Friday, July 11, 2014

Blogpost 7: Trypophobia

Your friend ask you to type trypophobia in google images and what did you see? What's your reaction? For you, maybe it is disgusting because of the holes but some it's not. Maybe you are imagining that the holes you see are eyes that are looking to you. You might be experiencing this when you see something that has a holes on an object and you can feel itchiness on your entire body. You can react to it and 2 ways, it might be you're going to destroy it or you will be dizzy when you see those holes. In a simple definition, trypophobia is the fear of shapes. 


I have read an article entitled "Are you afraid of holes?" by William Skaggs from the website www.scientificamerican.com. He discussed about what trypophobia really means. 


This phobia started in 2000s and many of netizens are joined in their common dislikes to picture that have many holes and small holes such as the sponge and the beehive. But now, researchers have found a proof of why it is spreading and why are we afraid of this things. It begins with the huge amount of people who share the images that has a holes in it and many people notice that this pictures will have a big reaction to others that can cause them to nauseate because of the holes. 

Two psychologists named Geoff Cole and Arnold Wilkins studied about the phenomenon. They show an image of a lotus seed head to adults who are 18-55 years old. The reaction of the people who saw the picture is that it's is uncomfortable and they are disgusted about what they saw. Geoff and Arnold said that the reason why we are repulsive to it is because of the visual structure of an image. They examined the set of disgusting images and they found out that the most unpleasant pictures have a mathematical shape that includes small, different features such as the dots and stripes. This pattern can be seen in the skin color of many species of threatening animals and according to studies, most people think about this as uncomfortable to look at. The characteristics of this explains the reasons why we are uncomfortable of the small holes in an image but Wilkins said that there is something more that is needed to explain the disgustion of a person who quickly responded to it. Those who are experiencing the fear of holes said that whenever they see a bunch of holes their skin crawl and the holes in the picture has effect to us. Maybe the fear of holes is the dislike of scars and sores, an advance trait that helped our ancestors keep away from the germs and disease. 

Skaggs said to his article that "For almost a decade "trypophobia," literally "fear of holes," was nothing more than an Internet phenomenon." This is true because it spreads in the social networking sites and I think we will not be afraid of this if there's no one share this to others. Additionally to this is I think the comments of this images has effect to our view of it. 


Do you know why are you disgusted with holes? Or the images that is related to trypophobia? I have read another article entitled Is trypophobia a real phobia? by Jennifer Abbasi from the website www.popsci.com

We are not alone that are encountering this fears. This fear is experienced by many people around the world and by just seeing a small holes, their hair crawls. A psychologist named Antony said that he was not suprised to hear that many people have extreme fear to the holes because all of us can be afraid of anything. The reasons why we are experiencing this are because of traumatic experience that happened in the past like your are bitten by a dog that leads you to be afraid of dogs, the things we learned by observing like watching others be afraid of darkness, instruction and information that leads us to be afraid of being alone because of the horror movies that we watched. Some people just begun to be afraid of holes because in facebook, the image of holes became a trend and when they see the picture, they didn't recognize it until they saw the comments from it. 

Abbasi said to her article that "The term will need to be used for years and have multiple petitions and scholarly references before the dictionary accepts it." This means that tyrophobia would be in the dictionary if this fear become popular in the world, I mean that It would be common and known by everyone.

Tyrophobia is just an illusion to us. This spread because of the image that have been shared by everyone. You learn that you're afraid of this because of the appearance of something. Maybe were scared of holes because something in the past has happen to us or maybe since birth, were afraid of it already. 
  



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