Meme phobias are an unacceptable insult to every person with real phobias.
Meme phobias are an unacceptable insult to every person with real phobias.
I'm especially thinking of "trypophobia." There are others, but it's the worst. I'll start out by correcting the word, at its most basic level: these motherfuckers have trypophilia. Yeah, I fucking said it.
You know why I'm saying that? Because every one of these fuckers who claims to have the "phobia" in question CONSTANTLY SHARES IMAGES OF THINGS THAT SUPPOSEDLY TRIGGER THE PHOBIA.
That's the opposite of a phobia, you fucking nimrods. People who have a fear of dogs don't post pictures of pit bulls and dobermans, in their goddamn group chats and subreddits. People who can't get on airplanes don't go looking for graphic photos of air disasters. People with acrophobia don't flock to that glass-bottom walkway, at the fucking Grand Canyon.
But, again, these assholes who are supposedly stricken with trypophobia constantly share pics of bubbly English muffins, collanders, plant pods, etc. THAT'S A FUCKING PARAPHILIA, YOU INCONSIDERATE FUCKING FUCK-STICKS.
At the risk of repeating myself, that is the opposite of a phobia. These intolerable douche-tubes even pervert the word "trigger" into a horrific parody of its actual use. They'll slide a particularly spicy picture of a slice of Swiss cheese into a discussion, and be like "ooOOOhhhH, this triggered me so much."
For "triggered," you can substitute "gave me a twitching hard-on."
Once again: this is NOT how it works for real phobias. If you've got hemophobia and someone shows you a picture of someone bleeding, you are NOT GOING TO REACT THAT WAY.
You do NOT seek out pictures of your phobia triggers. You do NOT discuss them in a basically lewd way, like the goddamned trypophiliacs do.
If you have a REAL PHOBIA, and you actually do get that shit triggered, it's, ya know, ACTUALLY TRAUMATIC. Again: you avoid those triggers, even if it costs you job opportunities, social standing, personal relationships, etc.
People with real phobias are living with real fucking problems, as a result of them. They work and struggle and research ways to try and lessen their effects. That might involve exposure therapy, where they deliberately interact with the object of their fear, but they are NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO THOSE SESSIONS, AT ALL.
They are suffering. They are suffering with real mental illness symptoms.
When you post your "oooOOHhhH, look at this seed pod, it's sooooo trigigigigigerring my trypophobia" shit, that is as close as you can get to spitting in the faces of all the people with real phobias, out there in the world.
I hasten to add that I don't have any debilitating phobias, myself. But I know people who do. And that struggle is painful to see. If you're out there faking a phobia, turning it into a paraphilia for shits & giggles, on the internet, FUCK YOU.
If you're out there doing that shit, I hope you develop a real phobia, and experience every iota of the real pain and suffering that it entails. That would be justice.
Username checks out
I'm sure he spends a lot of time explaining to people "it's a misunderstanding, I'm acutally a great guy!"
Bro you need to switch to decaf.
Edit: nevermind, I get like this over plenty of things. Rage on my dude!
I’m quite claustrophobic, particularly for caves and elevators, and still sometimes make myself uncomfortable with shit like the descent or reading about spelunkers getting trapped.. it petrifies me but, importantly, I’m not in a cave while reading or watching it, and that’s not something I’ll ever do, so I’m exploring it safely. It helps because we have all these really cool simulation mechanisms in our brains that work through the things we experience, and help us face them when we actually encounter them in our lives.
Exploring things that make you uncomfortable, whatever level that discomfort reaches, is really important for eventually overcoming it.
I would argue that pure aversion to things that cause discomfort is the far less healthy approach.
I would argue that pure aversion to things that cause discomfort is the far less healthy approach.
I did mention that exposure therapy is a real thing. It is absolutely important to managing phobia symptoms and possibly making strides to overcoming a phobia.
I'm talking about these fake-phobia motherfuckers, who trade pics of their "triggers," when they're actually just sharing fetish objects, serving their paraphilia. Again: that's the opposite of a phobia, and it's insulting to real phobia sufferers.
trypophobia is not a real phobia in psychiatry. Look it up, the term was literally coined by a random person in an online forum. Many people get the hebbie jebbies by it, but that's different from an actual psychiatric phobia.
I thought about pointing that out, but mainstream psychology has a veeeeeeerrrrrry sketchy track record, when it comes to adding new things that really DO need to be added to its "official" documentation.
And, ya know, an even more sketchy record, when it comes to removing things that SHOULDN'T be listed as mental illnesses, in that same documentation.
Like, go ahead and look up when various sexual orientations and behaviors finally got delisted from their "this is a mental illness" journals. It's not okay. Huge percentages of the people currently teaching psychology and psychiatry used to teach classes where they, themselves, openly referred to homosexuality as a mental illness. An even larger percentage of the practicing clinicians are old enough to have been taught, in those classes.
That's enough for me to just fully distrust psychology, period. I realize that people have no choice but to be treated by those doctors, when they need mental health treatment...but it's not a good situation. The entire academic discipline is poisoned by layer upon layer of homophobia, misogyny, ethically unsound political bias, etc.
Therefore, I made my argument about trypophilia, specifically without mentioning anything about "official" psychological opinions.
It's like you put a voice to the part of my brain that gets annoyed when bloggers bring it up.
I remember first reading about it on the blogosphere and it blew up ever since then.
Seed pods give me the heebie jeebies and that's about it. Probably an evolved aversion to bee hives and wasp nests that was useful once upon a time, just like spiders and snakes.
My wife definitely has trypophobia. She never seeks such images, and hates seeing them. You should hear her scream when she accidentally (to her. Mostly I plan it) comes across such images/objects. Just the other day she freaked out at some 'pineberries' that I brought home for their novelty.
Your wife isn't a part of the group I'm talking about, then.
At least, she's probably not. I would like to know when she started having the phobia. Was it something she had all her life, apart from any internet interaction? Or was it something she basically contracted, from seeing internet posts about it?
I realize that's a rude question, but I don't think it's an invalid one. I have very serious doubts, as to whether ANYONE truly, definitely, absolutely had trypophobia, before they were exposed to it, as a meme on the internet. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is a real thing. If I'm wrong, then your wife is a real phobia sufferer. But I just think it has to be more than a coincidence that the historical record seems to be devoid of any mention of that phobia, in the pre-internet age.
I think it's a modern thing that internet assholes made up. If it's making people truly suffer from it, as a phobia, then it's even more of a scourge than I gave it credit for, in my original rant.
Your wife isn’t a part of the group I’m talking about, then.
Because every one of these fuckers who claims to have the “phobia” in question CONSTANTLY SHARES IMAGES OF THINGS THAT SUPPOSEDLY TRIGGER THE PHOBIA.
There is a contradiction here. You framed your unpopular opinion as being every one of them is faking it and posting about it but you are also saying there are other groups of them that you are not angry at or addressing in your post. Your real opinion is that some people pretend to have phobias and some people actually have phobias. And that is not an unpopular opinion, nor an interesting one.
She has always had it. When we first met, she told me since she was a kid she hated certain things like fish scales, honey combs, etc. She felt like she wanted to scratch her eyes out when she saw them. I wanted to make fun of her saying she is the only person in the world with such a weird thing, and discovered that there was an actual name for it. Neither of us had any idea that trypophobia was a thing until I started searching with her symptoms.
No no, you’re right, those meme phobias are dumb at best and hella upsetting at worst.
Are people posting pictures of holes and claiming they have trypophobia or warning against it being a trigger for those who do? I've only ever seen the latter, personally. I've never actually seen anyone claim to have the phobia and certainly not for a meme, or for attention like all those dipshits on tiktok that fake having tourettes.
I used to browse submechanofobia on reddit not because I have said phobia but because I liked seeing those pictures. I bet most people contributing to this kind of subs don't actually have that phobia for obvious reasons. I mean.. I'm not browsing the clown communities either if there even is any.