What is the Monkeysphere?

Alex

What is the Monkeysphere and what does it have to do with war, oppression, and crime? A lot, apparently.

From a Cracked article by David Wong, here is the Monkeysphere:

First, picture a monkey. A monkey dressed like a little pirate, if that helps you. We'll call him Slappy.

Imagine you have Slappy as a pet. Imagine a personality for him. Maybe you and he have little pirate monkey adventures and maybe even join up to fight crime. Think how sad you'd be if Slappy died.

Now, imagine you get four more monkeys. We'll call them Tito, Bubbles, Marcel and ShitTosser. Imagine personalities for each of them now. Maybe one is aggressive, one is affectionate, one is quiet, the other just throws shit all the time. But they're all your personal monkey friends.

Now imagine a hundred monkeys.

Not so easy now, is it? So how many monkeys would you have to own before you couldn't remember their names? At what point, in your mind, do your beloved pets become just a faceless sea of monkey? Even though each one is every bit the monkey Slappy was, there's a certain point where you will no longer really care if one of them dies.

So how many monkeys would it take before you stopped caring? That's not a rhetorical question. We actually know the number.

Despite the humorous tone of the article, it's actually a very interesting and thought-provoking one. Find out what the "magic number where you stop caring" is: Link - Thanks Emily!


Comments (12)

Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments

I like this Monkey Sphere theory. It explains why I don't give a rip about the starving peeps in Africa, and I'm tired of feeling guilty like I should care about them, even though there's absolutely nothing I can do to help them. Even sending money is useless. It just doesn't help any. Plus i don't know them so outta site. Outta mind.
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I find myself severly underwhelmed. This essay lacks supporting evidence in a profound way, and fials to address the insightful arguments that previous thinkers have put forth on the subject in any serious way. Perhaps the book does a better job at this, but I found the level of discourse to be closer to a Chick Tract than a meaningful contribution to the way we understand human soceity.
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i will always box broken glass(if un-recyclable)just for this reason,I don't think its unusual,but mebbes my "monkeysphere" is a bit bigger than the writers!i.e having done some manual labour and had a grounding in socalist pragmatism from family and society at large.
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Wow really interesting.
It's not often that you find something on the internet that really makes you think about life.
But it's true- when it comes down to it, we're all just monkeys, no matter how advanced we become.
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How typically American and pedantic to make light of a serious thing.
Yeah it's important to have a sense of humor, but really, isn't this rather childish? How are you going to explain this to the kids? Oh, they'll remember this moment, when the whole town's signs went silly. They'll remember.
And the drunk drivers will be saying "Oh, I thought they were joke signs, not really serious about us actually reading them and understanding that they're not jokes."
Nice.
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we can only hope. anyway we have people who spraypaint HAMMERTIME under the stop on the signs in madison. pretty amusing, actually. the city doesn't bother to pay people to clean it off cause there haven't been any complaints yet.
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Seriously, if they took the money from this project and just had a police presence every once in a while giving out tickets to violators at these intersections they'd save money, lives, and make a more effective statement.

It's fine to take it lightly, but a cop showing up even every now and again gets the message across pretty quick "don't cruise through this stop sign". And if that doesn't quite work the cost of the ticket for a moving violation as well as the added points to your insurance will speak volumes.
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Ey, weeks ago I was thinking about write "in the name of love" in the signals to make everybody think: "I hate that song" and pass away.

I´m not liying...
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I see a multitude of problems with this as well. I see people taking the signs less seriously and I doubt those who roll through stop signs fail to see the sign in the first place. Seems like a waste of time and money if this was intended as a serious campaign. The money would have been better spent in patrolling and driving re-education.

If was done just for the fun of it though, then I'm for it.
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I think it's a rather clever solution that will get the stop signs a bit more attention while not adding ill will towards cops as an overbearing cruiser presence might.
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@k

dude, when every pompously official-sounding message of government already has the credibility of an arsonist giving fire-safety tips, you oughta think about the benefits of cutting through the clutter to reclaim some little bit of attention. Or you could just take a breath and take what seems like a much-needed vacation.
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Got to agree with the nay-sayers. Who cares about creating ill-will towards the police? They're there to ticket people who aren't obeying the law.

And the possibility of people interpreting the stop signs themselves as fakes is too big a risk to take with people's lives.

"I'm sorry I ran over your daughter, but isn't that a funny sign?"
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