Blobsquatch

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A blobsquatch is a portmanteau of "blob" and "sasquatch". It is usually used derisively to refer to the photographic or video evidence offered by cryptozoologists, UFOlogists, ghost hunters, and Elvispotters that are of poor quality.

Features

Blobsquatch photos share one or more of the following features:

• Out of focus
• The subject is hidden in shadow
• The subject is taken from a long distance away and the blow up is grainy or pixelated as hell

History

Although the term has become a favorite of skeptics these days, it does seem to have emerged in the cryptozoology camp as a kind of check digit by more serious researchers when presented with alleged photos of Bigfoot. Loren Coleman has suggested the term was coined by Bigfoot researcher Vito Quaranta and used by him on a Bigfoot forum. Fellow squatching enthusiast Ray Randell popularized the term for several years in the early 2000s. Alton Higgins was the first to use the term in print in a 2004 paper titled "Evaluating Purported Sasquatch Photographic Evidence". He suggested:

Any photo requiring equal parts interpretation and imagination (photos sometimes characterized as ‘blobsquatches’) should be discounted.

That seems reasonable.

Expanded use

The term in recent years has been applied to any extremely bad photo of almost any woo phenomenon. For example, videos and photos from the UAP flap of the 2020s have been compared to a blobsquatch.

Sharon Hill may have been one of the first to introduce the term into skeptical circles in a 2006 blog post.

See also

• Apophenia
• Electronic voice phenomenon
• Face on Mars
• Pareidolia
• Religious pareidolia

External links

• xkcd cartoon - "Alien Observers"