Bigtime Internet Crybaby

Have you ever read Cracked.com?  It's a site consisting of a list of lists, and while it has its moments, I feel it has committed an unforgivable crime.  While not the only offender, it is perhaps the most noteworthy.

Many of the articles (read: lists) on the site are things along the lines of "10 Most Terrifying Snakes" or "5 Cartoons That Make Me Want to Shit Myself", etc.  At first this conceit isn't so terrible; everyone bonds over things that make them uncomfortable.  Or if not, they probably should.  I imagine shared irrational fears are more revealing than shared favorite books.  But the tone of these works appears to work on a sliding scale of exponential hyperbole, in which the author expresses in the most strident manner possible how he will never sleep again and his children will be forever cursed because one time he saw a bug.

One imagines these men and women are eternally paralyzed with fear as they go through their lives, unable to take a breath without looking around first for any organic life or children's entertainment which might terrify them into a bowel-blasting fit of panic.  When did this kind of timidity burrow into the black heart of the jaded internet reader?  What person barely bats an eye at a photograph of a man distending his anus but shrieks like a tea kettle at the sight of a lotus root?

There are many other sites which seem to have taken this baby-brained wussery to heart, producing similar articles with more niche-focused content; most accidentally frightening video game characters, most upsetting breeds of dog, biggest cry-baby bitch who writes for this website.  The epidemic of chicken-shit weeping has spread over the internet.  I can understand that people are frightened of the natural world.  I get that.  I, personally, think it is an endless font of beauty, astonishment, and the closest thing to religious ecstasy I will ever experience, as an unrepentantly godless heathen.  I respect that some components of the natural world can, and will, kill me.  But this is not a source of fear for me, it is simply another facet of the aforementioned beauty/astonishment/revelation.

I'm not an idiot, of course.  If a fucking tiger was trying to take a chomp out of me, I wouldn't be telling it how graceful it looks as it savages my torso, I would be panicking and running and probably trying in vain to hit it with a stick.  And I understand that much of this hyperbole which I see in these articles is probably for humorous purposes, which is a fair and just thing to aim for.  But the frequency with which this "fuck anything that isn't shaped approximately like me/has more than four limbs/lives in the ocean" attitude recurs makes me uncomfortable.  It is not a healthy sentiment to express.

Not that these individuals limit their unbelievable crybabitude to nature and her multi-limbed progeny.  Man's works are the source of terror as well.  Old cartoons, big construction machinery, etc., etc.

I feel as if I am rambling somewhat, so I'll make my point and try to exit this posting gracefully.  My central point is that fear is the oldest and most basal emotional reaction man has to anything.  And while this emotion is fun to toy with in a controlled setting, it is not the best way to approach new situations.  Neophobia is for rodents.  It is the place of humans (and elephants, apes and dolphins) to think about and interact with new things to understand them.  Occasionally this interaction may manifest as being bitten by a spider and dying, but that is a very small price to pay for the vindication of our entire species as thinking, reasoning beings and not pants-wetting losers.