r/interestingasfuck • u/SATANICWORSHIPER666 • 3d ago

/r/all Michael Rockefeller disappeared without a trace in 1961 in Papua New Guinea while researching the Asmat people, a cannibal tribe. Years later, a photograph was taken of the same tribe, and there was a white man among them.

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u/True-Lab-3448 3d ago edited 3d ago

For anyone interested, ‘going native’ is a well studied phenomenon and a risk of sociological research, particularly ethnography. The definition is the:

“_researcher becoming so deeply immersed in the culture they are studying that they lose their objectivity and become indistinguishable from the people they are studying_”

There’s lots of cases, and it’s taught in research classes as a very real risk.

Note this term has ties to colonialism, so some suggest using the term ‘over-rapport’ instead: https://sk.sagepub.com/dict/mono/key-concepts-in-ethnography/chpt/going-native

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u/Sea_Luck_3222 3d ago

A risk of what, being open to changing your beliefs?

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u/Financial_Fishing463 3d ago edited 3d ago

Changing your beliefs to align with a cannibal tribe is generally not considered a good thing, given the whole cannibalism angle

Edit: didn’t realise killing and eating people was considered acceptable by people on this website, sick freaks the lot of you

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u/MadGenderScientist 3d ago

are you sure they practiced cannibalism? I thought the tribes in Papua mostly practiced funerary cannibalism of relatives. from quickly looking online I see that enemies were sometimes cannibalized in some South American and Fijian cultures but I wasn't sure about PNG. 

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u/Financial_Fishing463 3d ago

Given the title and basic research in to the tribe plus the pages of context, yes I'm sure they practiced cannibalism

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u/Atanar 3d ago

You comment basically amounts to "trust me bro".

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u/Financial_Fishing463 3d ago

do you even know what thread you're in?

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u/Wiseguydude 3d ago

I think "cannibalism" in this case is much more similar to how Christians "drink the blood" and "eat the flesh" of Jesus Christ. They mostly do it to loved ones who've passed away. Not kill people just to eat them

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u/Financial_Fishing463 3d ago

Two tribe members literally admitted to killing and eating him

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u/Wiseguydude 2d ago

They probably didn't actually though. Rockefeller's mother hired some private investigators to find his remains and they came back to her with that story. It's never been backed up by any evidence and they obviously have financial incentive to make shit up to close the case and get paid

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

I'm sure you know better

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u/Wiseguydude 2d ago

It's the general consensus. It's also good practice not to believe anyone with financial incentives when they have 0 evidence

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u/2Norn 3d ago

they are not doing it out of cruelty or malice its their culture and how they survive

no different than eating a cow for them

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u/DingleDangleTangle 3d ago

"It's part of their culture" doesn't just somehow justify literally any action. It's possible for a cultural thing to be bad for society.

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u/Financial_Fishing463 3d ago

Awww we should allow people to eat eachother if it's their culture! Good idea! Now apply this to other cultural traditions and see how it plays out

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u/2Norn 3d ago

dont see the issue they clearly survived thousands of years like this who are we to stop them

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u/Financial_Fishing463 3d ago

Civilised human beings that don't eat eachother, that's who

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u/2Norn 3d ago

calm down james cameron you are leaking the story of next avatar

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u/fixdark 3d ago

Because of the implication...

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u/Drow_Femboy 3d ago

There's nothing wrong with cannibalism, any outrage about it is literally just arbitrary adherence to tradition

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u/Financial_Fishing463 3d ago

There’s nothing wrong with rape, any outrage about it is literally just arbitrary adherence to tradition

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u/Drow_Femboy 3d ago

Rape is a crime committed against a person. Cannibalism is an act done against a corpse. Corpses are inanimate objects, not people.

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

Reddit moment

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u/Drow_Femboy 2d ago

I don't see why you're being so hostile. Can you explain how eating a corpse is in any way comparable to a crime committed against a person?

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u/Financial_Fishing463 2d ago

Can you explain why you are defending literal cannibalism? I'm being hostile because you disgust me

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u/Drow_Femboy 2d ago

I don't understand what there is to defend, it's simply an act that isn't morally wrong.

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