Humans are weird! How weird?

March 24, 2019 6:55 PM

Seeking observations of humans doing everyday things from the perspective of an alien or animal or other non-human.

Nathan W Pyle's Strange Planet series is a perfect example. I know 3rd Rock from the Sun or Coneheads must be chock full of this but I'd be grateful for pointers to specific scenes as opposed to general show or movie recommendations. Books / other writing / more comics / any form of media all great.

posted by Miss Viola Swamp to Society & Culture (36 answers total)

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, by Craig Raine
posted by redfoxtail at 6:57 PM on March 24, 2019 [7 favorites]

When I was in elementary school we learned about the odd practices of the Nacerima. Not quite the same.
posted by jessamyn at 7:00 PM on March 24, 2019 [13 favorites]

I read Motel of the Mysteries in elementary school and remember it as a classic example of "oo humans" and also, the follies of archaeology / anthropology.
posted by batter_my_heart at 7:01 PM on March 24, 2019 [12 favorites]

They’re Made Out Of Meat
posted by castlebravo at 7:17 PM on March 24, 2019 [17 favorites]

Asimov's what is this thing called love .
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:18 PM on March 24, 2019

"What on Earth!" by the National Film Board of Mars.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:24 PM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Here's a classic animation from the National Film Board of CanadaMars: "What On Earth" (which I first saw in Junior High and later stole the idea when a High School creative writing class had an assignment to write something Science Fictiony)
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:25 PM on March 24, 2019

There was a hilarious string of humans are weird posts on Tumblr a while back. I am incapable of properly navigating Tumblr's stupid threading so the best collection I can find is here collected on a different site.

There's a more diffuse, less focused but more extensive collection of similar posts here. The hashtags are often something like "humans are space Australia" or "Humans are space orcs."
posted by Wretch729 at 7:28 PM on March 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

Scalzi's "Three Robots Experience Objects Left Behind from the Era of Humans for the First Time”, now part of the Netflix series Love, Death and Robots, is more of a postmortem analysis, but it hits the spot.
posted by maudlin at 7:41 PM on March 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

One of my favorite Leigh Hunt poems, To a Fish (see the second verse).
posted by huimangm at 7:41 PM on March 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:42 PM on March 24, 2019

This poem
posted by kindall at 7:46 PM on March 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet has a fair amount of this, it's charming!
posted by LeeLanded at 8:13 PM on March 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

It's a series of eight books (which should really have only been four or five) but I'm very glad I waded through Harry Turtledove's Worldwar, if only for how he so fully gets inside the minds of our reptilian invaders, and their frustrations in dealing with humanity.
posted by Rash at 8:20 PM on March 24, 2019

This perspective on jogging
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:21 PM on March 24, 2019

Also this bit on humans in the Star Trek universe
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:33 PM on March 24, 2019

There is this bit from George Carlin where he discusses the concept of sleep from the perspective of someone who didn't know what sleep was.
posted by acidnova at 8:40 PM on March 24, 2019

The bits in Scarlett Thomas’s The Seed Collectors that are from the robin’s point of view.
posted by centrifugal at 8:54 PM on March 24, 2019

There's a fairly popular tumblr post called Humans are adorable which describes several typical human things as cute/quirky from an alien/outsider perspective
posted by O9scar at 9:00 PM on March 24, 2019

Jomny Sun’s Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too

The graphic novel is utterly fantastic, as is it’s translation to audiobook format (but do the book first)
posted by wowenthusiast at 9:12 PM on March 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

From the Toast:
Erotica Written By An Alien Pretending Not To Be Horrified By The Human Body
Sexual Overtures From An Alien Unfamiliar With The Human Body
posted by potrzebie at 9:27 PM on March 24, 2019

Matt Haig, The Humans
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:31 PM on March 24, 2019

The NFB's classic animated short What On Earth!

[Argh, double. Sorry!]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:00 PM on March 24, 2019

TVTropes:
Humans Through Alien Eyes
Humans are Cthulhu

Some other possibilities:

Martian poetry

my cat is sad

Scuttle from The Little Mermaid

Perky "Canada" Has Own Government, Laws
posted by Rhaomi at 11:43 PM on March 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This is a literary technique called Martianism, or the Martian School. You'll get a lot of good results searching for those terms.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 2:23 AM on March 25, 2019

Surely Stranger in a Strange Land is canonical.
posted by value of information at 3:06 AM on March 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

No Word from Gurb (but maybe you will not get the references about 1990s Barcelona/ Spain)
posted by sukeban at 4:23 AM on March 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions reads like this.
posted by stinkfoot at 7:20 AM on March 25, 2019

Best answer: The first few seasons of Fraggle Rock had a recurring segment of "Postcards from Uncle Traveling Matt," with wildly incorrect--but amusing & often poignant--anthropological reports on "the silly creatures" (humans).
posted by miles per flower at 7:43 AM on March 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

The original Space Orcs conversations have nucleated around the tag #HFY or Humanity Fuck Yeah! (Reddit link). Some great "Oho!" writing and some very poignant tear-jerkers. (Doctors Without Borders turned me into a puddle.)
posted by endotoxin at 11:16 AM on March 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human from 1999.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:20 AM on March 25, 2019

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley is sort of a view of humanity from the perspective of a crow. There are several moments like this taking place in a variety of civilizations. It's a really strange and wonderful book.
posted by taltalim at 6:12 PM on March 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

The fourth act of this episode of This American Life was what I thought of. It plays better than it reads—I remember it as very good while the transcript is kind of “meh.”
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:47 PM on March 25, 2019

XkCd has addressed this https://xkcd.com/203/
posted by sockymcpuppeterson at 9:03 PM on March 25, 2019

The novel "The Roaches Have No King," might be worth a try. (It's quite dark.)
posted by eotvos at 9:41 PM on March 25, 2019

Possibly All Seated on the Ground by Connie Willis?
posted by kristi at 10:46 AM on March 26, 2019