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community weblog
No word on what the raccoons think
When tourists go on vacation, the area around them becomes a liminal space. Their geographic location is no longer real, but a fantasy that they are living in. If tourists have the fantasy disrupted, they can get really mean. And that is why this raccoon biologist has to conduct her research wearing a bikini.
posted by clawsoon on Jan 21, 2026 at 6:26 AM
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So she inadvertently has to conduct anthropological research on tourists in order to conduct research on pygmy raccoons.
posted by Peach at 6:38 AM
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the research is about how tourists interact with them, so it's not inadvertent at all
posted by sickos haha yes dot jpg at 7:04 AM
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Oh I figured since she kept talking about researching raccoons and seemed surprised about how she had to manage herself as a participant observer that the idea was novel to her. Note: was ethnographer so don't mind me.
posted by Peach at 7:08 AM
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I thought her analogy to being an NPC was funny, and spot-on.
posted by martin q blank at 7:12 AM
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raccoon biologist and social psychologist.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:14 AM
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I must not be a very good tourist because if I were in Cozumel (not my sort of vacation spot most of the time, but still...) and someone came up to me and asked me to help them with a research project on endangered pygmy raccoons, I would be like "Hell yeah! What do you want me to do?" No matter how they were dressed. I might be a little disappointed if it only involved filling out a survey, though.
posted by TedW at 7:28 AM
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Liminal space fantasies are why tourists try to pet the fluffy cows in Yellowstone, as if a petting zoo.
posted by Brian B. at 7:38 AM
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See also: feeding bears, even putting food inside one's car to coax them into it. Humans may be sapient, but only on the average.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:40 AM
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I would be like "Hell yeah! What do you want me to do?" No matter how they were dressed. I might be a little disappointed if it only involved filling out a survey, though.
That sounds like the setup for "You may be wondering how I got here..."
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:42 AM
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The liminal space fantasy is so weird to me - I racked my brain to see if I could think of anything that annoyed me while I was travelling overseas [pre-2020] and the only things that I could come up with were things that would also have annoyed me if they had happened in my home city where I live:
- people in France smoking in nonsmoking restaurants;
- people in France smoking underneath no smoking signs in train stations;
- the woman on the train in Rome who physically body slammed me repeatedly to try to carve out space on a crowded train that had no room for more people;
- the people in Rome who were setting off massive fountain fireworks on crowded footpaths full of people;
- the countless people in Paris who let their dog poo on the footpath and didn't pick up after it;
- and the woman who stole my favourite top from a London youth hostel when it was drying inside the locked dorm room.
If someone had approached me dressed as a national park ranger/wildlife researcher with a clipboard, I would have been charmed and delighted.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:50 AM
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When a friend sent me this link I wanted to let him know I was aware, as I'd seen her tumblr where she writes about her field work. Except I choose to express this by sending just her tumblr name in all caps. So our conversation looked like this:
Friend: There's a TikTok about a field researcher who realized wearing a bikini makes talking to tourists about the raccoons she studies easier!
Me: RACCOON MILF!!!
Friend:...ummm she's attractive but I don't think she has kids...
Anyway her researchers is very interesting and she as a uniquely named tumblr that's easy to remember.
posted by lepus at 7:53 AM
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She says it's not a misogyny thing but I wonder how true that is; would be an interesting thing to study. Easy setup: have an assortment of gender and attractiveness researchers all dressed in skimpy beach wear approach people on the beach and see if they want to fill out a survey. Compare to if they were wearing shorts and tee shirt. I suspect willingness is correlated with attractiveness of the researcher and amount of skin showing.
posted by Mitheral at 8:30 AM
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I think Mitheral has it. I had a summer job once going door to door to try to get people to letters to their senators against hydrofracking (and raise money for our org), and people were much more likely to talk & donate when I wore short shorts and a crop top on a hot day. And that had nothing to do with liminal space or whatever.
posted by subdee at 8:40 AM
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When someone in street attire comes up to me at a resort, they're usually trying to get me to attend a timeshare presentation.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:50 AM
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btw we've all missed the most important part: there is such a thing as pygmy raccoons and they are even more adorable than the bigger kind.
posted by martin q blank at 9:05 AM
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See also: feeding bears, even putting food inside one's car to coax them into it. Humans may be sapient, but only on the average.
Thus the oft-repeated maxim in national parks that bear-proof trash cans are hard to design because there is significant overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest humans.
posted by TedW at 9:07 AM
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Now I am thinking of the time I agreed to help a friend with her research project for an undergraduate environmental science degree. We went to the closest beach (because we walked from our houses) and it was a nude beach.
It turns out asking people "what are the top 5 environmental issues about this beach as far as you are concerned? which one concerns you most? how has it impacted your beach use? what plant/animal species have you noticed at this beach, and have you noticed any increase or decrease in either biodiversity or number of individual plants/animals over the last few years?" and other similar questions
while you are fully dressed in business casual with a clipboard and they are completely naked is awkward for everyone concerned.
Most people said littering. It turned out later that the sand dunes immediately behind the beach were a gay beat, so the littering they were all talking about was probably used condoms/condom wrappers.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:08 AM
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Nessie O'Neil previously
posted by one for the books at 9:56 AM
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even though I am able to read and understand English, I was disappointed that this was not an AI thing with a pygmy raccoon in a bikini interviewing tourists. I'm sorry.
posted by mumimor at 10:19 AM
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I definitely know of a field site where this researcher could interview people about their interactions with raccoons, and she wouldn't have to wear a bikini.
It's called "The trash bins outside my building," and there are certainly times of year when a bikini would not be advisable attire.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:57 AM
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even though I am able to read and understand English, I was disappointed that this was not an AI thing with a pygmy raccoon in a bikini interviewing tourists. I'm sorry.
à la Better Call Saul, we don't need a raccoon biologist, we need a raccoon biologist.
posted by clawsoon at 11:03 AM
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I guess I believe her, but I don't want to completely overlook to the possibility that she did, in fact, scam her advisor into funding "research" that involved lounging on a resort beach in a bikini and chatting with other guests, then she learned someone from her department saw her there and noticed how strenuous her research wasn't, so she frantically put up a Tik-Tok video about how it's all for science, borrowing a few words from a friend in the sociology department in a hope to muddy the waters a bit.
posted by mark k at 11:32 AM
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Today I learned that even though I have told tumblr in my settings I would like to see (or rather, am not afraid of) "mature content" it will not let me search for "raccoon milf" so my scientific curiosity will remain unfulfilled.
posted by maxwelton at 12:59 PM
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Glad to help with your scientific curiosity, maxwelton.
posted by Mathter_Lee at 3:27 PM
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Liminal space yeah yeah yeah. My hypothesis: these people are also dumbfucks when not in Cozumel.
posted by polecat at 4:32 PM
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Perhaps wearing minimal clothing provides guests with reassurance that she is not, in fact, three raccoons in a trenchcoat.
posted by nickzoic at 4:56 PM
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Note: you may need to be signed into tumblr in order to view the official raccoonmilf tumblr. Well worth following to keep up with the latest pygmy raccoon research.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:08 PM
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I love thinking about liminal spaces. Liminal spaces around events (and resorts perhaps) are really important. Suspending disbelief at a Renaissance fair is much easier if you walk down a twisty wooded path to get to the entrance instead walking through a turnstile directly off of a hot asphalt parking lot.
posted by olykate at 7:09 PM
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