Things that scare most people, but not you

I think snakes are pretty cool dudes. Spiders, eh, I'm bothered when they're in my house but not when they're just existing in nature.

I've rarely ever seen snakes so I can't really speak on those, but spiders scare me like the devil. If they weren't so creepy-crawly-looking I'd like them more.

I don't like small animals in general unless they feel nice to touch. Otherwise, I don't want anything to do with them.

I'm also not scared of the "not candy" PSA.

The Palace Video logo. Maybe if I saw it when I was 5, things would be different, but as it is, it feels more comically spooky than truly scary. The music is also awesome, I must add, as is the animation.

I guess I'll add the Simitar Entertainment "S of Doom" here as well, since the music sounds awesome rather than scary, but many other people seem to agree with me here.

Here are some things that I don't find scary, while others may:

"It's a Velociraptor" line from Jurassic Park. The reason for this is because of how many positive portrayals of dromaeosaur's came after the premiere of the movie (including continuations of the movie), that portray them in more positive light, or I see it as Call-Forward to the Raptor Squad.

"They're Running Out of Batteries" - and Duke's conversation with Edmund before this - and "Owls Picnic" songs from Rock-A-Doodle are so narmy (especially Polish version's of these two songs, that also double as a Awesome Music) that instead of being afraid, I laughed at my ass off while watching those scenes. Like, one of the owls during the latter song prances to the table with a picnic basket (just the fact that they want to eat farm animals in such cartoony manner makes it into Nightmare Retardant to me). Not to mention that in Polish version of the movie Duke is voiced by the same mister who voiced Mr. Owl in Winnie the Pooh (with Owl being one of my favourite characters from the series), thus helping Rooting for the Empire concerning around Duke.

Some of the Gargamel schemes in The Smurfs (1981), especially during moments where Smurfs act as Designated Heroes. For example, instead of being afraid of Gargamel's Villain Song from episode "The Blue Plague", I actually find it cool, and was rooting for Gargamel in this episode, especially because of the fact that Brainy wanted to turn all Smurfs into his photocopies.

(Btw, I am new troper here and this my first post on this discussion).

Edited by Filip04 on Feb 28th 2024 at 7:45:43 PM

Some of the more infamously disturbing scenes from SpongeBob SquarePants (e.g. "Does this look unsure to you?", the horsefly close-ups, the toenail scene, the ending of "SquidBob TentaclePants") never fazed me, even as a child.

Same goes for scenes in The Simpsons like the panda rape (though I first watched that episode when I was 11 and didn't get what was going on in that scene), Homer's face melting off, Homer's eye popping out the socket after getting his face suctioned, or the grislier deaths in the Treehouse of Horror episodes.

Speaking of SpongeBob, I was never scared of "Ghost Host" or "Wormy".

Spiders.

Neither am I.

Now that you mention it, I noticed people pretty much stopped doing that. I remember a few years ago, it seemed like a lot of people on the Internet were practically promoting and encouraging arachnophobia. They were saying stuff like "Everybody in the world HAS to be afraid of spiders. Always and forever. No option, no exceptions." And now you barely see anything like that, or even at all. I was never a big fan of that. After all, if it wasn't for spiders, we wouldn't have gotten one of the world's greatest superheroes, now would we?

The "raptor Jump Scare" scene in Jurassic Park (1993) didn't startle me at all, despite the fact that I can be rather easily started (there have been several times when I've jumped just because I saw a family member standing outside my room). I wonder if it might have something to do with how there have been many people who have admitted to being jolted by that scene, to the point where I saw it coming when I saw the movie for the first time.

I can absolutely understand why that scene would be startling, though, especially if you're not expecting it.

For whatever reason, a bunch of things that apparently scare or unnerve people generally fail to incite any sort of reaction unless it's a jump scare or things the average human would be scared of anyway. So for example the candy PSA doesn't do anything for me and Eldritch Abominations usually don't process as nightmare fuel in my head unless they're grotesque in specific ways or do certain things. At worst I might go "oh hey that looks freaky" and then not care, but I usually don't mind it and might even think of the supposedly horrifying imagery as cool.

The interesting part, however, is that the few things that do actually unnerve me tend to be... not scary to other people apparently. Which even led to several Nightmare Fuel entries that I wrote being removed despite the fact that they genuinely put me at unease and the "actual" scary stuff doesn't faze me. I ended up only contesting and then adding back one of these (after a brief discussion of course) because that one legitimately and consistently makes my skin crawl.

Edited by Eggy0 on Feb 29th 2024 at 7:59:59 PM

Sometimes, I have this situation where I read comments from people talking about how scared they were of certain things, and then I actually sit down and watch it. It turns out to not be as scary as I was expecting, usually because, no matter how nightmarish the actual thing was, it's often Sesame Street compared to the version my brain made up. As an example, the infamous "You're the Guinea Pig" anti-drug PSA doesn't utterly freak me out like it does for everyone else, at worst, it's kind of creepy. This is likely because before watching it, I read so many comments from people who considered it one of, if not the scariest PSA ever made. And this isn't even a thing about me being immune to scares, as there are other PSAs that I find geniunely horrifying.

If there's one thing I can say though, the song that plays in the PSA is cool, even if it is just "You Always Hurt the One You Love" with different lyrics.