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We wrap ourselves in the skins of slaughtered animals, line our cars with them, cook and eat their flesh, suck their milk out and bottle it to drink, perform ex

We wrap ourselves in the skins of slaughtered animals, line our cars with them, cook and eat their flesh, suck their milk out and bottle it to drink, perform experiments on live mice and monkeys injecting them with chemicals and experimental medications at increasing dosages to find side effects and death, spray toxic chemicals that cause a holocaust of invertebrate life over millions of acres of farmland, harvest millions of tons of fish and "bycatch" out of the oceans by dragging nets through them. Playing with a few dead spiders is pretty mild in the scheme of things I would say.

efitz 4y ago
Biology and culture has prepared us for eating other biological beings, so steak and fish aren’t gross to most people. For most people, to use a non-food animal product, it has to be significantly unlike the animal itself, eg it’s easy to enjoy leather or fur that is not in the form of an animal. Even for food, most people are less comfortable with food the more like themselves it seems, eg a pig head on your plate is much less appealing than a pork chop. Lobsters and shrimp are not a lot like people so the disgust factor is significantly less. Yes, there are people with morbid interests in (actual, not depicted) skeletons and taxidermy but these seem to be getting more rare in modern cultures. For whatever reason, spiders trigger disgust and/or fear in most people; I can’t see necrocyberspiders ever being popular.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  Yes biology and cultures has also prepared us for squishing spiders. I assume the OP is calling this fucked up on a moral or intellectual level, rather than the normal basal dislike of spiders.
- nephanth 4y ago
  > for whatever reason I’m inclined to think this is instinctive, as some insects and spiders can be dangerous to us, we are instinctively repulsed by them

efitz 4y ago

Biology and culture has prepared us for eating other biological beings, so steak and fish aren’t gross to most people. For most people, to use a non-food animal product, it has to be significantly unlike the animal itself, eg it’s easy to enjoy leather or fur that is not in the form of an animal. Even for food, most people are less comfortable with food the more like themselves it seems, eg a pig head on your plate is much less appealing than a pork chop. Lobsters and shrimp are not a lot like people so the disgust factor is significantly less. Yes, there are people with morbid interests in (actual, not depicted) skeletons and taxidermy but these seem to be getting more rare in modern cultures. For whatever reason, spiders trigger disgust and/or fear in most people; I can’t see necrocyberspiders ever being popular.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
Yes biology and cultures has also prepared us for squishing spiders. I assume the OP is calling this fucked up on a moral or intellectual level, rather than the normal basal dislike of spiders.
nephanth 4y ago
> for whatever reason I’m inclined to think this is instinctive, as some insects and spiders can be dangerous to us, we are instinctively repulsed by them