honk
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Are people actually afraid of them?
I’ve never really understood this one.
Even the creepy clown trope in horror movies is kinda underwhelming and overdone in my opinion. It feels forced.
There are people in this world who are afraid of balloons. Irrational fears don’t care about how illogical they are, they just exist.
I think in this case, Japan doesn’t really have circuses the way that the west does. Therefore they don’t have a very large number of people who dress as clowns. So childhood encounters with clowns which could potentially create adult phobias don’t really manifest.
The Japanese have a few unique phobias not found in the west as well. So it’s not as one sided as the article makes out.
Ooh, can you name some unique phobias?
The only one I was able to find is the phobia of embarrassing over displeasing others.
I don’t think anyone has made a comprehensive list. The one that was specifically in my mind was their fear of spirits or demons. It’s not anything like western Christian belief, it’s more visceral and ancestral. But hey, here is a list of unique irrational fears from around the world, which includes the one from Japan that you mentioned.
https://listverse.com/2023/12/21/10-bizarre-fears-and-phobias-specific-to-one-culture/
I think it’s more of a boomer fear. They had clowns at birthdays and on TV as major cultural staples of childhood. And strange adults dressed silly and acting funny may usually be delightful or something, but its not surprising that plenty got freaked out, especially if they had a bad experience with one.
As a millennial they’re discomforting to me, but largely in a way of a bizarre cultural staple from not too long before my time but definitely well before it. They represent the veneer of innocence of the 50s and 60s, including what it covers up.
I find Gacey to be the guy who could have almost single-handedly instiledl fears of clowns in many american people.
yeah these people are like ‘what’s the problem?’
It is a real phobia; irrational, yes, but no less real. I know more than one person that reacts to clowns the way others might react to heights and spiders.
What confuses me about phobias is people who have them often do nothing about it. Fear fades when we choose to understand rather than avoid. I used to be terrified of spiders, until I took the time to learn about them, and in learning my fear turned into wonder. They are fascinating animals and deserve none of the hate they receive. Same for clowns, I guess…
Fear fades when we choose to understand rather than avoid
No, this is only your personal experience. I have ophidiophobia and I’ve watched my fair share of snake documentaries and movies and very much know how these animals work inside and out because they’re fascinating, but I still have nightmares, jumps cares, and panic.
It never goes away from understanding because they’re irrational by their very nature. What sets it off for me are the silhouettes, the movement, the patterns, and the textures. It’s not even the potential danger of dying from internal bleeding or being constricted to death.
What you’re describing is a form of mild exposure therapy that worked for you. For severe forms like mine I’d need gradual exposure for months with a specialist to even gather the courage to boop a garter snake with one finger as I sweat profusely and cry.
I’ve tried doing it myself to be able to tolerate small images, and even if I make progress, sometimes it feels like I slide back to where I was. It’s a huge mental toll to have to expose myself constantly just to find images tolerable, so I know can’t do it alone like you did. I’ve tried it.
Yes, therapy is possible, but your hill is an Everest to me and I wish more people who downplay it and try to rationalize it would understand that.
I didn’t mean to sound like I was downplaying your fears; I know phobia is an intrinsic, irresistible emotional force. I do appreciate you sharing your perspective. Sometimes I need to be reminded that I’m a weird outlier.
“Have you tried just not being
sadscared?”Have you tried actually being next to one?
Documentaries can only get you so far.
Oh yeah, a few times at various places, actually. Most notably:
One time at a friend’s brother’s house who had a huge anaconda in his room next to me that I was unaware of. The local zoo had this gigantic anaconda resting against the glass that still gives me shivers but that I stared at in admiration and horror nonetheless. One time at a Midwestern mall where they had a random yellow anaconda on display at kid’s eye-level along with a life-like one hanging from the ceiling (embarrassing story that one). One time at Disneyland at the jungle themed restaurant sitting almost right under a fake one that I think moved and freaked me tf out. One time I was walking on campus and someone had a ball python wrapped around their hands just casually strolling by that I didn’t even have time to react to before he was gone but left me with a figurative eye twitch. One time as a kid my neighbors were playing with a decapitated one out on the street threatening to throw it at people including me. One time my cousin chased me around with a snake skin belt until I got fed up and tired that I grabbed it and beat the shit out of him with it somehow in a furious rage. One time I was in the mountains and a huge black snake scurried away from me from a foot away right before I could stepped on it. And many other times. I remember feeling quite exhausted every time. Shit’s not fun.
E: To clarify, when I mean huge I mean they were several meters long and thicker than a grown man’s thigh. Especially the one at the zoo, holy shit. It was probably as long as a city bus.
Phobias are irrational, that’s in the very definition.
OK y’all, this is my peeve so I’ll put it out there.
Being scared of a thing is NOT a phobia. I’ve only met one arachnophobe in my life, that I know of. She never expressed any particular fears of spiders, not out loud. But much of her behavior over the 2-years we dated suddenly made sense when I realized she was constantly looking for spiders. That’s a whole level worse than being afraid when you see one.
Anyway, I did the exposure thing with spiders as you did. Not near so bad now! One time I ended up with a kayak full of banana spiders, started chucking them out with my bare hands. Still, if I caught one in the face I’d dance like a panicked toddler!
Phobia’s can be genetic and the US had a serial killer that dressed as a clown in the 70s
Phobia’s can be genetic and the US had a serial killer that dressed as a clown in the 70s
Are you arguing that a serial killer was so scary he literally changed the genome of Americans?
A fear of clowns is more a cultural thing, inherited thorough culture. A person who was deathly afraid of clows and gave up a child for adoption to Japan (although in Japan like 99% of adoptions are of adults iirc, look it up lol), it might inherit a tendency to manifest a phobia of some sort, but it wouldn’t magically manifest a fear of clows just because their mom was terrified by the serial killer.
I won’t die on this hill, but I do think it’s very possible. Gacey and all the media surrounding him, combined with all the horror media with killer clowns would absolutely have given some people phobias. If phobias are genetic, it makes sense America has a higher population of people that are afraid of clowns
You’re conflating a lot of concepts there, buddy.
A tendency to have phobias may be genetic, and a fear of snakes and spiders has been found to be “genetic” insofar that you recognise a photo of a snake faster than a stick of grass, even when the photos are made to visually otherwise match. Same with spiders.
Alcoholism is genetic as well, but if you’re family has none, you won’t magically make the gene for addiction appear by becoming an alcoholist. It either is there or it isn’t.
If your whole genome changed based on what you did over a few decades evolution would be much faster and life on this planet extremely curious.
Maybe I don’t fully understand [this](Can the legacy of trauma be passed down the generations? https://share.google/71zM8Ql9nM7Wl7i7f), but it seems like personal trauma absolutely gets passed to offspring. If that is the case, why couldn’t a fear of clowns be developed?
Well, first off, there are things such as epigenetic changes, but that aside, the link does not open. Give me the proper one and I can check it out
I’ll try to find it when I’m off work, but this is a different one saying something similar Your Childhood Experiences Can Permanently Change Your DNA https://share.google/FDPy5Bu1TGX1Hzwdk
Edit: I found the original link, just had to edit the other comment and copy it from there https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190326-what-is-epigenetics
Almost as bad as Japan’s fear of any outside culture
ZING
Idk aversion and fear are similar, but not the same.
If they have at least one political party whose core policy stances are preservation of culture and exclusion of all others, they’re afraid.
definitely not as bad as japan’s fear of working slightly less
I have it kind of the other way, a mild caulrophilia. It’s just a bit of a bump, but a girl that is already attractive to me, will likely be more so in well-done clown make-up. Which is ironic, because when it comes to normal makeup, I tend to prefer the look of a lighter touch.
Though I think it is probably more about emphasizing and exaggerating facial emotiveness. I tend to have trouble with facial expressions, so when someone can do something to make them clearer, or overact them, it’s very helpful/comforting. A clown-girl voice helps too for the same thing. They usually add more emotion to their speaking to go with the overacting.
Actually the characters alot of V-tubers portray is kind of the same thing.
I wonder what causes it that does not exist within Japanese culture. Is it that American children are potentially exposed to them as children, and circuses just aren’t a thing in Japan?
(The fact that children would find clowns scary, having no explanation for such eldritch beings, is not surprising to me.)
I’m not sure that exposure to clowns as a child is as common as it once was, but now that fear of them is a cultural touchstone, our media revels in it and exposes us to explicitely and intentionality scary clowns and nurtures the phobia.
I think it’s the “horror clown” trope. I haven’t seen any Japanese clown related horror stuff. But in American culture it’s a classic and every kid has caught a glimpse of a spooky clown
I’ve seen it in manga, but I don’t remember the names of any of them.
think like sharks. sharks are usually non confrontal and dont often attack humans. but jaws as a franchise has irreversibly made sharks as a symbol of fear for the waters, despite how insignificant shark attacks are.
I wonder if John Wayne Gacy has anything to do with it.
Almost certainly yes. Almost every “horror clown” that exists marks Gacy as an inspiration.
Americans also have Stephen King’s “It” as a well known cultural touchstone, as well as just the general fear of being around a strange man who hides his face.
It also explains why the shift away from clowns happened around that time. In the 50s and 60s they weren’t considered creepy.
In the middle of the night, it’s darkest hour, I got up in a cold sweat and a swamp of cum. Inseparable, my fear of death came with the lust. I was on a brink, on the edge of doing something to myself, when I brought my partner of ten years a squeaky nose and a palette of makeup. It felt unnatural at first, to have a hatefuck with them, to have a bonner pumped up by my own dread, but I wasn’t shy of requesting it again, and again. My phobia got my phalos going like nothing else could. I was not a man I believed I was, but I ran with it anyway.
I’m terrified of clowns, my wife put on clown makeup one time for a photo shoot and i could not look at her face at all. Just dread.
The more intentionally “scary” the clown is, the less bothered I am. It’s the “totally normal” clowns that are freaky. I think it’s the makeup. Perhaps a bit of the uncanny valley at play. I also find insane over the top drag queen makeup to be creepy. (Just to be clear, I have no issues with basic drag, crossdressing, or trans people.) It’s the over the top makeup that makes them look like clowns or aliens that creeps me out.
I’ve read multiple manga with an evil clown character. Some of them liked to turn people into balloons that scatter blood on people when they pop. I don’t think it’s an American thing.
