# The Uncanny Valley The Uncanny Valley is the dip in human comfort when a robot, CGI character, or doll looks almost but not quite human, a hypothesis Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed in 1970. The term crossed from academic robotics into online shorthand in the mid-2000s, becoming the default label internet users slap on creepy CGI faces, humanoid robots, and AI-generated imagery that triggers instant revulsion. ## Origin Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori introduced the concept in a 1970 essay for the magazine Energy, writing that human empathy toward robots climbs with their human-likeness until a point where strange familiarity flips into revulsion, which he named the uncanny valley[4]. The idea sat in robotics and animation circles for decades before taking off online. The earliest widely cited online definition came on August 5th, 2006, when Urban Dictionary user Civan posted an entry crediting Mori as the originator[5]. The term then jumped to mainstream video explanation on September 30th, 2008, when Popular Science's YouTube channel published a short explainer that introduced the graph to a general audience[1]. - **Platform:** Academic essay (concept) / YouTube and Reddit (online spread) - **Creator:** Masahiro Mori - **Date:** 1970 ## Overview Online, The Uncanny Valley works as a snap diagnosis label. People drop the term under any clip or image where a face is almost human but off, dead-eyed animated characters, humanoid robots mid-motion, deepfakes, and AI image generations with warped fingers or melted smiles[1]. The underlying claim is Mori's graph: positive affinity rises with human-likeness until a sharp dip around near-human appearance, then recovers once something looks fully human. The tag stuck because it names a feeling viewers already had but could not articulate, which is why a walking Boston Dynamics BigDog clip or a motion-capture demo gets flooded with the same two words in the comments[2]. TV Tropes catalogued hundreds of film, television, and video game examples under the heading, cementing it as media-criticism shorthand well beyond robotics labs[3]. By the 2020s the label was reflexively applied to AI-generated video and photos, where mangled anatomy and blank affect push outputs straight into Mori's dip. ## How It Spread Online adoption picked up through short-form video and link aggregators. The 2008 Popular Science YouTube clip gave viewers a quick visual explainer that got cited in later comment threads whenever a creepy robot video surfaced[1]. On April 7th, 2010, Redditor LaszloK posted an animated GIF of a Boston Dynamics BigDog robot walking as an uncanny valley example to /r/WTF, where it collected more than 2,800 up votes and 560 comments before being archived[2]. 2013 was the year the term saturated meme-adjacent spaces. On April 4th, YouTube channel DNews uploaded the explainer "Why Human Replicas Creep Us Out," bringing the concept to a Discovery-aligned audience[6]. On July 22nd, computer animator Mike Pelletier posted a video of humanoid characters built on purpose to sit inside the valley, pushing it into art-world circulation[7]. On August 13th, TV Tropes added a dedicated Uncanny Valley page cataloguing film, television, and video game examples, which gave the term a reference hub for media criticism[3]. From there the label stayed in rotation through every wave of near-human media, Boston Dynamics demos, motion-capture game trailers, deepfakes, and most recently AI image and video generators, where mangled hands and glassy eyes keep producing fresh examples[8]. ## How to Use Users typically drop "uncanny valley" as a one-line reaction under media showing near-human faces, CGI characters with dead eyes, hyperreal dolls, humanoid robots, deepfakes, or AI-generated people. The common convention is to tag the specific feature that broke the illusion, usually the eyes, mouth, or motion. Longer posts often include Mori's dip graph as a joke overlay with the subject plotted at the lowest point. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is The Uncanny Valley? It is a 1970 hypothesis by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori that human comfort with robots and replicas rises with human-likeness until a sharp dip when something looks almost but not quite human, triggering revulsion[4]. ### Where did The Uncanny Valley come from? Mori introduced the term in a 1970 essay for the Japanese magazine Energy[4], and it crossed online starting with a 2006 Urban Dictionary entry[5] and a 2008 Popular Science YouTube explainer[1]. ### What does The Uncanny Valley mean? Online, it means the specific creeped-out reaction people have to CGI characters, humanoid robots, deepfakes, or AI-generated faces that look almost human but have something off in the eyes, mouth, or motion[3]. ### How do you use The Uncanny Valley? People typically post it as a two-word comment under near-human media like a Boston Dynamics robot clip or a dead-eyed CGI face, often with Mori's dip graph attached as a joke overlay[2]. ### Is The Uncanny Valley still popular? Yes, the label is still in heavy rotation, especially around AI-generated images and video, where mangled anatomy and glassy expressions keep producing fresh examples[7]. ## References 1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNdAIPoh8a4]() 2. [https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/bnp2l/i_dont_know_about_you_but_i_find_this/]() 3. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UncannyValley]() 4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-uncanny-valley]() 5. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Uncanny%20Valley]() 6. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ar7WO1T5Cs]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIWWLg4wLEY]() 8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhVu2hxm07E]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/the-uncanny-valley Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library