That's Not RealityLists about the most insulting ways so-called "reality" shows lie right to their fans, from fudging details to outright manufacturing entire lives. Open your eyes, sheeple.
Here's a piece of information that will be shocking to very few people: Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot isn't real. That's right, just like Deadliest Catch and Man vs. Wild, this series is carefully staged and edited to give the appearance of a documentary. The hit TV show has made it through multiple seasons without showing a single real Sasquatch, riding a wave of viewer suspense that seems almost endless.
Besides the relentless nighttime searches out in the woods, there are many unintentionally hilarious Finding Bigfoot moments. Who could forget team member Bobo doing his "Sasquatch calls," or the wild speculation about the habits of these reclusive giant apes?
Is Bigfoot real? Who knows what new evidence could turn up in the future. But for now, one thing is very clear: Finding Bigfoot is easily one of the most ridiculous shows on TV.
Why film in the daytime (when you can actually see everything) when you can film at night? Night vision cameras certainly add to the atmosphere of Finding Bigfoot, but they don't give much authenticity to the proceedings. As anyone who has gone camping can tell you, noises in the forest instantly become more ominous in the dark. The crew reacts to every snapped twig like it's a monumental revelation.
Much like most horror movies, the mysterious sounds heard by the crew are paired with dramatic music for an intense and scary effect for the viewers. The team, however, claims they have a real reason for filming at night: Sasquatches are nocturnal.
How do you lure an elusive animal out of hiding? If you're the Finding Bigfoot crew, you bellow out a strange sound that's somewhere between the scream of "a woman being murdered in the woods" and a longer "Ohio howl" (whatever that is).
The cast has a lot of justifications for why these calls sound like they do – they're similar to other primate vocalizations, they've heard them in the woods, Bigfoots are developing primitive language – but the end result is a bunch of adults stomping through the woods screaming at night.
Finding Bigfoot doesn't exactly use quality evidence to launch its investigations. Case in point: one of the team's "leads" is an extremely blurry video shot at a New York music festival in the late '90s. The footage appears to capture what the hosts believe is a baby Bigfoot swinging around in the tree behind the festival-goers. Some believe that the animal is actually a pet monkey, but from that distance and in that light it is well and truly impossible to tell what it is.
Don't worry, though – the Finding Bigfoot crew was able to conclusively prove that it wasn't a human after spending some time swinging around in the trees at the location.
The stars of Finding Bigfoot have a particularly non-scientific term for their quest to find the elusive beast: "Bigfooting." Even weirder, they refer to groups of creatures as "Bigfoots." Apparently "Bigfeet" sounded too silly.
The Hosts Think Skeptics Can Be Convinced By Looking At Sketchy Evidence
Finding Bigfoot researcher Cliff Barackman claims that converting skeptics is all about education: "I was an elementary school teacher before I had this job, so I’m used to people not knowing things that seem logical to me."
Barackman insists that the key is for people to actually look at the photos, examine the footprint casts, or read a book about the subject before they come to a conclusion about Bigfoot's existence. The fact that most of this "evidence" is of poor quality doesn't seem to bother him; as he says, "I personally think it’s a very compelling subject, that’s 100 percent real.
Team member Ranae Holland may be a research biologist, but her credentials as a Bigfoot skeptic are highly suspect. According to her bio, during childhood, she and her father bonded by watching shows and reading books about Bigfoot.
What's more, Holland's specialty is actually aquatics. She graduated from the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, where she worked in their Alaska Salmon Program. She also works closely with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and her latest field research has involved steelhead fish in Oregon. These are great biologist credentials, but they have nothing to do with primates or any other land animals.
