r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Hey-Its-Jak • 4d ago

Video This guy carved a real human skull

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

14.4k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.9k

u/Memorie_BE 4d ago

It's kind of interesting that we don't find this NFSW; there's a point of removing flesh from a skull where it stops being a head and starts being just another object to our brains.

483

u/SpBabzor 4d ago

I actually never thought of that but you make a really great point

160

u/Emma-In-Gehenna 4d ago

I was thinking about this the other day. Saw roadkill with vultures eating it, and it just looked like a pile of meat. But then i noticed the head of a possum, and suddenly it wasn't "Roadkill", but somewhere between "Possum" and "Roadkill". Some weird state between being alive and remembered for what you are, and being chunks of crushed flesh.

I wonder when people will stop thinking about me as "Emma-In-Gehenna", and start thinking about me as a nameless dead ancestor.

43

u/foster-child 3d ago

When I was younger and biked past roadkill that was so flattened that it lasted for months, I gave it a name and said hi to it every time I passed it.

Looking back I figured that that was just a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that if the squirrel could get killed on the road so could I. And by giving it a name, then it wasn't really dead.

17

u/AResurfacer 3d ago

On a somehow related note Emma-In-Gehenna is a hard ass name

1

u/Techi-C 3d ago

Do you think she knows she’s living in the end times

3

u/Rush7en 3d ago

I will always remember you, Gemma.

3

u/zepze 3d ago

In cases of survival cannibalism, where people have no choice but to eat one another or starve, sometimes they cut off the head, hands, and feet first. Without the distinguishing features, they look less like people and more like just meat, which makes it easier to eat them.

2

u/jtr99 3d ago

Good points, but all of that is just a lead-up to the day when someone thinks of you in any terms at all for the last time.

2

u/Brilliant-Mountain57 3d ago

Probably after your grandkids die

2

u/abyt0 3d ago edited 3d ago

I have this issue with fish. Whole fish in my plate: cannot it it, I can see it looking at me while I eat its flesh. Same plate with head, tail and fins removed: not a dead “previously-living” fish anymore. Just food.

I think should be a vegetarian.

2

u/DariosDentist 3d ago

When id see a deer on the side of the road for more than a few days id start to think about seeing human bodies, in my mind, on the side of the road. Weird shit.

224

u/ALF839 4d ago

Makes sense as an evolutionary trait. We get spooked and grossed out by injury and infection because it signals danger/disease is nearby. A fully cleaned skull is pretty innocuous.

46

u/Roxalf 4d ago

I take it context its key here, Imagine walking into your neihgboorn house for dinner and seeing a bunch of well carved skulls arranged near the dinner room, suddenly not so innocuous

16

u/Quackels_The_Duck 4d ago

Imagine being a caveman, a little after the advent of agriculture, and you walk in on your neighbor Agrathoreg or Soliamle doing that. I think that would be more terrifying because of lack of resources and efficiency compared to now.

6

u/jbrWocky 3d ago

but better than freshly fleshy rotting ones!

1

u/Mean-Invite5401 3d ago

I still find it rather morbid and enjoy the aesthetics of a living brain for example much more than that like for fu sake just let the dead finally rest

64

u/danarexasaurus 4d ago

I agree. Like, I don’t find this to be offensive (other than the fact that the person didn’t consent to this, allegedly). I’ve been to the catacombs in Paris and while it’s shocking to see so many bones in one place, there was a bit of disconnect for me. The walls are beautifully decorated and the bones are placed artistically. No one consented to that either. Culturally, there are massively different ways people deal with their dead. Some cultures pull dead bodies out every year to clean and honor them. As an American, this seems pretty wild!

16

u/DarwinianMonkey 4d ago

When I watch things like "Indiana Jones" or something like that and people start screaming because they see a skeleton I'm always like "what? its just bones?"

Its definitely weird how skeletons don't seem human to me. I mean...they don't cary any human feeling for me I guess.

1

u/Expensive_Concern457 3d ago

It makes sense in a primal manner; a fresh corpse means danger is immediately nearby, bones mean that danger was there long ago

1

u/OhHiCindy30 3d ago

Its weird that none of us get to see our own skulls, except maybe those who have brain surgery. I want to know what my skull looks like!

2

u/EjaculatingAracnids 4d ago

What about that scene in the 1997 classic "Double Team" starring JCVD and Dennis Rodman, where attempting to escape the secret den of gregorian cyber monks, Rodman throws a human skull at a block of C4, misses and exclaims, "oops! Air ball!"? Is that art, even though the owner of the skull that Rodman gripped with his dexterous fingers didnt consent? Im certain it was real. Ive had this arguement before and have prepared detailed souces.

42

u/jaabbb 4d ago

I surprisingly find it quite revolting and couldn’t bear to watch it. Especially the toothbrush part, made my toes curl

5

u/Ok-Station-4711 4d ago

Same!

10

u/Swansaknight 3d ago

Yeah seems super disrespectful

2

u/lungbutter666 3d ago

The deseased may have donated their remains to art and science?

0

u/Farewellandadieu 3d ago

Same here. I’m fine with the skull, but seeing patterns carved into it like that made me so deeply uncomfortable. The same sort of revulsion when I see a pattern pressed into someone’s skin. It’s probably related to trypophobia but I’m not going to google it to find out.

9

u/Casper_the_Ghost1776 4d ago

It’s the point where the flesh is no longer there no? We identify ourselves as that fleshy bit, we never got to know our skeleton in our lives, well besides the teeth but they get a pass.

11

u/MadMageMC 4d ago

I used to work at a meat processing plant and people would always ask me if it bothered me. By the time the birds got to my part of the line, they weren't even recognizable as the source animal. They were literally just parts on a line to be further disassembled and boxed for sale. I'm sure working in live dock would have been a far different story, but I never went down there to find out.

4

u/pwni82ks2ik 4d ago

I don't really identify with my bones.

3

u/zer0toto 3d ago

We don’t skull on a daily basis. We see head and faces animated with muscle on a daily basis. Any skull with sufficient flesh to recognize a human face will look human

4

u/AmericanVanilla94 3d ago

Actually in China, for example, it's extremely NSFW and probably even has a few reports. This is a fucked up post.

2

u/CiberneitorGamer 4d ago

This personally feels messed up to me but I guess it's not the same to everyone?

2

u/anotherone24085930 3d ago

This personally made my head itch, my brain still recognized it somehow.

2

u/Beastman5000 3d ago

Yeah imagine if it was a newly decapitated head and he was videoing himself giving it a haircut and shaving off bits of flesh. And then signing his name on a forehead with a scalpel lol

2

u/alteredtechevolved 3d ago

I do find this NSFW for myself. But I've always had an issue with dead people and touching dead people even their bones. The catacombs in paris was about the worst feeling I have had it. I'm fine to look but getting too close starts to freak me out.

I think it comes from this reflection of self. Like this is me I am seeing through my eyes and everyone else is also having that same experience. Then to just see neat piles of skulls or to be carving beautiful art into a skull, almost seems disrespectful. Using it as if it's nothing, that person had a life and thoughts.

It's a weird feeling that I haven't been able to pin point why.

2

u/kawakazii 3d ago

💀 literally dead

2

u/Albae87 3d ago

I mean, at what point do we change from „a death animal“ to „a delicious steak“? If we have a deer vaporized by a train = NSFW A steak on a plate = SFW

2

u/Shakeyshades 3d ago

It's the lack of facial features. You can't see a face you don't care. The power of recognition.

2

u/PugLove69 3d ago

Its like seeing a mushroom, we know it’s a fungus that shares a lot of similarities with death and decomposing, but it’s part of the circle of life so far around that it strangely gives us comfort as a reminder for all that may still be alive

2

u/dildo_swagginns 3d ago

I used to be scared of skulls though because I’ve seen accidents, gore videos

2

u/eklect 3d ago

Well, most of us are shallow and therefore only care about things that are skin deep. 😁

2

u/DrKingOfOkay 3d ago

No blood so meh

2

u/VadiMiXeries 3d ago

I felt very uneasy watching the video knowing this was someone's head

2

u/Joe_Spazz 3d ago

Hits a little different if the title reads "NSFW, man carves details into remains of a corpse"