Creepy people

I first ran across the idea expressed in this article The Undead Zone: Why realistic graphics makes humans look creepy when I was reading Scott McLeod's Understanding Comics. The author even mentions McLeod in the discussion.

The essence of the article is that we are comfortable with humanoid creatures, in video games or even robotics, but once they get too be human-looking, we focus on the 1% that isn't quite right and get creeped out by it. Of course Freud's unheimlich is the same kind of thing as well.

Today I walked into the living room while a sports show was on television. And just for a moment, the two athletes on the screen looked like CGI characters, not real humans. I felt that kind of creepiness when I thought they were CGI-ed. But when I realized they weren't CGI'ed, that's when they just got a whole lot creepier.

I felt sorry for men who would go through life resembling CGI characters because of their physical features. And then I started wondering if perhaps I had only made that mistake because they were athletes - you know, muscled bodies, few physical defects etc. Both happened to be pale red-heads too, and I wonder if that had something to do with it. After all, the most realistically CGI-ed characters in video games tend to be white, don't they?

I haven't really thought it all out yet, but it got me thinking about the reverse of what the article is talking about. What happens when we think the humans look unrealistic? Is it the same effect as when CGI-ed characters look too human? Something to think about a bit more perhaps...