Dying. If it's so scary, then why does everybody do it?
Hey, more than 6% of people haven't died. Not everybody does it.
Give em time. They'll come around.
Jokes aside, it's the pain of dying that's scary, not the idea of being dead.
"Death gotta be easy, cause life is hard" - Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent
There is a strong tradition of feeling against it :)
Cities
Chicago especially
However, entering or exiting cities is a legit nightmare.
Scary Gary has entered the chat.
Ending capitalism to embrace a system where we end poverty, consumerism and discriminations.
I’ve always suspected people conflate communism with dictators, which is the main cause of distrust for anything anti-capitalism.
Are there any examples of a nation successfully transitioning out of capitalism without ending up in a dictatorship? I want to believe it can be done, but I have no idea what it would look like.
Have a day off.
The only people who are truly afraid of this are the few wealthy who stand to lose 80% of their enormous wealth that they will never use in their lifetime.
If only. You forgot how people are afraid to help others who came from an other country. Most of people want equality but only with their superiors. And people are afraid to change their lifestyle to a more ecological one.
You really think that the only ones against ending capitalism are a handful of wealthy people?
Public speaking. I've seen surveys where more people are afraid of speaking in front of an audience than they are of dying, which is utterly insane. For the vast, vast majority of scenarios where you might find yourself speaking to a group of people, the risk level is very low. Likewise, in the vast majority of cases, few people are likely to remember much about your performance. It's just talking.
Well I mean dying is a one time thing. However if you do badly at public speaking you will never hear the end of it. And if you do good they might ask you to do it again.
Can you imagine waking up at 3am and remembering how you said “Salvia” instead of “saliva” in your dissertation?! And it’s been 10 years since, but you KNEW you just outed your habits to the whole audience and your professors?!
Edit: Death is a sweet release you never have to remember, not like the above.
Spiders (USA).
Most spiders are harmless to humans and even beneficial to have around.
Giggles in Aussie
I rationally understand that spiders are mostly beneficial but they're just so alien. Too many legs, too many eyes, move too fast. Also there are a few that will kill you. Here in SoCal black widows are in every dark spot in my garage.
99.9% of every horror movie, which should be renamed jump annoyances, tada
Or the other category of horror, “that’s gross”
Asking someone out on a date.
I had social anxiety for years, so I probably struggled with this more than most. But it's surprisingly easy. And more often than not, if your instincts are that that person likes you, you're usually right.
if your instincts are that that person likes you, you're usually right.
They're not talking about you and i, dear reader.
Linux. It's more the same than different and everyone learns fast :)
Most mainstream distros are no harder to learn than Windows or macOS. People (especially as they get older) are just averse to relearning how to do things.
I replaced my father in laws win XP with ubuntu and more recently ubuntu with mint and he barely noticed.
Here is your browser, adjust volume here, no problem.
It seems scary at first, but if you just let go of the things you learned with Windows, you'll see it's a lot better. It just takes some getting used to, and it can be frustrating at first if you don't fully understand. You may be tempted to find an alternative, but this is not always the way. Just accepting that it's different is a good first step
Universal healthcare. So scary only 33 of the world's 34 most modernized countries have managed to make it work.
I should mention that only South Korea and Canada have TRUE Single Payer (which is, IMO, what the US should be working toward).
Any other type of “universal healthcare” has the effect of creating a premium lane alongside the regular one. However, if all of society has to use the same healthcare system, they will have no choice but to collectively fight tooth and nail to improve healthcare for everyone. This is the only way, IMO.
In a truly just society, the homeless man sleeping on the bench would have the same healthcare as Jeffrey motherfucking Bezos.
In a truly just society they'd be sleeping on the same bench. 😣
Math, Haskell, and software engineering in general.
Haskell isn't scary, it's just redundant.
Traveling to a foreign country.
I haven't done as much as a millionaire traveler but I have touched 30 countries and directly explored about 20 of them. I got to see wealthy first world Europe, as well as Morocco, Egypt, South America in Peru and a whole bunch of southeast Asia and India and Sri Lanka. Not to mention road trips in Canada and parts of the US west coast and east coast.
I got to see a lot of dirt poor slums and really rough places.
I don't drink nor do I do drugs because I'm in recovery myself (30 years sober) .. and what I discovered is that once you remove any and all illegal behavior, drugs and alcohol, the majority of people everywhere in the world are decent people like you and me who are just trying to get by. Sure they want your money and some people are desperate but touristic places usually attract seedy people anyway. Regular common people away from tourist places are just getting by and they really don't care who you are.
This is all within the realm of being realistic too ... you don't go wandering down a lonely alleyway on your own or go into a dark sleazy noisy bar. I'm just saying that as long as you are safe and others are safe, people the world over are no different than you and me.
Root canals. The procedure has come a long way since the 90s and is relatively smooth and painless now. Obviously having a good and skillful edodontist also helps, but it’s no longer excruciating like decades ago.
Can confirm. The pain kept me awake the night before my appointment, so I was quite tired while having my canals filled. As soon as the dentist had given me a couple of anesthetic shots, I had to struggle to stay awake. I felt nothing during the procedure, and the only pain after was in my wallet.
Currently having to deal with finding an endodontist that does retreats, so finding a good one in the first place is the pain.
The procedure itself is whatever.
But I am on Xanax when they do they, otherwise I'm not allowed inside a dentist office.
Yeah if anything it’s about taking the pain away.
Australian animals.
Americans are the absolute worst at it and it's just so stupid. Yes we have poisonous snakes and spiders, so does America.
We have more of them than America, yes.
You know what we don't have? Large predators. You can go walking in the bush in Australia and you might see one of the most dangerous snakes in the world. You know what you do? You don't fuck with it and continue on with your business.
You're walking in America and oh, you've just stumbled across one of the multiple species of bears, coyotes, wolves, cougars etc. Animals that may chase you down and maul you. It's not even a competition.
And you, as an American, might say 'oh but you pretty much never see them'. Yeah same with dangerous snakes etc in Australia.
America doesn't have Gympie Gympie trees.
That is true, again, very specific area, I've never seen one in near 4 decades.
100%, I’m much more afraid of aggressive roos or feral animals than snakes or spiders.
You know what we don't have? Large predators
Crocodiles are pretty large, and so are great white sharks.
You know what's funny though? I just finished writing about how bears aren't scary, and then I came across your post saying American predators are more scary than Australian ones. Haha. I suppose it's all a matter of familiarity.
Crocodiles are very large, but again, they are mostly in a pretty unpopulated region and again, they do not chase and attack, you just don't go swimming.
Sharks are not Australian. For many years I've also had Americans and Japanese alike saying 'oh Australia has so many sharks!'. It's the ocean, there are sharks everywhere.
It is all about familiarity, but with a snake it's literally 'don't touch it'. With a bear, you have to know which bear it is, best defence, carry a weapon etc. Not comparable.
Skydiving
Yes, the first few times are intimidating. Hence why most students do their first few jumps tandem and then with a Jump Master after that.
After that though, you'll be looking out the window of the plane and seeing just how much air there is to play in. As you gain experience, you will internalize the fact you're safer in free fall, than you are on the airplane.
It's not the free fall that I'm worried about. It's what comes after.
Main deployment isn't that bad. I have been whacked a time or two by my main parachute, but it was my fault for having bad body position at deployment time.
A chill guy on a Citi bike
Living in the Matrix. If you do what they want, you get to taste steak.
If you weren’t born into being one of those poors.
Maybe we could give the ‘everyone is happy’ setting another spin? Having lived this timeline, I feel we might have given up on that one a bit too soon…
The Matrix posits that the late 90s were the peak of human civilization. Given what's happened in this millennium so far, I think I'm inclined to agree.
Needles.
I think mine is animalistic fear of damaging yourself. I’m fine, I sit down and act nonchalant. I’ll talk and look at the person or them doing it. But, under that is my skin getting clammy and breaking out in a light sweat…
Totally normal reaction, I mean it isn't normal to let someone else put metal inside your own body, I get that little sweat too sometimes when the needle goes in. But I wouldn't say scary.
You've never had someone miss before, have you?
I have those veins that makes the nurse go all happy asking if the trainee can have a go (they are big and juicy).
So yeah I have had some fat blues 😋
Inconvenient? Sure, it even hurts sometimes, but I wouldn't say scary.
The heat death of the universe.
You literally don't need to worry about it at all. You won't be there for it when it happens.
I don’t think anyone is out there scared that they’re going to find themselves present at the heat death of the universe, they’re scared of the implication: the idea that nothing matters, even on the grandest of scales, because everything will be lost in the end.
The fear isn’t physical, it’s philosophical.
Unambitious.
Minorities.
The sun imploding in the next few billions years. I've had conversations about that that I could see in the person's eyes that they were getting really scared about it.
Doesn’t it expand into a red giant and envelop the earth first? Make them even more uneasy with that!
The eventual annihilation of our species casts a shadow over everything we do. Because we're ultimately working for something temporary, which will be followed by ultimate death and infinite silence.
hunger.
I don't mean starvation I mean there are people that cannot sit with a slight uncomfortable feeling of hunger. If you have eaten enough to fuel your body in a healthy way then being slightly hungry will not harm you.
I often operate with forgetting to eat.
Some people don’t understand how ’forgetting’ to eat happens. Getting so wrapped up into the subject you’re in that you can just put off whatever that hunger feeling is to a bit later. Although maybe I am just not that uncomfortable I guess. I’ll eat when my brain starts to feel hungry over the gut feel. But this comes with a caveat. You can have a crash and I do not recommend this.
Spiders.
They're such amazing creatures.
I know, still hate them
Fire eating. It's super dangerous so there's a lot of safety protocol you must follow. But when it comes time to actually do it, most of the difficulty is psychological
(I'm an instructor)
Maybe I'm in the minority but I still think inhaling wrong and being covered in fire inside and outside is scary.
making phone calls (yes this is calling myself out too)
Hang Gliding! It's really chill. So many students are on edge when they're about to do their first flight, but I always hear happy sounds as they fly off and they're in a great mood when they finally land.
I wonder if their great mood is as much about the (successful) landing as much as it is about the glide?
That is definitely a factor, but we gopro everyone's flights and nearly everyone giggling and smiling the whole time
Trees
Treephobia is a thing now? 🤔
no joke, I have root-phobia. It's weird.
Seeing plant roots or imagining touching them gives me shudders.
I have no problem with carrots or potatoes, funnily enough (although the latter is turning into phobia territory if they are starting to bud)
My suspicion on how I got it: As a small kid (3 or so years old) I remember having some nightmares about tree roots grabbing me by my feet. Must have wired some things in my brain in a weird way
It's real. Trees tried to kill me two times now.
Murdering a CEO
Beeing outside in the dark. Not in the streetlamp dark but the forest dark. If you can't see anything then nothing can see you. It's like a blanket that covers everyones eyes.
People sure, but all the critters out there can see you juuuust fine.
Most of them don't want anything to do with you though, so that's ok.
But some of them... some of them are hungry...
Predators can see in the dark much better than you do and not only that; their sense of hearing and especially smell is orders of magnitude better than yours.
As someone who has spent several nights alone in a pitch dark forest, shit's scary. You hear sounds around you all the time and you have no idea wether it's a bird, human or a bear.
War atrocities. There's a lot of terrible shit that happened in America, and instead, we teach kids that the Indians gave the pilgrims corn.
German kids grow up learning about the Holocaust. Japanese kids grow up learning about what they did in WW2.
Americans are scared to learn about these things that we have book banning and fucktards rewriting history books. It's not scary, it's history.
Japanese kids grow up learning about what they did in WW2
No, they dont
And there would be so much to learn
Agreed with you until you said Japanese kids learn more critical things about their past than Americans. That's absolutely not the case.
Properly raised "aggressive breed" dogs. Pitbulls are the goofiest, most loving and loyal dogs I've ever met when they're raised properly. Doberman Pinschers aren't very goofy, but they're pretty needy, loving, and loyal, preferring to lean against their family at all times.
Bears in the wild, or the wild in general. Yes bears and other predators can easily kill you if they want, but they almost always don't want to. They'll run from you well before you know they're there. I've been going backpacking in the high country wilderness my entire life and have never had an altercation with a bear, cougar, coyote, or wolf. Follow proper procedures when you're in their home (the wilderness), and they'll leave you alone.
The AVMA documented 66 human fatalities caused by pit bull type dogs, 39 by Rottweilers, 17 by German shepherds, 15 by husky type dogs, 12 by Malamutes, 9 by Dobermann Pinschers, 8 by Chow Chows, 7 by Great Danes, and 7 by St. Bernard dogs.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/dog-attack-statistics-breed/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breed-specific_legislation
And if you think the numbers are skewed due to popularity...
Top 10 Dog Breeds of 2023
It’s no surprise to dog lovers that the Frenchie remains in the No. 1 spot, and the rest of the top five breeds follow a similar pattern. Same as 2022, the Labrador Retriever, Golden Retriever, German Shepherd Dog, and Poodle are ranked No. 2-5 respectively.
There’s some shuffling in the top 10 from 2022 to 2023. The Dachshund is making moves, jumping from the No. 9 spot in 2022 to the No. 6 spot in 2023. Rottweilers took their spot at No. 9 in 2023, moving down from No. 7 in 2022. Bulldogs went from No. 6 in 2022 to No. 7 in 2023. The Beagle remains at No. 8, and the German Shorthaired Pointer remains at No. 10 with no change in rank.
