I was reading a fascinating article about the "Uncanny Valley". It's a term used in robotics and computer animation to describe a phenomenon that occurs when measuring people's emotional response to ever increasingly lifelike machines and animated characters. As a general rule of thumb, as robots and computer generated characters become more and more lifelike and "real", people's emotional response is increasingly positive, following a fairly consistent upward trajectory.
Until you reach 90% "real".
Once you hit 90%, people's responses plummet and turn into outright revulsion, scoring about the same as viewing a human corpse or contemplating zombies.
But if you keep moving forward and make your creations 95% "real", emotional responses shoot right back up and continue their upward climb as if nothing had happened.
The graph looks like this (hat tip Wikipedia)...
See that steep cliff? That's "Uncanny Valley".
Welcome to Bakersfield.
I realized that this goes a long way towards explaining my hatred of this place.
Bakersfield is 90% "real".
If it was 85% "real", it would probably come off as kind of quirky and would probably be a more interesting place to live. If it was 95%, it would be close enough for jazz and be at least tolerable. But it's Bakersfield's dumb luck to find itself firmly settled on the Uncanny Valley floor.
It's nice to know my feelings aren't completely irrational, that they are at least partly backed up by pseudoscience.
Maybe one day Bako can nudge up their percentage and make this place somewhat livable.
They could start by importing some Zombies.
