BearWiki:About

From BearWiki

So, you've followed some link, and stumbled across 'BearWiki, the only wiki dedicated specifically to addressing claims that Man vs Wild is fake, and wish to learn more.

Contents 1 What's this about? 2 Why start a wiki? 3 "You're just jealous that he climbed Everest" 4 Standards and Practices 5 Bootstrapping

What's this about?

On November 10, 2006, the Discovery Channel premiered the show Man vs Wild. Purporting to be a survival show, the host, Bear Grylls, spends an hour (minus commercials) "attempting to survive" in the wilderness and "teaching" viewers how to do so. It didn't take long after the show premiered for the [[1]] to start in the Discovery Channel forums and all sorts of survival forums[2][3]. Some people registered with the Discovery forum specifically to complain.[4] Complaints ranged from it being a "Hollywood" show to outright encouraging behavior that will get people killed if actually presented with a survival situation.

Why start a wiki?

While many were outraged, many others believed the show's presented narratives as being legitimate survival situations. A debate with a single person can take forever. 90% of the time, they end up accepting the premise, but each time, having to collect all of the different lines of evidence can be overwhelming.

"You're just jealous that he climbed Everest"

If you've never raised the issue with "true believers" before, you might be amazed at how much of the time, when evidence is presented that the show is fake, the "believer" respond with a line to that effect. They rarely address the evidence; the messenger is much more convenient to shoot with this rather silly ad hominem attack. Often (but not always) these people are young -- teenagers and even pre-teens -- who have fallen in love with the scenario presented, of an attractive Übermensch triumphing over adversity with Hollywood-style glamour and a storybook ending every time. The possibility that the host hides protective gear, uses undeclared materials to make his task easier, stages survival "challenges", gives bad advice, pretends to be alone in populated areas, and so on, is like an insult to them.

To anyone who believes that people only question the show out of jealousy: You're right. It's just jealousy. We don't care that the show is clearly staged, yet tries to convince people that it's not. We don't care that it encourages behavior that's near suicidal at times, stunts that even Bear isn't willing to do without protective gear and with a crew standing by to have him rescued if he's injured (unlike a stranded person for whom an injury can mean death), when there are far better (but less photogenic) options available. Or the fact that they go to great lengths not show his protective gear. We don't care that he skips over the most important survival skills (realistic firestarting scenarios without tools, cutting without tools, cordage making, cooking water without a pot, etc) in order to show off these dangerous stunts and present a fake survival narrative. We don't care that his show may end up getting people killed. No, you're dead right -- it's just jealousy. We don't care about deception and encouraging dangerous behavior; all we give a damn about is that the guy climbed Everest, and because of this fact, we want to ruin his career. We wish we were as perceptive as you.

Of course, if his Everest stunts are all that really matter to you, you might want to reconsider.[5][6]

Standards and Practices

BearWiki is not Wikipedia. Specifically, the standard is logically-founded reasoning, not verifiability. The simple fact of the matter is that it is quite likely nothing that is done on Man vs Wild will ever undergo anything like peer review. Furthermore, there are virtually no "secondary sources" -- we only have the primary sources of the show , published photographs, and interviews with the cast and crew. Hence, BearWiki is designed as a collaborative editing environment in which individuals can add points supporting or opposing various claims made about the show. However what we can do is to both point out obvious errors and to reference technical errors. The only verifiability requirements are that any references are valid and agree with what the text claims they do, and that claims made about the show are in-line with the show itself.

BearWiki seeks to elucidate the maximum level of accuracy possible in determining the validity of each claim. If one were to simply claim that "Bear killed a domesticated hare, not a native cottontail, in the Sierras episode," that would be a weak argument against the show. However, if they supported it with references to statistics on cottontail rabbits, photographs of typical cottontails in comparison to Bear's rabbit, included a statement from a cottontail breeder, and so forth, that would be a strong argument against it. Likewise, a supporter of the show could present references to statistics on cottontails and photographs to support their counterclaim that the rabbit really was wild.

In short, we seek not to have edit wars in which people argue over wording in trying to establish some sort of "absolute truth", as you see on Wikipedia. Rather, we seek to have both sides of all arguments presented as concisely as possible in a heirarchial structure. Example:

An important tag to make use of, if applicable, is the {{reference|q=your brief qualifications|s=~~~~}} tag. This allows you to specify in what manner you're qualified to make the claim you're making if you have personal experience or expert knowledge that applies to it. If you use the tag, please elaborate in your talk page: your real name, your full qualifications, and some form of contact information (preferentially email). A link to an external page that verifies your credentials would additionally be useful.

For references to other sources of information, use the standard [YourFullURLHere] format.

Do not look at the analysis as "comments". They should not be signed unless you are using yourself as a reference. Editing posts made by others is not only allowed, but encouraged. What matters is that the main points of both sides are represented.

Please keep your points concise. Use the minimum verbiage to convey the point. If your point is complex, split it up into multiple pieces of evidence. If an argument over a critical point gets acrimonious, take it to the talk page; we want to keep the article pages clean.

Bootstrapping

Most of the articles on this site have been "bootstrapped" -- that is, to say, they have been created based on claims and references made by individuals at numerous other sites, so as to accelerate the creation of this wiki. This includes both supporting and opposing viewpoints, all of which have been summarized and referenced where appropriate.