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Why do holes horrify me?

mosaicscience.com

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Re: Why do holes horrify me?

#11

Post by ultrarunner »

ramenmeal wrote: post #6
hprotagonist wrote: post #2

social contaigon is a weird, weird thing. I have always understood /r/trypophobia to be a deep in-joke, and the earliest i can find reference to the idea at all is 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20090316071914/http://www.geocit... and that smells tongue-in-cheek too.

It's not a joke for me! Google image searching "trypophobia" is terrifying!

I used DuckDuckGo, but a lot of that seems intentionally disturbing rather than coincidentally so. Graphic depictions of skin conditions can be difficult to not empathize with. There is certainly room for someone else's reaction to be an extreme magnification of mine, but "terrifying" seems so subjective already I have a hard time ruling out a big joke on that basis alone.

Re: Why do holes horrify me?

#12

Post by kstrauser »

thfuran wrote: post #7
miguelmota wrote: post #5

Humans want to avoid disease and some diseases can causes holes or hole-like symptoms on victims, so it's human nature to be horrified of clusters of holes because it's abnormal.

Probably not. Lots of abnormal things aren't viscerally horrifying and I'd expect something with a strong evolutionary basis like avoidance of disease to be much more widespread than trypophobia. Such as, for example, the nearly universal dislike of the taste and smell of rotting meat.

Perhaps it's a local thing. If you're around guinea worms, you evolve to be afraid of their signs, maybe? Not everyone is afraid of spiders or snakes, but there's a good evolutionary reason to be, so maybe people who aren't afraid of them are from areas without extremely venomous versions?

Re: Why do holes horrify me?

#14

Post by philwelch »

hprotagonist wrote: post #2

social contaigon is a weird, weird thing. I have always understood /r/trypophobia to be a deep in-joke, and the earliest i can find reference to the idea at all is 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20090316071914/http://www.geocit... and that smells tongue-in-cheek too.

I don't think I have it to the degree that it's a "phobia", but I find a lot of trypophobia images really creepy/gross/frightening. Basically the same reaction I have to arthopods.

I also have had a history, prior to being exposed to the concept of trypophobia, of body-horror nightmares where lots of tiny holes open up in my skin around my joints, so yeah, it's probably one of those common fears.

Re: Why do holes horrify me?

#15

Post by maxander »

thfuran wrote: post #7
miguelmota wrote: post #5

Humans want to avoid disease and some diseases can causes holes or hole-like symptoms on victims, so it's human nature to be horrified of clusters of holes because it's abnormal.

Probably not. Lots of abnormal things aren't viscerally horrifying and I'd expect something with a strong evolutionary basis like avoidance of disease to be much more widespread than trypophobia. Such as, for example, the nearly universal dislike of the taste and smell of rotting meat.

Trypophobia is presumably an abnormal, overly-aggressive version of the disease-avoidance mechanism, though; there's no evolutionary reason to be unsettled by holes on inorganic objects, or even most kinds of holes on organic ones. Presumably, almost everyone has some level of the underlying mechanism; go look at a picture of a smallpox victim and see how you feel about it.

Re: Why do holes horrify me?

#17

Post by maxander »

hprotagonist wrote: post #2

social contaigon is a weird, weird thing. I have always understood /r/trypophobia to be a deep in-joke, and the earliest i can find reference to the idea at all is 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20090316071914/http://www.geocit... and that smells tongue-in-cheek too.

It's definitely a real thing. I don't have it badly, but when I learned about tryptophobia it was satisfying to know why lotus seed pods had always made me feel somewhat uncomfortable.

(Google that only if you're reasonably confident you're not a tryptophobe. :) )

Re: Why do holes horrify me?

#18

Post by maxander »

khendron wrote: post #16
vesche wrote: post #13

Not even clicking on this article because I know it's about trypophobia and I'm afraid of seeing the pictures!

There actually are no triggering images. I guess they want trypophobics to be able to read it.

Pretty few would take the risk, I bet. It's an interesting problem- we have "trigger warnings" and "content warnings" but not "content all-clears."

Re: Why do holes horrify me?

#19

Post by tokai »

maxander wrote: post #18
khendron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There actually are no triggering images. I guess they want trypophobics to be able to read it.

Pretty few would take the risk, I bet. It's an interesting problem- we have "trigger warnings" and "content warnings" but not "content all-clears."

I have seen SFW used in that regard.

Re: Why do holes horrify me?

#20

Post by ryanmcbride »

hprotagonist wrote: post #2

social contaigon is a weird, weird thing. I have always understood /r/trypophobia to be a deep in-joke, and the earliest i can find reference to the idea at all is 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20090316071914/http://www.geocit... and that smells tongue-in-cheek too.

When I was a little kid I was terrified of coral because of the little holes. I definitely wouldn't say I have a phobia but images of things with lots of holes makes my skin crawl.
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