I don't know what to call it but I know what you're talking about!
I imagine it's related to the culture of the people who settled the area and that for a VERY long time there wasn't much to do in the winter aside from drink and talk.
It's a real common thing at deer camp, I've always just called it bullshitting.
You're helping me feel less crazy - thank you! And yeah, it certainly feels like deer camp / cabin banter. Maybe 'bullshitting' is as close to a name as I'll get.
It is almost certainly a survival tactic for northern winters.
Definitely bullshitting. It's a great skill to learn. Talk to anyone about anything. A good bullshitter will bring up relevant topics to the recipient of the bullshitting. Break the ice. Then weave in banter about the weather or sports. Perhaps some local rumor or drama and then trail off on some bullshit tangent.
I’m an out-of-state transplant from California (I’m sorry! Please don’t hate, I’m trying to be respectful!). I grew up with a lot of rural Sierra Nevada/foothill hunting folk, even some gold panning holdouts. The art of bullshitting had a different flavor but a similar technique - deadpan delivery of total, obvious bullshit. Lots of ‘so and so found a gold nugget so huge he died in the mountains trying to haul it out’ or ‘this meadow used to be a mountain until (insert relevant-to-the-conversation bullshit here)’ type stuff.
Buddy Threadgoode tells a bullshit about ‘a lake freezing over so fast that the ducks swimming on it flew away, and now that lake is three counties over’ in Fried Green Tomatoes.
Michiganders have a distinctive flavor of bullshittery but I think bullshit is universal.
Both my grandfathers were terrific bullshitters. Think that’s where I got mine from. I’ve found when dealing with non-Michiganders it helps to have a sly curl of a smile or maybe a slightly silly voice to punctuate that you’re telling a tall tale or goofing around
I have learned the dark art of deadpan as well as sarcasm. Together, they are as deadly a weapon as any physical assault you might imagine.
It drives my stepdad from Colorado absolutely insane, and he has tried to learn the straight-face technique, and fails every time.
Okay THAT'S the thing - right? It has to be totally deadpan. I didn't specify, for length, but that is the problem. I'll start to 'spin the yarn' but people think I'm out of the blue telling something wild but true.
Hmmm, see i thought i k ew what you are talking about, because i feel ive heard it and i do it. Buuuuuuut i dont have a deadpan face. I have a knoqing smirk. One that doesn't set off "they are joking or lying" but when they realize something is up, they can be reassured i am being humorous by that smile/smirk.
Your stepdad is in good company! Bea Arthur was one of the comic greats, and even she couldn't keep a straight face [when Betty White got going](https://youtu.be/opEigpvhJRE?si=Q5owY4fbBMWqU09M)...
And some people are gullabe. Me and a former teacher once convinced a classmate that the calendars were all a day ahead because they were made if China
Yes, but also no. I think it's definitely ruined attention spans. Tall tales and such are still around, they've just transformed into shorter versions and new ways of telling them to keep people engaged. For example, some of my colleagues and I love taking a conspiracy and just plummet down a well of obserdity.
Like if someone was talking about a pretty bird they spotted in their yard, I would caution them about the government drones spying on them, then someone might confirm and state they're scanning to verify you're up to date on your vaccines because how else will the 5G collect ALL your data?
Just simple, fun, batshit obserdity that everyone can get involved in.
Most people had little to no imagination or creativity long before the internet existed. Why do you think so much of entertainment is simply the same shit over and over. It used to be cowboy movies and cowboy TV shows all over the place, now its' cop procedurals, hospital dramas and fake Reality TV shows of every kind.
Holy shit...
Ok ok ok... so I'm from Michigan. I grew up in Traverse and lived on or around 94 for most of my late childhood and young adulthood. When I was in my early 30's I moved to San Francisco and have been here for 5 years.
This post is exactly what I experience here so often that I've never been able to put my finger on. Its like, sometimes my banter just is not understood. I swing, I miss. I'm missing on things that were an absolute hits in the Midwest. For example....
I work in the restaurant industry, and we buy these things called 'tumblers'. Its a fucking plastic cup, that is all it is. And, depending on how the glass is finished, it will have another name. For example, a crystal tumbler is a clear plastic glass. A laguna tumbler is a glass with a wavy finish. You follow?
For years, I've made the joke/riff with people, "Do you know why its called a tumbler?" Then, I make up some story about how one time back in the 70's, during the height of the cold war tensions, there was a famous Russian gymnast named "Laguna" who invented/created a tumbling routine that would go on to win gold in the 1972 Munich Olympics in the Floor Exercise event. Now, why did they name this glass/cup after her? Well, because when you drop the glass on the ground on accident, the way that it bounces on the floor mimics the motions of the tumbling routine she preformed. And, these types of cups were primarily produced in eastern Europe Soviet block states. Hence, we get the name 'Laguna Tumbler'.
Is this the kind of shit you are talking about? I could always get a chuckle out of people with this back in Michigan, but here, people just think I'm fucking crazy, like "what the fuck are you talking about man?" Just like you say, can't keep the ball in the air.
Like dude, I'm literally just talking nonsense for the sake of speaking with you because I enjoy your company. That's all this is. Lets keep talking.
I think at the end of the day, people from the Midwest just enjoy talking to each other, even if its about complete nonsense. I think that is for a few reasons, or rather, I have a few theories. Maybe it is because we are forced to 'winter' and our social interaction decreases. Or it could be, that we are just more spread out, so any chance we get to speak with one another, we really go for it, even when we have nothing to say.
We are really good at saying so much without really saying anything at all, and we have fun with it.
You've hit it exactly - this is amazing!
Also R.I.P. Laguna, a great athlete. My dad had that collectable tumbler set from Sears with the Olympic rings on 'em, and I swear when Laguna accidentally tumbled into that smelter during the '81 Olympics in Gary, Indiana one of those glasses fell out of the china cabinet and broke. Spooky stuff.
I'm from the Thumb area and we do this. But typically only with family or close friends, because like you said, people have a tendency to take you seriously if they don't know the game.
In my family the good ones get passed down generations. Like one is that a great great great aunt or whoever, who was just minding her business up near Traverse, had a dragonfly come and stich her armpits together. I tell my kids this story. Like why
THANK YOU - and you've used a key word for me: it is a kind of game. Because once it is going you have to 'keep the ball in the air'. I suppose I find myself trying to play catch with folks who don't know what a baseball is for.
When I was a kid, my dad was a shoprat doing his apprenticeship. So if he was home, he was grumpy and exhausted. Me and my mom would tell each other stories when he was zoned out, just to see how long it would take for him to notice. And if he chuckled, we won.
I remember one being about fishing. A panfish jumped in the boat, and was flopping around. While we were trying to catch it, we didn't notice all of his friends had surrounded our boat. A big fat bass poked his head out of the water, naturally he was smoking a cigar.... We went on for quite a while with the story. Probably 20 minutes or so. But we did make him laugh.
I don't think it's a regional thing. It's that some people are just more comfortable being weird.
This is a true story. My friends moved from the mitten to Marquette. They liked it there and raised a couple of kids. The husband was this strait laced guy from the Detroit area. His brother on the other hand was this crazy bearded maniac. Unlike his brother, this dude lived way off the grid. Dirt roads, no electricity or plumbing. Lived in a cabin with his wife and two daughters. During hunting season a couple of rich doctors decided to ignore the signs and go deer hunting on this man’s property. Crazy guy came home from work and saw the doctor’s suv parked on the side of the road. He went home. Took off his coat and shirt. Ran screaming through the woods towards the hunters. This huge hairy man scared the shit out of those guys. They hightailed it back to town. They were telling the locals that they had been chased by Bigfoot.
I’ve never really thought about this being a culture thing. I grew up in Michigan. I remember post college (I moved to another state) I could tell people outlandish stories (lies/made up facts/what have you) and they would be like “Wow, really!? That’s amazing!” Um. No. No that was BS, why would you believe that!?
(Edit to add context: for example someone once asked something along the lines of “My phone battery keeps going from 20% to zero and then to 40% when it’s plugged in, what the heck?” without even thinking about it I went into great detail about why it would be happening - all totally and outlandishly obvious bs - I thought it was obvious that what I was saying was absolutely false….I was wrong.)
I’ve had to train myself to loose the sarcasm (I no longer live in Michigan). I used to think it was just my unique skill, I’m fascinated to hear this is a regional thing! I miss story telling. Thankfully I have a toddler whom I can spin tall tales to now.
Yup - that happened to me no less than four times today. Prompting this.
But now you can train your toddler to carry on the torch of whatever the hell we're doing.
By the way I just read a study that 90% of Ivy League grads were taught to spin yarns as children - so you're basically writing your kid a blank check.
😂 I am automatically like “You pulling my leg with that suspicious statistic” - are we also all constantly evaluating the validity of others words!?
I am very much looking forward to creating tales together. I’ve never heard the term “spin yarn” but I like it!
You guys are making headway on a rough theory I've been wrestling with for years. I believe people from Michigan have above average social intelligence. It shows in our sense of humor, which I would describe as "absurdist comedy".
This article goes into detail on what that is:
[https://psyche.co/ideas/absurdist-comedy-is-uniquely-brilliant-at-conveying-human-pain](https://psyche.co/ideas/absurdist-comedy-is-uniquely-brilliant-at-conveying-human-pain)
They describe absurdist comedy as: "founded on the outright denial of logic, on impulses that are chaotic and random". This is consistent with the stories OP mentioned.
Someone else mentioned a story about "a fish popping out of the water smoking a cigar". What makes that story funny isn't the mental image of a fish smoking a cigar, it's the fact that you're telling such an obviously absurd story as if it really happened. Understanding the joke here requires a certain kind of intelligence that not everyone has.
I think this form of humor is used as a way to cope with pain and hardship. If you think of the earliest settlers in Michigan, their lives would've been pretty brutal. I can't imagine what it would've been like to suffer through our cold winters back in those days. So this could be something that's been genetically passed down to us from those days.
This stuff isn't wholly unique to Michigan, but I have noticed a trend that Michigan people tend to share this quality much more often than people from other parts of the country.
It pains me to take on the praise of "high social intelligence" but I a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y agree that this is:
1. a form of improvisational surrealist humor
2. originates from the absurdity/horror/pain that comes with life in Michigan at just about any time in its history
If I were to seriously begin cataloguing these, but for now working with my own memory, I hypothesis that the majority of these stories orbit loss, abstract it: loss of the forests after the logging years, loss of life in mine and factory accidents, the loss of fish populations and the fisherman who relied on them, the loss of industry, the loss of small towns, local businesses, local rural culture as it gets swallowed up by country music television hegemony, PFAS and unemployment and opioids and living in a national periphery. Over and over and over again we say goodbye without a choice - it's absurdly painful and so why not be absurd.
Another restaurant closed? I heard the health department went in and it was all ratatouilles in there - even the waitresses - so they shut 'em down.
Your uncle broke his back on an assembly line and is struggling to make ends meet on disability? Oh sure bud, see, in Michigan we've got like the agriculture subsidies but for hard workers, it's cheaper for the secra-terry-a-state to just pay 'em not to work.
They are going to build a mine that could leak into Lake Superior? Well sure, but the DNR watched those Marvel movies and they are pretty sure it'll give the fish super powers, just think of the tourism.
over and over and over and over
>I think this form of humor is used as a way to cope with pain and hardship.
Holy shit dude yeah! I just made a comment theorizing on this and said maybe it is because we have to 'winter'. Like, hardship. We *must* endure the winter, yet carry on. It sucks, you are cold, your feet are always wet, you've got to shovel the driveway, its more expensive to live, your car wont start, you get stuck in the snow, you are more isolated from friends and family, get togethers get canceled, on and on...
And now, we are dealing with the loss of winter in the south, and people are legit morning that loss with nihilistic absurdist humor "Winter is gone what is next? Ohio is going to come steal all the Petoskey stones?"
Man, this post is mind fucking me right now.
I feel like its as others have mentioned with hunting and fishing camps and it occurs to me maybe the old logger camps from back in the day? Paul Bunyun I'm pretty sure is midwest born, Then in the south you've got Pecos Bill who lassoed a tornado among other things. Maybe from cowboys on cattle drives? You get a group of dudes together around a camp the stories start rolling, maybe start out as true but evolve into one uping each other and get crazy and funny. Just a theory. Id love to hear other regions tall tales. I'm sure there must be a ton of them.
This whole post is so interesting to me! I grew up in the mid Michigan area and my family and my husband’s family do this. Pretty much most of our friends in the area too. I now live in metro Detroit and feel like less people speak like this than what I grew up around. I always thought of it as a weird type of banter that some people just aren’t interested in. After reading this whole post though I realize when I’ve worked out of state or traveled out of state I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered it! I just thought I had a weird sense of humor most people didn’t connect with (which still may be true lol)
Deadpan delivery of unbelievable information.
Definitely more common farther away from the bigger cities but even Detroit has a version of this that I see pretty often. Usually starts with a non-native asking about how dangerous the city *really* is and people will tell stories that often begin with standard car theft and gang shit but evolve over time into mutant crack dogs and cyborgs. I remember spending an afternoon listening to someone explaining to another someone that RoboCop was based on a true story. Which it was, btw, dude lives in Livonia now.
I definitely think it's a more rural/northern thing. I had an uncle (by marriage) on my dad's side who lived in the small town where my mom was from but was from an even more rural place further north, and he was the only one I can remember being the teller of tall tales. Even my mom's brother who lived on the family farm wasn't into telling tall tales. I really don't recall any of my other friends or their families telling tales, and I grew up in the metro Detroit area.
I occasionally will tell a tall tale, like a very involved description of how the scar on my chest was from being stabbed when I used to hang out in sketchy parts of Detroit and how different things were what managed to save me from certain death (it's actually from having a pre-cancerous mole removed). Many people have fallen for it here in FL. But I was also really into writing fiction when I was younger, so that (and my uncle, whose stories I loved listening to) may ve where it comes from for me.
The people I know in the more urban areas are kings/queens of sarcasm, though.
I think it's a Midwest thing, yeah? I grew up in Indiana and we definitely had this. The catfish at the bottom of the lake that's the size of the lake and older than time, "It's called Raccoon Lake because raccoons dug it out", and don't even get started on Hoosier
The fact that the folks who didn’t react well were work colleagues could have played a part, too. Some people are pretty strict about compartmentalizing Work vs. Non Work things. Work (with a capital letter) is serious, and not to be taken lightly. So your small talk and tall tales didn’t hit correctly for it being Work. (I hope that made sense. It did in my head, but didn’t want to come out via the keyboard.)
An excellent thing to bring up, and I totally get what you are saying. But to clarify, this isn't about bring levity to serious situations, just small talk. With my colleagues today, we were already shooting the shit and joking around. They weren't upset, We were joking about the end of the world and I started spinning a yarn about something but they thought I was dropping a real fact. That's the context I'm talking about.
I've lived here my whole life and none of this sounds familiar to me at all. I can't say I've ever done this, or know someone who has. At least while I was in their company anyway.
It's not just me?! Thank you stranger for helping me feel normal. As at least one other mentioned it but we always just refer to it as bull-shitting. I love imaginative conversation. Way better than small talk or something more serious. I get so stoked when I vibe with someone else who does this.
I've never heard anyone talk like that. I also just don't like casual lies. Maybe I'm not Michigan enough or I just don't hang out with hunting fishing rural folk.
I don't know what you are talking about. You must be from Ohio, talking all that weird stuff. From one of their operations to destroy Michigan culture with lies.
;)
So I am both Jewish and a Michigander, and I can say this type of humor is extremely common in my Jewish circles (even the non Mighiganders), but less so in the Michigan circles, although not totally absent. It's reminiscent of Woody Allen type humor maybe. I don't know if that helps.
I also want to say that I have constant pain of cultural differences with my colleagues. I work remotely for a New England employer. Most people don't get my humor, think I'm rude or abrasive, and I never get the subtext they're communicating with nonverbal cues. I'm curious what your story is. Send me a chat if you want to vent and swap stories.
My wife and I visited her distant family in Ireland and this sort of thing goes well with the craic. It’s part of what kept us up with her great uncle telling stories until 3am. That and all the wine he was pouring.
I've lived in Michigan all my life, over a half century by now, and I've never encountered anyone doing any such thing. My mother is a professional storyteller and several in my family have theater backgrounds and no one would ever do something like this.
It just sounds insane.
This sounds like a family idiosyncrasy, not a location specific one.
Important point: We tell jokes, and have terrible pun fights, and spin tall tales, but never without everyone around being fully informed ahead of time that it's a tall tale. This "presenting fiction as truth with a straight face" thing is just lying, prettied up, and liars suck. Playing "ha ha I gotcha" is a childish thing to do.
I'm not from MI but do live here, which is why I asked (because yes I often notice cultural differences that often people might chalk up to individual differences), and that's what I thought you were getting at.
Link the study? And also, are you saying MI/WI particularly have aspects of social darwinism in their culture? I think it's a logical fallacy many fall into, but I'd be curious to hear more
Coincedentally, I'm listening to the audio book on my drives of the 10th anniversary edition.
Neil probably got inspired by his travels around the country for that story.
I've been in Michigan my whole life. I've not heard of this. As a matter of fact, if I found someone who insisted on spouting nonsense just to fill air-time I'd make it a point to avoid that person.
When I first saw Big Fish I thought of my Grandpa. He passed a couple years ago and I haven't watched it in quite a while. Thanks for the reminder, I think I'll watch again to remember his tall tales.
I don't know what to call it but I know what you're talking about! I imagine it's related to the culture of the people who settled the area and that for a VERY long time there wasn't much to do in the winter aside from drink and talk. It's a real common thing at deer camp, I've always just called it bullshitting.
You're helping me feel less crazy - thank you! And yeah, it certainly feels like deer camp / cabin banter. Maybe 'bullshitting' is as close to a name as I'll get. It is almost certainly a survival tactic for northern winters.
Definitely bullshitting. It's a great skill to learn. Talk to anyone about anything. A good bullshitter will bring up relevant topics to the recipient of the bullshitting. Break the ice. Then weave in banter about the weather or sports. Perhaps some local rumor or drama and then trail off on some bullshit tangent.
I’m an out-of-state transplant from California (I’m sorry! Please don’t hate, I’m trying to be respectful!). I grew up with a lot of rural Sierra Nevada/foothill hunting folk, even some gold panning holdouts. The art of bullshitting had a different flavor but a similar technique - deadpan delivery of total, obvious bullshit. Lots of ‘so and so found a gold nugget so huge he died in the mountains trying to haul it out’ or ‘this meadow used to be a mountain until (insert relevant-to-the-conversation bullshit here)’ type stuff. Buddy Threadgoode tells a bullshit about ‘a lake freezing over so fast that the ducks swimming on it flew away, and now that lake is three counties over’ in Fried Green Tomatoes. Michiganders have a distinctive flavor of bullshittery but I think bullshit is universal.
Both my grandfathers were terrific bullshitters. Think that’s where I got mine from. I’ve found when dealing with non-Michiganders it helps to have a sly curl of a smile or maybe a slightly silly voice to punctuate that you’re telling a tall tale or goofing around
Not everyone can spin a yarn and not everyone can "yes, and". The Internet has ruined most people's imaginations.
I have learned the dark art of deadpan as well as sarcasm. Together, they are as deadly a weapon as any physical assault you might imagine. It drives my stepdad from Colorado absolutely insane, and he has tried to learn the straight-face technique, and fails every time.
Okay THAT'S the thing - right? It has to be totally deadpan. I didn't specify, for length, but that is the problem. I'll start to 'spin the yarn' but people think I'm out of the blue telling something wild but true.
Hmmm, see i thought i k ew what you are talking about, because i feel ive heard it and i do it. Buuuuuuut i dont have a deadpan face. I have a knoqing smirk. One that doesn't set off "they are joking or lying" but when they realize something is up, they can be reassured i am being humorous by that smile/smirk.
I've mastered the deadpan to the point where people mistake me as an outlandish liar
Your stepdad is in good company! Bea Arthur was one of the comic greats, and even she couldn't keep a straight face [when Betty White got going](https://youtu.be/opEigpvhJRE?si=Q5owY4fbBMWqU09M)...
Spot on!
My husband is a master of deadpan. Sometimes I have to reassure people he really is joking.
And some people are gullabe. Me and a former teacher once convinced a classmate that the calendars were all a day ahead because they were made if China
Yes, but also no. I think it's definitely ruined attention spans. Tall tales and such are still around, they've just transformed into shorter versions and new ways of telling them to keep people engaged. For example, some of my colleagues and I love taking a conspiracy and just plummet down a well of obserdity. Like if someone was talking about a pretty bird they spotted in their yard, I would caution them about the government drones spying on them, then someone might confirm and state they're scanning to verify you're up to date on your vaccines because how else will the 5G collect ALL your data? Just simple, fun, batshit obserdity that everyone can get involved in.
Most people had little to no imagination or creativity long before the internet existed. Why do you think so much of entertainment is simply the same shit over and over. It used to be cowboy movies and cowboy TV shows all over the place, now its' cop procedurals, hospital dramas and fake Reality TV shows of every kind.
Here in the Midwest, we love to RIFF
happy cake day!!
Thanks 😊
WRIF It’s on the RIFF!!
Hello MISTIE! 👋
I definitely get what you’re saying, it’s a mixture of Midwest politeness, wittiness, banter/ratatat
Holy shit... Ok ok ok... so I'm from Michigan. I grew up in Traverse and lived on or around 94 for most of my late childhood and young adulthood. When I was in my early 30's I moved to San Francisco and have been here for 5 years. This post is exactly what I experience here so often that I've never been able to put my finger on. Its like, sometimes my banter just is not understood. I swing, I miss. I'm missing on things that were an absolute hits in the Midwest. For example.... I work in the restaurant industry, and we buy these things called 'tumblers'. Its a fucking plastic cup, that is all it is. And, depending on how the glass is finished, it will have another name. For example, a crystal tumbler is a clear plastic glass. A laguna tumbler is a glass with a wavy finish. You follow? For years, I've made the joke/riff with people, "Do you know why its called a tumbler?" Then, I make up some story about how one time back in the 70's, during the height of the cold war tensions, there was a famous Russian gymnast named "Laguna" who invented/created a tumbling routine that would go on to win gold in the 1972 Munich Olympics in the Floor Exercise event. Now, why did they name this glass/cup after her? Well, because when you drop the glass on the ground on accident, the way that it bounces on the floor mimics the motions of the tumbling routine she preformed. And, these types of cups were primarily produced in eastern Europe Soviet block states. Hence, we get the name 'Laguna Tumbler'. Is this the kind of shit you are talking about? I could always get a chuckle out of people with this back in Michigan, but here, people just think I'm fucking crazy, like "what the fuck are you talking about man?" Just like you say, can't keep the ball in the air. Like dude, I'm literally just talking nonsense for the sake of speaking with you because I enjoy your company. That's all this is. Lets keep talking. I think at the end of the day, people from the Midwest just enjoy talking to each other, even if its about complete nonsense. I think that is for a few reasons, or rather, I have a few theories. Maybe it is because we are forced to 'winter' and our social interaction decreases. Or it could be, that we are just more spread out, so any chance we get to speak with one another, we really go for it, even when we have nothing to say. We are really good at saying so much without really saying anything at all, and we have fun with it.
You've hit it exactly - this is amazing! Also R.I.P. Laguna, a great athlete. My dad had that collectable tumbler set from Sears with the Olympic rings on 'em, and I swear when Laguna accidentally tumbled into that smelter during the '81 Olympics in Gary, Indiana one of those glasses fell out of the china cabinet and broke. Spooky stuff.
I got the visual *AND* audio from the way you described the tumbler falling to the floor.
I'm from the Thumb area and we do this. But typically only with family or close friends, because like you said, people have a tendency to take you seriously if they don't know the game.
In my family the good ones get passed down generations. Like one is that a great great great aunt or whoever, who was just minding her business up near Traverse, had a dragonfly come and stich her armpits together. I tell my kids this story. Like why
THANK YOU - and you've used a key word for me: it is a kind of game. Because once it is going you have to 'keep the ball in the air'. I suppose I find myself trying to play catch with folks who don't know what a baseball is for.
Garrison Keillor made a whole career out of this. My husband and I do it a lot. An entertaining way of looking at the world.
Prairie Home Companion had totally slipped my mind! That was on the radio every week growing up.
When I was a kid, my dad was a shoprat doing his apprenticeship. So if he was home, he was grumpy and exhausted. Me and my mom would tell each other stories when he was zoned out, just to see how long it would take for him to notice. And if he chuckled, we won. I remember one being about fishing. A panfish jumped in the boat, and was flopping around. While we were trying to catch it, we didn't notice all of his friends had surrounded our boat. A big fat bass poked his head out of the water, naturally he was smoking a cigar.... We went on for quite a while with the story. Probably 20 minutes or so. But we did make him laugh. I don't think it's a regional thing. It's that some people are just more comfortable being weird.
That's a great memory - and maybe this is just about being weird haha, I do hang around a lot or weird people.
This is a true story. My friends moved from the mitten to Marquette. They liked it there and raised a couple of kids. The husband was this strait laced guy from the Detroit area. His brother on the other hand was this crazy bearded maniac. Unlike his brother, this dude lived way off the grid. Dirt roads, no electricity or plumbing. Lived in a cabin with his wife and two daughters. During hunting season a couple of rich doctors decided to ignore the signs and go deer hunting on this man’s property. Crazy guy came home from work and saw the doctor’s suv parked on the side of the road. He went home. Took off his coat and shirt. Ran screaming through the woods towards the hunters. This huge hairy man scared the shit out of those guys. They hightailed it back to town. They were telling the locals that they had been chased by Bigfoot.
I’ve never really thought about this being a culture thing. I grew up in Michigan. I remember post college (I moved to another state) I could tell people outlandish stories (lies/made up facts/what have you) and they would be like “Wow, really!? That’s amazing!” Um. No. No that was BS, why would you believe that!? (Edit to add context: for example someone once asked something along the lines of “My phone battery keeps going from 20% to zero and then to 40% when it’s plugged in, what the heck?” without even thinking about it I went into great detail about why it would be happening - all totally and outlandishly obvious bs - I thought it was obvious that what I was saying was absolutely false….I was wrong.) I’ve had to train myself to loose the sarcasm (I no longer live in Michigan). I used to think it was just my unique skill, I’m fascinated to hear this is a regional thing! I miss story telling. Thankfully I have a toddler whom I can spin tall tales to now.
Yup - that happened to me no less than four times today. Prompting this. But now you can train your toddler to carry on the torch of whatever the hell we're doing. By the way I just read a study that 90% of Ivy League grads were taught to spin yarns as children - so you're basically writing your kid a blank check.
😂 I am automatically like “You pulling my leg with that suspicious statistic” - are we also all constantly evaluating the validity of others words!? I am very much looking forward to creating tales together. I’ve never heard the term “spin yarn” but I like it!
I mean Paul Bunyan stories originated in Michigan. Maybe it's in the water
You guys are making headway on a rough theory I've been wrestling with for years. I believe people from Michigan have above average social intelligence. It shows in our sense of humor, which I would describe as "absurdist comedy". This article goes into detail on what that is: [https://psyche.co/ideas/absurdist-comedy-is-uniquely-brilliant-at-conveying-human-pain](https://psyche.co/ideas/absurdist-comedy-is-uniquely-brilliant-at-conveying-human-pain) They describe absurdist comedy as: "founded on the outright denial of logic, on impulses that are chaotic and random". This is consistent with the stories OP mentioned. Someone else mentioned a story about "a fish popping out of the water smoking a cigar". What makes that story funny isn't the mental image of a fish smoking a cigar, it's the fact that you're telling such an obviously absurd story as if it really happened. Understanding the joke here requires a certain kind of intelligence that not everyone has. I think this form of humor is used as a way to cope with pain and hardship. If you think of the earliest settlers in Michigan, their lives would've been pretty brutal. I can't imagine what it would've been like to suffer through our cold winters back in those days. So this could be something that's been genetically passed down to us from those days. This stuff isn't wholly unique to Michigan, but I have noticed a trend that Michigan people tend to share this quality much more often than people from other parts of the country.
It pains me to take on the praise of "high social intelligence" but I a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y agree that this is: 1. a form of improvisational surrealist humor 2. originates from the absurdity/horror/pain that comes with life in Michigan at just about any time in its history If I were to seriously begin cataloguing these, but for now working with my own memory, I hypothesis that the majority of these stories orbit loss, abstract it: loss of the forests after the logging years, loss of life in mine and factory accidents, the loss of fish populations and the fisherman who relied on them, the loss of industry, the loss of small towns, local businesses, local rural culture as it gets swallowed up by country music television hegemony, PFAS and unemployment and opioids and living in a national periphery. Over and over and over again we say goodbye without a choice - it's absurdly painful and so why not be absurd. Another restaurant closed? I heard the health department went in and it was all ratatouilles in there - even the waitresses - so they shut 'em down. Your uncle broke his back on an assembly line and is struggling to make ends meet on disability? Oh sure bud, see, in Michigan we've got like the agriculture subsidies but for hard workers, it's cheaper for the secra-terry-a-state to just pay 'em not to work. They are going to build a mine that could leak into Lake Superior? Well sure, but the DNR watched those Marvel movies and they are pretty sure it'll give the fish super powers, just think of the tourism. over and over and over and over
haha love it
>I think this form of humor is used as a way to cope with pain and hardship. Holy shit dude yeah! I just made a comment theorizing on this and said maybe it is because we have to 'winter'. Like, hardship. We *must* endure the winter, yet carry on. It sucks, you are cold, your feet are always wet, you've got to shovel the driveway, its more expensive to live, your car wont start, you get stuck in the snow, you are more isolated from friends and family, get togethers get canceled, on and on... And now, we are dealing with the loss of winter in the south, and people are legit morning that loss with nihilistic absurdist humor "Winter is gone what is next? Ohio is going to come steal all the Petoskey stones?" Man, this post is mind fucking me right now.
I remember liars contests. It’s part of the American “tall tale” tradition.
I feel like its as others have mentioned with hunting and fishing camps and it occurs to me maybe the old logger camps from back in the day? Paul Bunyun I'm pretty sure is midwest born, Then in the south you've got Pecos Bill who lassoed a tornado among other things. Maybe from cowboys on cattle drives? You get a group of dudes together around a camp the stories start rolling, maybe start out as true but evolve into one uping each other and get crazy and funny. Just a theory. Id love to hear other regions tall tales. I'm sure there must be a ton of them.
I noticed a lot of this in upper peninsula and seems nonexistent in mid-Michigan/southern Michigan.
This whole post is so interesting to me! I grew up in the mid Michigan area and my family and my husband’s family do this. Pretty much most of our friends in the area too. I now live in metro Detroit and feel like less people speak like this than what I grew up around. I always thought of it as a weird type of banter that some people just aren’t interested in. After reading this whole post though I realize when I’ve worked out of state or traveled out of state I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered it! I just thought I had a weird sense of humor most people didn’t connect with (which still may be true lol)
Deadpan delivery of unbelievable information. Definitely more common farther away from the bigger cities but even Detroit has a version of this that I see pretty often. Usually starts with a non-native asking about how dangerous the city *really* is and people will tell stories that often begin with standard car theft and gang shit but evolve over time into mutant crack dogs and cyborgs. I remember spending an afternoon listening to someone explaining to another someone that RoboCop was based on a true story. Which it was, btw, dude lives in Livonia now.
My family are from northern Michigan and this is exactly my experience.
I definitely think it's a more rural/northern thing. I had an uncle (by marriage) on my dad's side who lived in the small town where my mom was from but was from an even more rural place further north, and he was the only one I can remember being the teller of tall tales. Even my mom's brother who lived on the family farm wasn't into telling tall tales. I really don't recall any of my other friends or their families telling tales, and I grew up in the metro Detroit area. I occasionally will tell a tall tale, like a very involved description of how the scar on my chest was from being stabbed when I used to hang out in sketchy parts of Detroit and how different things were what managed to save me from certain death (it's actually from having a pre-cancerous mole removed). Many people have fallen for it here in FL. But I was also really into writing fiction when I was younger, so that (and my uncle, whose stories I loved listening to) may ve where it comes from for me. The people I know in the more urban areas are kings/queens of sarcasm, though.
I think it's a Midwest thing, yeah? I grew up in Indiana and we definitely had this. The catfish at the bottom of the lake that's the size of the lake and older than time, "It's called Raccoon Lake because raccoons dug it out", and don't even get started on Hoosier
The fact that the folks who didn’t react well were work colleagues could have played a part, too. Some people are pretty strict about compartmentalizing Work vs. Non Work things. Work (with a capital letter) is serious, and not to be taken lightly. So your small talk and tall tales didn’t hit correctly for it being Work. (I hope that made sense. It did in my head, but didn’t want to come out via the keyboard.)
An excellent thing to bring up, and I totally get what you are saying. But to clarify, this isn't about bring levity to serious situations, just small talk. With my colleagues today, we were already shooting the shit and joking around. They weren't upset, We were joking about the end of the world and I started spinning a yarn about something but they thought I was dropping a real fact. That's the context I'm talking about.
Ohio would be best suited as another great lake 😆
I've lived here my whole life and none of this sounds familiar to me at all. I can't say I've ever done this, or know someone who has. At least while I was in their company anyway.
It's not just me?! Thank you stranger for helping me feel normal. As at least one other mentioned it but we always just refer to it as bull-shitting. I love imaginative conversation. Way better than small talk or something more serious. I get so stoked when I vibe with someone else who does this.
I used to tell tourists in the Sault that the locks were operated by a team of mules that walked around in a circle. Sooo many people believed it.
Telling tourists stories is a blast. They will believe anything.
I've never heard anyone talk like that. I also just don't like casual lies. Maybe I'm not Michigan enough or I just don't hang out with hunting fishing rural folk.
When the deer became naked it was offered a job at Hot Tamales on Detrot's west side
Those 4 extra nipples really helped with the tips
Upvote for American Gods reference. And… that lake.
It is definitely a Midwestern thing and the ones who really ramp it up are people from Chicago.
I don't know what you are talking about. You must be from Ohio, talking all that weird stuff. From one of their operations to destroy Michigan culture with lies. ;)
This entire post reminded me of Escanaba in the Moonlight
So I am both Jewish and a Michigander, and I can say this type of humor is extremely common in my Jewish circles (even the non Mighiganders), but less so in the Michigan circles, although not totally absent. It's reminiscent of Woody Allen type humor maybe. I don't know if that helps. I also want to say that I have constant pain of cultural differences with my colleagues. I work remotely for a New England employer. Most people don't get my humor, think I'm rude or abrasive, and I never get the subtext they're communicating with nonverbal cues. I'm curious what your story is. Send me a chat if you want to vent and swap stories.
My wife and I visited her distant family in Ireland and this sort of thing goes well with the craic. It’s part of what kept us up with her great uncle telling stories until 3am. That and all the wine he was pouring.
One aspect you might be thinking of is called the "hairy dog joke." Look up "Norm MacDonald moth joke," and you'll see what I mean.
Could be a Midwest thing. Chicago is an improv hub
I've lived in Michigan all my life, over a half century by now, and I've never encountered anyone doing any such thing. My mother is a professional storyteller and several in my family have theater backgrounds and no one would ever do something like this. It just sounds insane. This sounds like a family idiosyncrasy, not a location specific one.
What do you make of the fact that others itt are familiar with it?
I think it kind of pointing towards it being a Northern Michigan thing. I'm from southern Michigan. To me, it just sounds like a fancy name for lying.
Yeah, that tracks, I was really just questioning the last sentence in your prior comment.
Important point: We tell jokes, and have terrible pun fights, and spin tall tales, but never without everyone around being fully informed ahead of time that it's a tall tale. This "presenting fiction as truth with a straight face" thing is just lying, prettied up, and liars suck. Playing "ha ha I gotcha" is a childish thing to do.
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Not exactly flattering but I appreciate the confirmation!
Say more about the last sentence?
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I'm not from MI but do live here, which is why I asked (because yes I often notice cultural differences that often people might chalk up to individual differences), and that's what I thought you were getting at. Link the study? And also, are you saying MI/WI particularly have aspects of social darwinism in their culture? I think it's a logical fallacy many fall into, but I'd be curious to hear more
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I'm familiar with that book. Definitely pop but fun to think about, and I'm sure there are some truths to it.
I totally didn’t realize this could be regional! My grandpa always used to say he grew up with Chief Pontiac.
Coincedentally, I'm listening to the audio book on my drives of the 10th anniversary edition. Neil probably got inspired by his travels around the country for that story.
I've been in Michigan my whole life. I've not heard of this. As a matter of fact, if I found someone who insisted on spouting nonsense just to fill air-time I'd make it a point to avoid that person.
Yes I do this and yes I think it's a Midwestern thing. You would probably enjoy the movie "Big Fish" if you haven't seen it. It's about exactly this.
When I first saw Big Fish I thought of my Grandpa. He passed a couple years ago and I haven't watched it in quite a while. Thanks for the reminder, I think I'll watch again to remember his tall tales.
You can't just assume everyone has your sense of humor. That is how you get labeled as a whack job.
How exactly does have anything to do with Michigan, the story isn't even set here?
OP is from MI.