speaker 1: and communicate through your facial communication array. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: also how it's received to right, Like, So, like we
Speaker 1: were talking earlier before the break about how people see
Speaker 1: smiles and perceive them in uh, the kind of happiness
Speaker 1: that that generates, or even like the kind of happiness
Speaker 1: that just smiling on its own generates. So I'd be
Speaker 1: curious to see a study on Valentine angled plasty and
Speaker 1: the level of happiness amongst the people who have received
Speaker 1: it versus I guess you know, they would have to
Speaker 1: use like a h control group of people who don't
Speaker 1: have it. All right, so we we've talked about smiles already,
Speaker 1: But of course that's not the only, um, the only
Speaker 1: aspect of Jeff the Killer here, right, So raises aren't
Speaker 1: The story goes that in order to I guess see
Speaker 1: how lovely his face is all the time, Uh, he
Speaker 1: burns off or cuts off his eyelids. Um, And that's
Speaker 1: not something that you normally see uh people do to themselves. However,
Speaker 1: there are lots of occasions in which eyelids either need
Speaker 1: to be replaced or fixed through surgery. This is a
Speaker 1: good example of what we're just talking about with corrective surgery,
Speaker 1: or people have been in like really horrible accidents and
Speaker 1: need to have grafts put on because eyelids are an
Speaker 1: important thing. Yeah, I have to admit that this is
Speaker 1: an area that's it's fascinated fascinated me since I read
Speaker 1: Larry McMurtry's novel Comanche Moon. So this isn't I'm not
Speaker 1: familiar with this, all right, Well, it's it's ano same series,
Speaker 1: the Lonesome Dove series, So there with those characters like
Speaker 1: they they are in this book. It's like it I
Speaker 1: think it comes before. It definitely comes before. But if
Speaker 1: you if you haven't read it, you've probably maybe you've
Speaker 1: seen it a bookstore and it just looks like a
Speaker 1: big dick Western novel, right, But I have to tell
Speaker 1: you it is. This is a weird book in respects
Speaker 1: if he's just a lot of Comanche horse mysticism, and
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of torture and flaying, and in
Speaker 1: particular there's a an already weird Texas Ranger character named
Speaker 1: Captain Innish Skull. He winds up captured by a band
Speaker 1: at warlord and then his tortures. Um there, you know,
Speaker 1: they busied himself deciding just how much skin they're going
Speaker 1: to remove from their various captives, and they finally decide, well,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna take his eyelids. So they cut off
Speaker 1: his eyelids so he can't turn his head away from
Speaker 1: the horrors of the sun. But he eventually escapes in
Speaker 1: the book, and he crafts a special set of glasses
Speaker 1: with a system of varying shades to click through in
Speaker 1: order to regulate the amount of light entering his eyes.
Speaker 1: So it's it's really almost a kind of crazy, almost
Speaker 1: steampunk notion. That is not what I would expect from
Speaker 1: a lonesome dove book. Yeah it is, though it is
Speaker 1: a weird, great a great book. I've tremendously enjoyed it. Well,
Speaker 1: So eyelids themselves, though, you know, they do more than
Speaker 1: filter light, right, So, I mean that is one of
Speaker 1: the important features. Though, I mean you can't squint, you
Speaker 1: can't you can't adjust to the lighting. It's always just
Speaker 1: wide open all the time. Huh. So I'm guessing, I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm trying to wrap my head around in
Speaker 1: both of these fictional examples, is what what that would
Speaker 1: do to the eyeball, Well, you would It definitely plays
Speaker 1: into some of the other key reasons to have eyelids,
Speaker 1: to begin with, moistening the eyeball via blinking, spreading to
Speaker 1: your across the surface of the eyes, especially the moist cornea.
Speaker 1: So like maybe as goggles need to like have a
Speaker 1: little bit of i don't know, like a moisture trapped
Speaker 1: inside of them. Yeah, yeah, like some sort of like
Speaker 1: little clockwork orange squeezies on the side. So you know
Speaker 1: that this is what Jeff would need in order to
Speaker 1: turn his life around. Also, your eyelids protect your protected
Speaker 1: just stuff from getting in there, all sense of debris
Speaker 1: that's gonna blow around in the wind and help they
Speaker 1: help keep perspiration out of the eyes as well. So
Speaker 1: the key risk here is exposure care atopathy, which is
Speaker 1: excessive dryness due to revealed eye especially during sleep. So
Speaker 1: and and this is interesting as well, we'll discuss there
Speaker 1: are surgical methods to either replace eyelids or to correct
Speaker 1: eyelids that have either there's a birth effect or it's
Speaker 1: an agent related to symptom. But without going into those surgeries,
Speaker 1: the best you could do is to apply at nightly
Speaker 1: dressing to the eyes, like with using bubble patches or
Speaker 1: swim goggles, even to ensure that the eyes stay moist. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you gotta wonder about this Jeff the killer myth
Speaker 1: then that like, uh, you know, he's already kind of
Speaker 1: a crazy serial killer who has done all this terrible
Speaker 1: stuff to his face. But like, uh, he'd have like
Speaker 1: some real eye problems unless he'd like put some swim
Speaker 1: goggles on and dressed his eyes every night, I guess
Speaker 1: every day, because he's probably a serial killer at night
Speaker 1: when h and of course, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: he would be more or less terrifying with swim goggles on. UM.
Speaker 1: In his case though, if he wanted surgery, he's going
Speaker 1: to happen because there are there are surgical techniques that
Speaker 1: can be used to just correct minor. You're not getting
Speaker 1: full coverage lots of academic articles about UM, different procedures
Speaker 1: and methodologies for that kind of reconstructive surgery. And then
Speaker 1: I think there's also like grafting that can be done
Speaker 1: from other parts of your body, right right, yeah, now
Speaker 1: with but with Jeff or with Captain Skull here, nothing
Speaker 1: short of total upper and lower eyelid replacement. It's gonna
Speaker 1: actually take care of thing. And this is the complex
Speaker 1: surgical procedure in a series of procedures. Even a two
Speaker 1: thousand two paper on this titled Treatment of bilateral severe
Speaker 1: eyelid Burns with skin Graphs colon an Odyssey, which should
Speaker 1: give you some idea if what we're dealing with here
Speaker 1: in this case five operations over the course of five
Speaker 1: years the individual. And then there's a two thousand eight
Speaker 1: paper total and upper eyelid replacement following thermal burn using
Speaker 1: an A L T flap. Case of report this chronicle
Speaker 1: is the use of of free anterior lateral high that
Speaker 1: thigh that's a LT thigh flaps uh. In the skin
Speaker 1: graph procedure, cutting uh bits off of your own thigh
Speaker 1: and then using those to graft in new eyelids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a skin graphed here, and a rather
Speaker 1: rather detailed uh one as well. Uh So, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's not it's not just as simple as just throwing
Speaker 1: some some tissue back up over the eye. You have
Speaker 1: to hook it into the the the existing muscles. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a complex procedure. But uh. In the case of
Speaker 1: total eyelid loss, you know, a necessity. So as far
Speaker 1: as our Jeff the Killer loose thread that we're following here,
Speaker 1: the fake smile thing, yeah, there's some plausibility to that,
Speaker 1: but it would be more like a Glasgow grin, I think,
Speaker 1: than like the Valentine angle of plasty that we were
Speaker 1: just talking about, unless he's really skilled with whatever whatever
Speaker 1: blady he was using in his parents bathroom. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then as far as this eyelid thing goes, I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like you wouldn't get very far,
Speaker 1: very long without eyelids unless like you had. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: constantly treating it yourself. I don't even know if the
Speaker 1: goggles would cut it. Now at this point we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into a little darker realistic territory. But I think
Speaker 1: it's important because with with Jeff the Killer, we're essentially
Speaker 1: talking about, Oh, this an individual discarred by fire or
Speaker 1: or ask did and this and this makes them horrible somehow,
Speaker 1: this makes them a monster, which of course is it's
Speaker 1: a ridiculous notion, um. But but we have this idea
Speaker 1: just throughout our horror culture, especially like you have just
Speaker 1: all of these burnt creatures, you know, they're and then
Speaker 1: they're they're awful and they're less human because of it,
Speaker 1: which is which is completely ridiculous. So it's it's really
Speaker 1: essential to I think, to to take that that that
Speaker 1: cultural trope and then actually discuss uh, some some rather
Speaker 1: depressing um facts about real life mutilation attacks that continue
Speaker 1: to take place around the world. Yeah, I have to say,
Speaker 1: like we talked about this a little at the top,
Speaker 1: but I was just I was shocked at how prevalent
Speaker 1: this is, UM. But I'm glad that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of research being done on it. UM. In particular, there
Speaker 1: were two sources that we we looked to here. One
Speaker 1: was a really great BBC magazine article that was just
Speaker 1: sort of about the general cultural problem of what are
Speaker 1: called acid attacks, uh, And then we we also looked
Speaker 1: at a thesis paper out of the University of North
Speaker 1: Carolina by a woman named Jane Welsh, and it's called
Speaker 1: it was Like Burning in Hell, a Comparative Exploration of
Speaker 1: Acid Attack Violence, and she looks at the whole gamut
Speaker 1: of acid attacks and like the last I think it's
Speaker 1: like thirty years that this has become fairly prevalent UM
Speaker 1: and really kind of breaks down the statistics and what
Speaker 1: what can be done and what should be done about them.
Speaker 1: So let's start with how jeez, how prevalent they actually are. Okay,
Speaker 1: acid attacks skew heavily, as you would imagine, toward women
Speaker 1: and girls. Eighty percent of them are done to women. Uh.
Speaker 1: Thirty percent of those women are under the age of eighteen. Uh.
Speaker 1: You may have heard about it recently happened in Zanzibar
Speaker 1: to two women who are tourists. There has been a
Speaker 1: couple of incidents in which there have been Western tourists
Speaker 1: in other countries where this is more acceptable, and you know,
Speaker 1: some somehow or another, it's they've offended someone and therefore
Speaker 1: like an acid attack is perpetrated against them, and these
Speaker 1: poor people, you know, have have to go back and
Speaker 1: uh have surgeries to correct this. There's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of literature on the surgeries themselves for this as well.
Speaker 1: So this is some of the numbers that I was
Speaker 1: able to accumulate for this. Just in England alone, which
Speaker 1: is not one of the major countries that you read
Speaker 1: about when you hear about these ascid attacks. In the
Speaker 1: between eleven and twelve, there are a hundred and five
Speaker 1: hospital admissions for what we're referred to there as assault
Speaker 1: by corrosive substances. UH, so that covers more than acid,
Speaker 1: but it's the same premise essentially. UH. Every year there
Speaker 1: are more than fifteen hundred cases recorded. So those are
Speaker 1: recorded ones. Other are the ones that are reported. UH.
Speaker 1: There's an uh an organization that tracks this called Asset
Speaker 1: Survivors Trust International. India has an increasing problem with this.
Speaker 1: UH that the group that tracks that says that a
Speaker 1: thousand of the incidents take place in India every year. UH.
Speaker 1: They're they're disproportionately common in South Asia India, as they
Speaker 1: just mentioned, they are also suspected to have very high
Speaker 1: numbers in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and UH Cambodia. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so like many of the you know, every case is
Speaker 1: a little different. But then a lot of the ones
Speaker 1: that i've I've heard it entails, uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: male proposition as a woman or tries to initiate some
Speaker 1: sort of u uh sexual or romanic um relationship with them.
Speaker 1: They are rejected and then their response is I am
Speaker 1: going to deface you. I'm going to try to ruin
Speaker 1: you by assaulting you with acid yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: don't know the details specifically on those Western tourists, but
Speaker 1: I suspect that that was probably the case. It's worth
Speaker 1: deeper diving. Um And like we said at the top,
Speaker 1: we didn't want to do a full episode on this,
Speaker 1: but we do think that it bears covering. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's about destroying someone's identity at the end of it, right,
Speaker 1: Like that is the real aggression here. Uh And and strangely,
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of what Jeff the Killer is
Speaker 1: a about. You know, if you can like do some
Speaker 1: sort of thematic analysis of a creepy pasta like that,
Speaker 1: if you do a far more serious reheat of the
Speaker 1: pasta than it, yeah deserves the character Jeff starts off
Speaker 1: as just kind of a junior high kid, like everyday
Speaker 1: American kid who deals with like incessant bullying and his
Speaker 1: brother getting thrown in jail, and then he's assaulted terribly
Speaker 1: and literally changes his identity, right it makes him go crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean really, there are two main optacles here. I mean,
Speaker 1: one is just the cultural challenge of keeping this from happening,
Speaker 1: to to just you know, push this back into the past.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand too. It's it's about the
Speaker 1: victims as well. How the various programs and and uh
Speaker 1: an outreach programs that are aimed at at helping these
Speaker 1: women reclaim their lives, you know, and and help them
Speaker 1: feel like like in a way, keeping their their attackers
Speaker 1: from winning, keeping their attackers from achieving this warped sense
Speaker 1: of victory they that they set out to accomplish. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: because it's more than just about like the physical surgeries
Speaker 1: involved to right, It's about the like psychological consequences of
Speaker 1: losing your identity as such as it is. I don't
Speaker 1: think that a lot of these attackers articulated that way,
Speaker 1: but that's essentially what's going on. Yeah. The BBC piece
Speaker 1: that I was listening to, which dealt with a cafe
Speaker 1: that allows the place for these women to work and
Speaker 1: also has support network for them. Like they mentioned that
Speaker 1: in some of these cases, UH, the victim is is
Speaker 1: it can no longer turn to their emily because there's
Speaker 1: like this level of of shame that is a that
Speaker 1: is applied to to their plight that they no longer
Speaker 1: have a home because this this person assaulted them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that that is largely UH cultural from
Speaker 1: from the areas that these are committed into. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: I'd like to think, I don't know, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: the case, but I'd like to think in in our culture,
Speaker 1: at least here in America, Uh, in the house, stuff, work, studio,
Speaker 1: that that that you know, like that wouldn't happen. Well,
Speaker 1: And that's the I mean, that's one of the things,
Speaker 1: right is so much of us live with the privilege
Speaker 1: of not having to know. You know, we can, we can,
Speaker 1: we we can think, we can't help, but think what
Speaker 1: would happen if this happened in my community, if this
Speaker 1: happened in my family? Uh, how would one respond? How
Speaker 1: does one react? And you know, luckily most of us
Speaker 1: don't have to know. Well. Jane Welsh's thesis, she really
Speaker 1: does a great job of breaking it down, and it's
Speaker 1: it's much longer. I mean, I'm I'm just going to
Speaker 1: summarize a few facts here. But she found that this
Speaker 1: started somewhere around the nineteen sixties. So I was off
Speaker 1: when I said thirty years. But it's it's thought to
Speaker 1: have started in Cambodia as the earliest case of this
Speaker 1: kind of violence. Uh, And since that time, it's become
Speaker 1: an epidemic there. Uh. And in the late nineties through
Speaker 1: two thousand five, acid was a favored weapon of choice
Speaker 1: for women and men looking to disfigure their rivals and
Speaker 1: settle scores. Uh and so uh some of the activists
Speaker 1: that are involved in this, they say that at least
Speaker 1: sixty people were attacked in one year alone. Well that's
Speaker 1: in the nineties. You know, we just read the stats
Speaker 1: for now and it's in thousand, um and and that
Speaker 1: it's both men and women who are doing the attacking,
Speaker 1: but you know more women are being attacked. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the reasons are listed as sexual jealousy, extramarital airs, land
Speaker 1: or business disputes, domestic violence, personal or family disputes, robbery
Speaker 1: or hate and revenge. And then it's usually a premeditated
Speaker 1: act that involves sulfuric, nitric or hydrochloric acid thrown at
Speaker 1: another person. So uh, you know, I don't know that
Speaker 1: there's like much deeper that we can go than that,
Speaker 1: other than you know, if I guess if those of
Speaker 1: you out there want to hear more on this, we
Speaker 1: can maybe do a future episode where we dig deep
Speaker 1: into the science of the surgeries involved. But honestly, like
Speaker 1: I read a few of those getting ready for this episode,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty deep diving. Like I think it
Speaker 1: was a dense medical material that I didn't necessarily understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think probably the best we can do is will
Speaker 1: make sure that the landing page for this episode will
Speaker 1: include links out to UM to some of the sources
Speaker 1: here as well as some organizations that have involved as
Speaker 1: somatomacity organizations. UM. A positive BBC story that here that
Speaker 1: alluded to already about the cafe. The title of that
Speaker 1: is the cafe helping to support acid attack victims in India.
Speaker 1: Believe it the dioplete peace Uh that I think I
Speaker 1: heard it on the radio initially. UM, that's worth checking
Speaker 1: out because it highlights not only the problem but also, uh,
Speaker 1: what's some of the efforts that are that are underway
Speaker 1: to to help the victims. So all right, let's like
Speaker 1: wrap this up and and try not to end it
Speaker 1: on like a super bummer note with the acid attacks thing,
Speaker 1: but as such as like let's go back and look
Speaker 1: at the Jeff the killer, I guess myth and in
Speaker 1: the realities involved. Right, So acid attacks, Yes, that's a thing,
Speaker 1: unfortunately more of a thing than we'd like it to
Speaker 1: be so sure, a kid named Jeff could have been
Speaker 1: attacked in such a way his face would have been
Speaker 1: burned away and he would be able to go back
Speaker 1: to his home. From when I was reading, there are
Speaker 1: no asset attack victims though, that go crazy and cut
Speaker 1: their mouths and cut their eyelids. That is that is
Speaker 1: purely a a fictional thing. Yeah. Um, the eyelid reconstructive surgery. Yes,
Speaker 1: that you can reconstruct lids. I suppose you could cut
Speaker 1: your own eyelid off, but I don't know necessarily that
Speaker 1: you would be a very functional serial killer without eyelids.
Speaker 1: And then when it comes down to the smile. Wow,
Speaker 1: is there a lot of research on that. Uh. But
Speaker 1: you know, in the Jeff the Killer situation, I don't
Speaker 1: think he's doing like a cosmetic Valentine angle of plasty
Speaker 1: as much as like, you know, it's just kind of
Speaker 1: the Glasgow grin joker kind of thing, Eachi the killer type,
Speaker 1: you know, the generic I guess it's become a generic
Speaker 1: trope now, jeez of like a sort of homicidal maniac
Speaker 1: who cuts themselves. All right, Well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: We stood up to the challenge. We took you asked
Speaker 1: for Jeff the killer. We gave got for him, We
Speaker 1: gave it to you. We explored some very fascinating science
Speaker 1: and cultural information. Uh. That, like I said, doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: underlie that it's not like the the author and authors
Speaker 1: of that original Creepypops and inspired by these things. But
Speaker 1: in a sense, Jeff is composed is of all of
Speaker 1: these things. He's kind of like the cultural um, the
Speaker 1: cultural sludge kind of comes together and forms a figure
Speaker 1: like this, uh in our myth making. Yeah, well, it's certainly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the science and psychology behind
Speaker 1: fake smiles certainly play into at least the sort of
Speaker 1: general trope of of this type of creepy pasta. Alright,
Speaker 1: so hey, if we were to do a third Creepy
Speaker 1: Pasta episode, which one would you like for us to tackle?
Speaker 1: Which one would you like to us to try and
Speaker 1: just dissect and and dig some slivers of science out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you can tell us about you first of all,
Speaker 1: tell us about other creepy pastas, even if they're not
Speaker 1: ones that you think we should cover, but you know,
Speaker 1: ideally we'd like to do them on the podcast. I
Speaker 1: was surprised at how many listeners popped up and we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: check this one out and this one and this one.
Speaker 1: Like I think you know, even though you and I
Speaker 1: are big horror fans, uh, that like this is just
Speaker 1: an area of the medium or the genre. I suppose
Speaker 1: that we're not highly familiar with. UM. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: there's stuff out there that we're missing, let us know
Speaker 1: about it. You can always get in touch with us
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler will blow the mind on
Speaker 1: all of those. Uh. We do periscope or Facebook live
Speaker 1: on Friday's Eastern Standard time around noon. Uh, And lately
Speaker 1: we've been kind of switching back and forth between those
Speaker 1: two things. But you know, we'll let our audience know
Speaker 1: beforehand on on those platforms. Hey, this is what we're
Speaker 1: doing today before we we jump on one or the other.
Speaker 1: All right, if you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us via the old fashioned email, we can reach us
Speaker 1: at below the Mind. How to work dot com? Well
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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