What is it with humans always saying they want to pinch, squeeze, or eat cute things like babies? Science calls it ‘cute aggression‘ and it apparently has to do with a rebalancing of emotions to help us survive: if we’re too busy gawking over how cute a baby is, we’d be too distracted to take care of it, and the baby would starve.
It’s probably the evolutionary impulse that inspired internet musician Billy Cob to write the hateful power ballad “I Want To Kick Baby Yoda In The Ribs” – a hilarious declaration of war against the cute little alien that took the world by storm last November.
Peep these lyrics:
I want to see that he’ll never need to breathe
As his cradle’s buried deep under the sod
Strong with the force he may be
But that doesn’t impress me
Want to drown him in the swamps of Dagobah
Yeesh. Besides the lyrics, the real appeal of the song is the genuine talent behind the instrumentals, which sound like a lost Weezer b-side from the Pinkerton era. That comparison shouldn’t be surprising; Billy Cobb also put out the Weezer tribute-ish album, Zerwee, which was a near perfect recreation of the early Weezer sound.
More on Cute Aggression
“Scientists suspect that cute aggression is the brain’s way of coping with the overwhelming response that occurs when these two powerful brain systems are triggered; to temper the onslaught of positive feelings, in other words, the brain tosses in a dash of aggression. And there may be a good reason, evolutionarily speaking, why this occurs.
“[I]f you find yourself incapacitated by how cute a baby is—so much so that you simply can’t take care of it—that baby is going to starve,” Stavropoulos says.”
