Distractible - Fears & Fetishes

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Sharks, stage freight, and snapping your leg like Joe Theismann: today the guys discuss their fears and come to the conclusion that the opposite of a fear is a fetish. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible, a Wood Elf production with your hosts, Worldly Wade, Bananas Bob, and Maladjusted Mark. This week, the Randy Roystering Rangers round the rugged rocks of the Rebord. Yes, it's time for Fears and Fetishes. Please agree thy safe word, and enjoy the show. Please agree thy safe word and enjoy the show. Hey guys, welcome back to Distractible. I'm Wade, joined by Mark and Bob, and we are here with our show where we talk about whatever we want. I assign points, or whoever's hosting assigns points, and then somebody wins, two people win, nobody wins. I don't know. We'll figure it out.

Ooh, we've never done that. Can nobody win? Is that an option? I mean, I feel like that's a little cheating. That's the end of the podcast. Nobody wins. There's no host for next week. It's over. Oh, spoiler alert. Is that today? It could be.

That's how it ends. I guess it's up to the host when it ends. Yeah, I guess it's like whenever there is no winner, that's when the show ends. At any moment, the host could just be like, you guys suck. That's it. It's over. That really puts some stakes to this show. You you know maybe we should elevate it like that if there's ever uh like an episode where no one gets any points then i guess it has to end right or a tie tie it nothing that's not the same

a tie is like kissing your own butthole nobody wants that you guys tied once no no you're skating over this concept how do you kiss your own butthole uh can't happen that's why we can't have any times all right fair enough there is somebody out there that's flexible enough to kiss their own butthole oh absolutely and you know they have like i know exactly the extent to which i'm not able to kiss my own butthole because you know what i've tried just like everyone else is that where the phrase tongue in cheek comes from yes shut up that's a hundred percent you know what way points for that thank you for you thank you you can't give the judge points i will allow him to give me points don't tell me what i can do i'm gonna tell you exactly what you can do and you can't do that

well i already did it i will allow you both to give the judge points this week all right fair enough does that mean we can also take points away from the judge? Just curious. I can only be giving points. I give you negative five points. Honestly, that's kind of cheesy, but I allowed it. So not against the rules. Technically true.

All right. Well, anyway, since we're all here and since spooky season is, has been upon us, kind of a combo there. Say it again the way you said it. Since we're all here, since spooky season has, is, been upon us. No, just spooky season. God, what is wrong with you? No, spooky season. You said spooky season in a fun way.

Spooky season. Spooky season. Spooky. Say it differently. God, forget I said, and we'll cut this out. Don't cut anything out ever, Will. It's unedited now. Your job is just to post this as we send it to you.

That's the rules. I'm starting to think maybe there's no editing at all and we just are thrown up like vomit onto the platforms that people listen. You know, you would know if that was true if you listened to them before they go up, Wade. That's true. Yeah. We are afforded that opportunity. Look look over there

I hate the sound of my own voice. I don't want to I don't like listening to myself If I wasn't in the podcast, I would love Wow wow it's not for you it's for the people to make sure that it's good look they are smarter people than me i am so much more mad at you right now than it would seem but i'm gonna save it till the end oh beloved judge i will keep note of that when i assign points thank you um well uh get a little warm in here so uh let's talk about spooky stuff because i don't know i don't like it when halloween's over because that means we have to wait a whole another year for halloween there's some other good holidays i suppose but it's one of the best ones

so today we're going to talk about fears logical fears irrational fears silly fears serious fears whatever you guys kind of want to focus on i don't have anything specific to ask about it but i just figured that's a good topic because it's something that you know a lot of us think of the common things like you know there's some very common fears spiders and such we can talk about those but sometimes there's just weird things people are afraid of and i have a couple of those that come to mind so now that i've blabbed and blabbed and given you guys plenty of time to prepare for the topic talk to me about either some of your fears or fears of people around you what stories you've heard whatever you know how this show goes i just want to be clear you did talk for a long time but you said

the topic at the very end of your very extended talk so yeah you're welcome like 95 of that was not like oh i'm thinking about this new topic Wade has presented. Just to clarify what you said. I know, but I was trying to make myself look better than I was to you. Uh-huh. I was trying to misrepresent myself to look good to the audience. Minus one point to Wade. Wade, you can't take points away. You can only add negative points.

I give you negative one point. All right, that's fair. That's fair. That's the rules. I do. I feel like I have a light-hearted one that i feel weird about that i guess i could start this with i don't know if you've got ones ready locked and loaded mark no honestly because like you i just heard about this topic two seconds

ago okay it's not been two seconds anymore now it's been at least a minute yeah but i was too busy laughing at you all right listen i've got this and it's like an everyday thing like constantly like when we finish recording this podcast i'm probably gonna deal with this and i don't know maybe it's not a fear we can debate that but i have this thing right basically every time i go to stand up or walk i have a fear that i'm gonna like hurt my ankles or my feet. And it's not like a, Ooh, I hope I don't hurt my ankle. It's like a physical cringe. If I see someone like a roll their ankle or like one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen, if you're a sports fan, the video, I believe of Joe Disman, he's a quarterback. He's playing football, American football. He gets tackled. I found a picture of it. He's a quarterback. He's playing football, American football. He gets tackled.

I found a picture of it. He's standing, trying to throw the ball basically. And he gets tackled low in his leg and it like snaps his leg, like destroys his leg. And when it just, I'm not watching the video right now. I just googled to make sure that was the right dude that exact injury is like a deep fear for me it makes me feel like i'm gonna throw up it makes my eyes like water like tear up and every time i'm if i'm on the escalator at a store and i'm approaching the end of it my brain is like make sure your your pant leg is not too low so it doesn't get sucked in. It's going to rip your legs off. Every time I step down off a curb,

I'm like, ooh, don't step down into a sewer grate. Your foot might go through it. You might break every bone in your ankle. It's like this weird thing. And like football sports injuries where ankles get like snapped. There's an MMA injury where two guys are like kicking each other

and they kick and their shins meet and the one dude's leg or like wraps around the other dude's leg because his shin just shatters. I mean, that's gross, right? I feel like everyone would look at that and be like, Ooh, that's a rough injury. Like, damn, that probably hurts. I think about that constantly. Every time I walk, every time I take a step up or down, is that weird? Am I weird? Is that like a weird thing I hold on to? Because it makes me feel weird, but it's a real like constant thing for me that I'm afraid of. Anytime I'm like using my legs, this in the back of my mind, I'm like, be careful. Don't destroy

your legs. Watch out. Watch out. And anytime, if I like step on a rock or even if I slightly roll my ankle, my whole body is like, this is the end. This is how we die. Is that weird? Am I weird? Because I feel like that fear follows me constantly and I don't understand it. I mean, given that I broke my foot by stepping off of a curb and barely rolling my ankle. No, I'm not saying that that's crazy because that can happen. Humans are surprisingly durable can happen humans are surprisingly

durable but humans are also surprisingly fragile they will break at a moment's notice do you think there's like something that happened or something you witnessed when you were really young that caused you to like have that or do you think it's just happened one day you're like huh he just talked about joe theismann and his thigh being broken in half yeah i know no okay so for his first personal experience i was a football player right i played football through uh high school for a couple years in high school i my goal was to play in college i was taking it pretty seriously and i frequently had ankle injuries but i don't know if it comes from that like i'm just a big guy linemen get their ankles stepped on a lot you roll your ankle it just sort of happens if you play college football you basically

have your ankles taped all the time no matter what because you probably have taken a lot of abuse and have had a lot of ankle sprains or injuries or whatever but like no traumatic events or anything involving feet i don't know well i looked it up joe theismann's injury happened like 85 so i don't think any of us were alive to see that happen in real time no no it's just like an iconic thing like you know it's a video if you're like a sports especially if you're a football player you've probably seen the joe theismann clip because it's it's horrific yeah and apparently everyone likes watching that there was one i witnessed probably a decade or more ago it was like i think it was a college basketball game where like someone went to jump and when they

landed they didn't bend their knees and they had um what's the fracture called where like the bone goes through the skin fucksplosion i believe they had a knee fucksplosion a bone annihilation there's actually there's a name for it yeah but basically this dude jumped up to like block a pass or something and he landed didn't bend his leg and like his leg buckled but like in real time because i mean they didn't cut it soon enough you could actually see that happen and him go down i'm gonna throw up sorry as a basketball player at the time that was awful to witness too because it's like oh my god the way i jump around like that could happen to me at any given time i guess my biggest question about this

i this is a thing i deal with i i don't know it's not going away as far as i can tell is that a fear or is that like a weird like just a thing for me it's not a fear i don't know what is a fear i don't know what is a fear what is what is a fear hang on what is fear what is fear that's a good question i just asked what is a ferrara and the internet was like ferrari what is the fear of ferraris ferrarophobia it must be right ferrarophobia probably ferorophobia okay fear definition this is the start of like a seventh grade essay fear the dictionary defines fear as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous likely to cause pain or threat so weirdly it's specific to danger right that would be dangerous yeah threats i think it's fine to call that a fear because it is it's

even if it's rational and understandable it still qualifies as a fear i don't see why not yeah i mean it's definitely it comes from my feeling that that's i'm gonna get injured it's irrational i guess maybe in that i think i'm gonna get injured in every situation when if i'm just walking normally i'm probably relatively safe i guess but okay so that is a fear that's kind of a fear yeah absolutely it's a fear you know i kind of a fear. Yeah, absolutely. It's a fear. I say qualified.

I feel validated. You know what I just thought? Is there a pill that makes you feel incredible fear? Because I feel like there's a market for that. I feel like that's something Scarecrow would employ in like the Batman universe. I know, right? They always have the like the fear potion or the fear tonic. But is there actually

a chemical that makes you feel afraid like what chemical in the brain what chemical makes you feel fear on the flip side wouldn't there be like a counter maybe like for i don't know soldiers or police or something that makes you feel incredibly brave i mean probably lots of cocaine oh my imagine a fear suppression that would be so dangerous to have like a fear suppression probably because i think that fear is what makes good decisions a lot of the time i mean no no honestly no fears make you make i think worse decisions way more than good decisions yeah i think it depends i think if you get into a position where you're you're basically entering the fight or flight part of fear and you're making a frantic decision that's not great but fear is rationalized when you're making like calmer decisions before

something is happening or if you're totally have control of yourself i think that's good out in the woods grizzly bear comes to your campsite you're like hold my it's a hold my beer moment that's what fear suppression is it's hold my beer it's a hold my beer life i know how to deal with a grizzly bear in the woods. You kidding me? Okay. How do you deal? How do you deal? It's easy. It's easy. Shit your pants and play dead.

Oh. All right. What if you had just finished pooping? Well, God help you. You better run fast. If you don't have one in the chamber, that grizzly bear is going to get you. That's why I always carry my camping bag of shit with me at all times. Yeah, that's why real outdoorsmen shit in a bag and then tie it on their belt.

Yeah. I got a quick-release pouch. It's like a parachute. I pull a cord and poop. A guy just got back from a long bushcraft trip. He gets into the city, parking his car, walking into his apartment. A mugger comes up and is like, hey, give me your wallet. The guy, like Spider-Man, whips his hand behind his back whips the bag out like a web of shit

launches the mugger loses his mind and then shoots him in the face because that only works on grizzly bears the shit defense is more effective in nature it doesn't work in the urban environment uh-huh yeah humans don't like that but it doesn't scare them away i feel no i feel like if i was in a situation where i wanted to mug someone and they pull the cord and poop went everywhere i feel like i would be dissuaded from robbing that guy yeah imagine they have like shit all over their hand they go to grab their wallet and like they go to hand you a shit covered wallet like i wouldn't want it yeah it's too much well but if you're mugging them you've got the you've got the weapon you've got a whatever i would be like lick your hand clean then pass it to me this is what you get i tried

the shit defense on a human that has intelligence oh yeah yeah exactly intelligence is what we're dealing with here oh yeah i would never mug anyone so no one has to worry about me telling them to lick their hand claim but thank god but if i was in that position you've got the element of surprise you've got a weapon or something something you know you're trained in karate whatever i don't know you mix up your like poop bag with your party confetti and you go to someone's birthday and you're like, surprise! Then you feel really bad, so then you throw confetti to you and it kind of sticks to the moist poop. You basically just tarred and feathered someone on their birthday.

I just got a bunch of cords on my body that I can pull at any time. One's poop, one's confetti, one's food, one's drink, one's a fire extinguisher. You're a terrible, shitty superhero. It's me cord man i should have labeled some of these cords i'm just gonna keep pulling until the situation is resolved cord man sucks and cord man what are we talking about fear fear right fear fear right yeah my fear of the leg injury thing that's real abnormal okay well i mean i don't have too many like standout fears except for the ocean. I freaking hate the ocean.

Like me and Ethan, we went swimming in the ocean. It was this bone gripping terror of being in the water. I cannot explain to you how real that fear was of even the idea of being in the water was terrifying but once i actually jumped in all i could think of was get out i might have pushed ethan into the water to get out i'm i'm not ashamed to say i watched that video and i had two comments one the expression on your face prior to getting into the water yeah i'm pretty sure you were going to kill ethan like i was watching it and i was like whoa whoa whoa this isn't like a bit mark looks possessed mark looks violent like this doesn't look like mark

i yeah it's it's like it was pure attack mode like that was it was fight or flight and i choose fight until i got in the water and then it was flight. And just like the amount of adrenaline, like my heart rate just skyrocketed with the idea of being in the water. I couldn't handle it. I want to explore this. I don't want to like make you super uncomfortable, but I know you're pretty into the idea of exploring what makes you uncomfortable. Of course.

What if you can explain it? Okay. What is it about it that the ocean makes you so uncomfortable? It's the deepness, the mystery, the creatures. It's the fact that if you're in the ocean, you have a mile below you of you don't know what's there. It's the unknown, right? If I was in the water and I saw a shark there, I would be just as scared as I was when there

was nothing there because my mind was making up more to fear than like a tangible thing. If there was a shark, I would probably be like, holy shit, I'd shit my pants. But also just like the idea that there could be anything below me or nothing at all. That's equally scary. Something about the ocean as a whole, like a giant body of water. Maybe it's something in my genetic history.

Like if you open me up like Assassin's Creed, you'd find just like every single one of my uncles has drowned or something like that. And it's just really pervasive. Well, every single one of my uncles has drowned or something like that and it's just really pervasive well thing number one the shitting your pants i'd be curious to know if that worked on sharks as well as it works on grizzly special pull cords for underwater so it's not the ocean in general and it's not like salt water what if you were in a coral reef you could see the bottom it's 15 feet below you is that different i have swum i swam in hawaii and i swam with the snorkel and i did the coral and because i could see the bottom and

because i could see all around me the water was crystal clear i was fine it is just the unknown like i i think that's that's predominantly what makes it so terrifying to me do you think if you were in space and you were like outside the spaceship like just holding on by like a cord or something would that be a similar sensation i think it would be a different terror because i could see everything around me but i think i would be terrified if i was just without a cord like where's my where's my grappling cord if you were just floating yeah but i mean if you were just outside and there was just like one little thing holding you were doing uh what's this called spacewalk yeah that type of thing yeah spacewalk yeah that's interesting have you ever found because the ocean's pretty unique on our planet i feel like the ocean is a large unique

thing right it represents a lot i feel like a lot of people see the ocean as representing mystery and grand you know those giant creatures we couldn't even imagine way way deep down in the in the depths of the ocean maybe theoretically we theoretically, we have evidence that something, you know, like a giant squid exists, right? There's some kind of video of that or something, but is there anything that matches that? Space was a good example. Is there anything else, like, I don't know, if you're hypnotized or, I don't know, have you experienced anything that even comes close to that? Because it does sound like it's not fear of the water or of drowning in any specific way. It sounds like it's the fear of just how unknown it is, right? Could be anything.

I think that it boils down to all fears are like this, right? So all fears, like the definition of fear is like whatever, danger, threat, pain, all that stuff. The thing about not knowing something can drive someone like insane. And it does. And like that fear alone, your brain comes up with more terrifying things than ever could actually exist you know what i mean because like my brain is just constantly on like paranoid look for threat mode and it's like oh there could be like a giant squid about to pull me down or there could be like a shark but also it's just like there could be fucking anything

and that's why like walking alone in the woods at night you know that's scary there could be things in the woods but in the daytime usually walking alone in the woods is fine because you can see you can see everything around you yeah i don't know it's just like that unknown is so primal and so keyed in i wonder if animals feel the same way i certainly feel that to some extent it makes me feel unsafe i would say like the alone in the woods or i've never been swimming in like the deep open ocean i've only swam in like you know in the shallows and among a coral reef or like by the beach or whatever but i would say for me the thing about fear is it's what my mind invents which is why i don't enjoy scary movies i've never done a haunted house i can't handle scary shit because even if it's dumb so take for example uh manny and i really enjoy paranormal activity and i would argue the first paranormal activity movie

actually was really interesting and like really scary and they like they were trying something and i feel like that i don't know how other people feel but that one i feel like is a pretty good spooky movie the rest of the paranormal activity series would argue, is kind of garbagey. Like it gets trashy. They're trying to like recapture kind of the magic that they had in the first one and they really just don't. They're trashy, right? But I've watched, I think, all or most of the rest of the Paranormal Activity movies. And no matter the fact that I know that they're trashy, like cheap jump scares, like cheap horror movie tactics. They scare the shit out of me equally to like The Shining. The Shining scares the absolute shit out of me and gives me trouble sleeping for like weeks. But so does every shitty, trashy, paranormal activity for, you know,

type movie. It's because of what my mind does, everything becomes real to me. It's not a fear of like what I don't know. It's a fear of like what I can imagine, which I guess maybe is that different. Does that seem different to you or am I just framing it differently? No, that's exactly the same thing, right? I think with movies, what captivated perfectly is like, you know, it's not so much about the jump scare. It's about putting people in an environment where they feel uncomfortable, you know, where they feel like they could be in danger and that you basically kick up an engine that will automatically pump out the adrenaline will automatically make people feel like they don't know what's going on or make them feel like they're gonna die at any moment so i feel like

it's the same thing and horror movies that do it well like the shining is great because it's not exactly a jump scare movie and that's fine it's a movie that's supposed to put you at like not at ease at ill ease oh deep discomfort discomfort yeah and so it's great for that because it makes people afraid for themselves they don't know the main villain isn't apparent even if it's jack torrance himself like uh is representative of the main danger to the other two he's not the big evil of it it's like the hotel itself there's a greater darkness and it's that unknown that makes it fascinating to me have you guys seen the haunting of hill house it's not a movie but like a it was a series i think netflix series no no i

heard it was great though it really was they made a another season the haunting of blind manor which is pretty good too but hill house is probably one of the best scary things I've ever watched. That and the remake, I really enjoyed the remake of It. I thought that was really good. The Haunting of Hill House is a similar thing where it's like there's all kinds of stuff going on, but there's some kind of greater evil of what you don't fully understand even while you're watching the whole show. I think the unknown and the darkness, the void into the ocean or the emptiness of space,

I think all of those do play on our fears because our imaginations run wild. Imagine being like an animal, like a deer or something that's just always got to be afraid of predators or like a raccoon or something. Cause like we have moments where we're afraid, but like there's creatures that always have to be on edge. I mean that their existence depends on them being like ever vigilant. Yeah.

That would suck. That would suck. Anywho. Those are pretty good. That's pretty good. They make sense. The leg one surprised me, Bob. I wouldn't say it's unusual to be afraid of that or anything,

but it's just not one I would have thought of. Weird one. My aunt, if you're listening right now, don't listen anymore because she has this fear. Even the word scares her. I thought that was to everyone. I thought that was just like a general thing to all the listeners. Just really wake people up.

Everyone, get out of here. Everyone leave one listens this is private just mute it for the next 60 seconds and then unmute it put a timer on whenever i wave my arms you can come back just keep an eye out um my aunt has this fear and she's had it for her entire life we've been able to talk about it a couple of times and she has no explanation for why, but it's so severe that even seeing or reading the word scares her. Her fear is of turtles. Ah. The word turtle,

the letters that spell out turtle, seeing one. I have this memory of being a kid and her going to look at like a property, like a piece of land with my dad. I don't remember the context or anything. I remember they were like walking around, sc out this land this property trying to figure out if that was something i wanted to invest in or something and as a kid i was just running around

looking at you know bugs and whatever and i found a box turtle and i picked it up i was so excited like guys look what i found and she screamed ran and like i think she was wearing like nice shoes like heels or something i remember her running full sprint to the car and we had to leave immediately and she would not even consider the property again after that being there oh damn weird as kids we were told like whenever she was visiting like do not talk about turtles because we used to collect them and we'd like my grandparents had this uh cabin that like there's this old bait shop that was part of their property and there was like in the back these old like little stone minnow container things and we would occasionally catch a turtle or a frog or something we'd put it in there for like a day we'd feed it whatever

and we'd let it go but we were not allowed to have any of them when she visited and we were not allowed to talk about anything that we'd caught when she visited that might lead us to talking about turtles like we had to have stern talking to about like make sure you don't say it because of her like intense fear and she has no idea why but everything about turtles just scares the crap out of her and she ironically coincidentally moved into a neighborhood at one point in her life where she had street names all around her that had turtle in the name oh and she had to find a very specific way out of her neighborhood to dodge those streets oh geez yeah but it's such a weird irrational fear and we have no idea what caused it. I just imagine her on her way back from a business trip or something.

We're visiting you guys. She's in an Uber on the way home from the airport. He's just following the directions. He's like, all right, this is your neighborhood. We turn in here. And she's like, no, no, the next one. He's like, oh, it says it's down here, right? Don't go on that street.

I mean, probably. Like a weird interaction with this uber driver doesn't fucking understand that this lady can't hear the word turtles and she can't even really talk about it to like explain it that's wild yeah so what i'm hearing is she's got some repressed memory where some horrific thing happened to her involving turtles right that's what we all imagine but she has no recollection and like her parents like no one has any recollection of anything happening that involved it no one has any idea i've always been curious about that i've never not that i want wishing this on myself i find it hard to understand the idea of a phobia or fear like that that's so

intense that it dominates your life like i i'm afraid i'm pretty scaredy cat and i have like the leg thing is constant right but i have that and then i'm like okay but i have i have to keep walking that doesn't prevent me from using my legs or from doing anything specifically that's a whole i feel like that's a whole different level of fear that i've never experienced it must be terrible yeah no it's like an instinctual fear i weirdly specifically am afraid like whenever it's time to like go to bed and i have to turn off like the whole light all the rest of the lights would have come usually the last one to go to bed I'm always afraid that there's someone that's broken into the house like there's a person in the house I usually have to like scan and make

sure there's no one around before I can like comfortably go to bed because I like I feel like someone's in the house I'm gonna be like murdered in my sleep or something and I don't know why I always worry about that I even had a nightmare a couple weeks ago that I was doing my like search of the like I heard a noise and I was searching to make sure like the house was clear and there was a window open and i was like oh no how this might mean they're hardly ever open these windows what in the world i remember closing the window in my nightmare and then i was walking down a hallway and one of our closet doors were open in a place that we don't even have closet doors and there was just a person sitting in there oh geez and like they made eye contact with me and then i

woke up so like yeah every time i like hear a noise like i'm like there's a person in the house i just keep thinking that oh man i have waking nightmares like that all the time but also the yeti sighted in cincinnati what what is an article the yeti aka the abominable snowman has been seen in cincinnati ohio oh yeti yet yaddy, yaddy. It's actually nothing. It's a new coin that someone stamped with the abominable snow. Wow. Boo! Minus 500 points for getting my hopes up.

That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. But I kind of wanted, I was touching on the idea of instinctual fears and stuff like that. And I was looking up some stuff and I found that. But I kind of was curious as to why there is this idea of a large ape-like creature, Bigfoot in the Americas and Canada.

You got the abominable snowman and like, you know, colder climates. But also in Australia, you got something called Yowie, which I've never heard of before. But also in Australia, you got something called Yowie, which I've never heard of before. But it is, much like the other ones, a large, hairy, ape-like creature. And I'm wondering, like when it comes down to instinctual fears or stuff like that, do you think that there was like an offshoot? We talked about this before, haven't we? There's like an offshoot evolution of not a cousin, but like a side evolution of a bipedal creature that was somewhat intelligent that lived maybe similarly time to humanity that we fucking murdered because we were terrified of

them. And that doesn't justify us killing them, but maybe they were also terrified of us and wanted to kill us also. But like, possible i mean in i don't know evolutionary or anthropological history i don't know what the right term would be that that happened in some time in the history of humanity's development sure are you implying that we have some kind of memory of that like a speacial memory maybe right because that that harkens back that's why we all humans in universally craft this myth of like the bigfoot the yeti the whatever local you know everyone has their own version of that i mean maybe there are instinctual fears there are you go up high you look down your stomach sinks right that's just a that happens. You get afraid because you don't want to fall.

And you can conquer that, or some people are affected by that more. But that is kind of universal. We don't like, you know, eyes in the darkness or whatever it is, like, because it's like threats in the force. There is instinctual-based knowledge in humanity. And it's often, like, subconscious because it doesn't need to be part of the linguistic system. But there are instinctual fears that are baked into our genes. It's a survival mechanism, right?

So how does that happen, number one, and how long of an exposure to a thing across a few generations does it need to exist for it to become baked in to our DNA? You know what I mean? I feel like my take on the idea of Bigfoots and Yetis and things is not fear-derived, and i'm certainly not an expert but i've always sort of thought that it was a fascination with the idea that like humans don't know everything in creation right yeah and people fear maybe fear these creatures because some of them are sort of you know maybe

have like a violent myth or or they're you know they do certain things but like i feel like they exist because people are entranced by the idea of the supernatural by the idea of the unexplainable and humans feel drawn towards that in like a positive way but maybe it's fear i don't know it's like you're saying certainly there are instinctual fears that exist i feel like those are usually more abstract because it's it comes from like a this is life-threatening danger some sort of instinct that triggers that where it's like some the eyes in the darkness or the footsteps behind you or like animal instincts of like that is a danger to me but i feel like bigfoot is much more of a mythical story yeah but i don't know i could see that what you're saying maybe it's generational i find it interesting how we're all afraid of like you know

dying getting hurt whatever like none of us want to be in pain or anything for the most part but like some fears stand out to us individually more than others even though we can all be like well yeah the fear of the unknown is is scary but one fear that jumps out to me that i'm sure nobody likes the idea of is like small spaces like not necessarily claustrophobia like being on an elevator but the thought of being like in a cave and having like a cave collapse or going down like a narrow passageway where i might get stuck that terrifies me i remember as a kid my brother and i used to like throw a blanket on each other and like grab a pillow and like, you know, tackle each other or whatever. But anytime I was under the blanket, like I thought I was going to die.

If I was like under a blanket or something and someone was on top of me, I felt like I couldn't breathe. Like I was suffocating. What you need to do is you need to pull your pull cord that inflates your life raft and it'll expand and create like more space for you. It'll push it out of the way. Or you pull the cord that's an explosive, but it's shielded on the inside. So it blows a hole opening in the cave you're stuck in. And then you can get out fine. That would be nice if that worked like that.

That would be, that'd be cool. How many points do I get for that idea? Oh, let's go 450. So that way you're only down 50 from the thing from earlier. What you really need to do if you find yourself in that scenario is just not be scared, you baby. Yeah, you little bitch. You just man up. really need to do if you find yourself in that scenario is just not be scared you baby yeah you little bitch you just man up yeah plus a thousand points to both of you for brutal honesty i don't feel that one i do think it's interesting that everyone has their own versions of their own like

sliding scale of which fears are impact them the most i don't like the idea of being in a cave collapse but as much as i'm a huge dude and i'm i frequently find myself in spaces where i'm like i don't quite fit or i'm like you know i feel wedged in or whatever that does not get to me at all that's not like a fear that triggers me unless i was actually trapped in a collapsed cave i don't i you know if i'm in a cave where i'm like oh this is cool man i hope i fit i just keep squishing keep scooching on through. Oh boy. But like, I don't know, I guess the joke I just made came from in my head. I was thinking about like, why is it? I mean, I kind of know the answer to this, but why is it manly to pretend like you're not afraid and or to not be afraid,

which I don't believe for two seconds. This is wandering pretty far away from the original topic, but what's the deal with that? Why are people so sensitive about you expressing like, oh, this is scary. I'm afraid. It's like, it's a competition thing. We're like, I'm better than you. I can face my fear. And if you're a coward and I'm smart and strong and I push my fear down, like it's, that's all it is. It's like a, it's a competition thing, right?

I think it comes from something probably though. Like imagine a long time ago, needing to like rally people around, like in your tribe, like let's say you had like we're under attack and if you went and showed courage in the face of that that can inspire those around you so you know something's attacking you and some animals do this too we're like you know they instead of running away they have like a built-in thing where they'll puff out their chest or they'll expand to make themselves look even bigger and that's like that'll counter the thing that's like trying to attack them i feel like there is some instinctual purpose to showing that brave in it that the brave bravity that braveness that brave bravery

bravado bravery bravado and i don't know if we had it built in ourselves as humans or not but there's definitely times where something like comes at you and the response is no you don't run away if you run away you're gonna get killed so you go and you roar back and beat your chest and put your arms out and make yourself as big as possible isn't there an animal that you're supposed to do that to if an animal like i don't know if it's a bear a mountain lion something like if it threatens you you're supposed to like make a loud noise back and look big i think raccoons yeah okay i think that a lot of that is definitely like the competition thing now i imagine in the past that served a survival purpose of a false bravado that makes yourself seem bigger scarier more

imposing to either inspire those around you and or just scare off whatever's attacking uh i think it's called the fighter flight reflex i mean yeah i yeah, I guess so. Though, you don't have to fight. You can just puff out your chest and roar and then if it still comes at you, you're like, okay, now I'm a bitch baby and run away. So that's the flight part. Yeah. You tried the fight part. Yeah. I think science

has pretty much nailed this one. It's like a fake fight. It's not a real fight. It's like, oh, I'll fight you. No, I really won't yeah as a big dude i have always actually been afraid of people shorter than me interesting it's not a fake thing it's because i was one of those like gentle giant types growing up where i felt like people seemed intimidated by me because i was so much taller than everybody like especially middle school junior high i was just very very much taller than everyone else but like i had this

thing of like if someone came up and wanted to beat me up and i had to defend myself would anybody believe me because i was so much more physically imposing than like a lot of the people that would come after me and so many dudes had napoleon syndrome in our school i don't know if you'd know that but there were so many dudes that were like shorter and they were just workout warriors and buff as hell i didn't really do much working out or you know lifting weights or anything and so i knew they could whoop my ass even though i was twice their height and they were just workout warriors and buff as hell and i didn't really do much working out or you know lifting weights or anything and so i knew they could whoop my ass even though i was twice their height and they were at perfect height to dick punch there were just so many reasons to be afraid of like the little dude i thought you were gonna say it's like because you couldn't see him coming because like you'd never know where they were well sometimes yeah

you're you're looking out you're surveying and you just hear like fuck is that it's like being a beaver being attached by a colony of ants you'll never see them coming you know wait i'm gonna punch you in your shins what's that tiny voice coming from who said that what is this but yeah growing up i was like terrified that some like shorter dude would come to beat me up and if i defended myself no one would believe me because i was like bigger than that person or they would actually succeed and just end up killing me i mean killing you jesus christ what does this guy do to you god what the hell i don't know man what i felt like i was easy to hate they just wouldn't be able to stop themselves once they started wailing on me man your self-esteem it was pretty low fights

and wade's head and only in death or or uh promising your life to the winner of the fight apparently and wade ain't promising his life to nobody no one yeah i get that man i get that now that we're all feeling nice and confident going back to like the turtle sphere do you guys know anyone or do you have any or whatever heard of like weird seemingly irrational fears hey weird weird is judgy calm down now it is it is weird i think a fear of like something like that i got a list okay there's arachibuterophobia fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. Okay. Okay. Nomophobia, fear of being without your mobile phone. That's a new one.

Okay. Plutophobia, which is the fear of money. I don't get that. I found a phobia that every jock in middle school and high school has, apparently. Arithmophobia, fear of numbers. Arithmophobia. Yeah. Ablutophobia, the fear of numbers arrhythmophobia yeah ablutophobia the fear of bathing octophobia optophobia optophobia is fear of opening one's eyes oh that is rough that can't

that oh my god how do you survive you blink like multiple times a minute like every time you blink you they stay close and you're like come on i'm driving the car come on uh yeah it's gotta be some kind of like sensory thing in the brain where like you're afraid of what you might see or like the unknown of what might be i imagine it's not from blinking but like if your eyes are closed oh my god this is the meanest shit i've ever seen okay guess what the word is for fear of long words oh go for it it's a long one isn't it hippopotamonstrosesquipedaliophobia that's like a 30 letter word that's the longest word i've ever seen so someone who has this phobia every time they're like hey doc hey doctor new therapist hey

yeah i have i have some uh i have a phobia i'm really i'm here to work on the doctor's like oh yeah what are you uh what's your phobia i'm here i'm here to help like it's i can't say it i can't say it because the doctor who named it is an asshole i mean no who is actually afraid of long words that cannot actually be true you know what i mean i mean i feel like a lot of so this we're i think mark you and i are reading the same list i feel like a lot of these have to come from very specific instances right yeah sure yeah i don't know who who looks at a long word and like is afraid of that like well that's what debilitates you i would have felt that way about turtles if i didn't have a personal experience with someone it's got to be tied

to something, right? Someone is afraid of long words because as a child they had a stutter and it was like something that defined their... Or they had an experience with a person who would use long words to, I don't know, to verbally abuse them. They would only abuse them with long... I have no idea. It's long word man. It the like this most verbose villain and extrapolated my plan this is i fucking love that guy fucking love that guy god damn it world's best villain yeah i mean i don't know there's a lot of i mean you could be afraid of anything i feel like some fears like we talked about are instinctive they come from you know self-preservation

there's instincts that we have as animals but you can develop a fear of almost anything given the right circumstances if you just read like okay chatophobia chatophobia is the fear of hair like oh well almost everyone has hair and you ever what you see hair i know somebody who has that a phobia like that and it's not necessarily hair just in general but it's loose hair oh okay like individual like hairs that are no longer attached to somebody well when you say like that that sounds creepy freaks them out to no end i mean okay so i go in my shower and i see a big clump of hair there i'm not exactly in love with it no i don't know if i'm afraid of it if it started moving holy shit then see a big clump of hair there. I'm not exactly in love with it. No. I don't know if I'm afraid of it.

If it started moving, holy shit, then maybe I would have fear of hair from then on in my life. But at that moment, no. But anyway, my point is, I'm sure there are people who have random, like the turtle thing. Maybe some people are just randomly, arbitrarily afraid of something deeply and unexplainably. But I feel like a lot of fears and phobias come from if you talk to a person or if they talk you know they talk to a therapist in a safe place about this there's probably a story right there's probably something that happened it comes from a specific experience or person in

their life or whatever who knows trauma i don't know but like they sound silly on their own but the thing is the fear the thing is not what you're afraid of the thing is the fear. The thing is not what you're afraid of. The thing is the fear. Fear is to some extent universal. I'm not going to judge anyone for having a fear that I don't understand just because maybe on the surface it seems weird to me or it doesn't make sense. Makes sense to them. Still, it's equally scary to them regardless of how judgy I am about it, I guess. Fair. Fair is fair.

I've got a weird one. I don't know how weird it is, but this is one I have that I never really explored. I've never really admitted to anybody, but like has totally affected me many times in life. I have like this fear of failing performance, like physical activity, like basketball or whatever, or acting improv in front of friends, in front of people that I know. So like back when I was playing basketball, I often played a lot better when i wasn't playing with anybody i didn't like i knew if there was no one i knew i think i was a lot more aggressive confident whatever like doing the improv and stuff i was always nervous as hell doing that

like around you guys oh we could tell same with like the acting and stuff like just super uncomfortable and whenever we had like the live audience it was like i had something else to distract me but like doing the warm-ups and stuff i was so uncomfortable doing it same with like acting and things like whenever we've done various either skits or heist or whatever have you if i'm like on my own or again just streaming in front of like a bunch of you know people that like i don't see every day or at least if you guys are there i don't always know where you're there whatever have you i can kind of pull that stuff off without worry. But for some reason, when there's like people I know there or watching or so have you,

I feel like my performance tanks and I just like am panicked about not doing well. Oddly specific, but it's one that's like just always been there. Yeah, I wonder why that would be like just to your friends. Is it like because you trust them or any of you, you would hate to be disappointed? It's kind of like the same as me. I don't care what any random stranger thinks of me. It works well for me being on youtube because i literally don't care like i can read any comment about this and it glosses right over me but if someone i trust like if you guys said something that was critical to my character i would take it to heart and i would be so like oh my god oh no they're right i am oh god so you know i i think it's similar it's like you don't want to let down

people you trust because it's all part of like the community thing like back in the survival days of humanity like being ostracized from your community was a death sentence pretty much if you did like because humans lived as groups from very early on and like relied on each other so if you if you were kicked out of the group man that ain't that ain't good you. Whereas today, you know, society has a bunch of safety nets. And, you know, if you're... It's like, please kick me out. Well, I mean, maybe not quite like that, but... Kick me.

Oh, yeah. Right in the ass. Come on. Kick my ass. Kick me out. Come on. Kick me. I guess it's the opposite of a fear, a fetish.

Yes. 100%. Is that true? Yeah. It's gotta be, right yeah there's no middle ground you either fear something or you fetishize it i know right yeah that's how humans conquer their fear i just that's what the opposite was don't kick me out kick me out i want you to kick me sharks if i'm scared of sharks someone loves sharks someone thinks sharks are sexy that illegal. Don't think sharks are sexy. Don't even think about it.

It's illegal. But I hate the ocean. Someone wants to fuck the ocean. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, yeah. The unknown. I'd bang the unknown.

I don't care what it is. If I don't know it, I want it. I mean, 100%. There's got to be people out there who are nodding their head right now listening to this podcast. Like, oh, yeah, the unknown. I will destroy the sun to get to the darkness. I want darkness all the time.

What about that fear of opening the eyes of someone who fucking loves open eyes? They take naps just so they can wake up an orgasm. Constantly sleep deprived. They have insomnia because every time they lay down and go to bed they close their eyes and their brain is just like open them look at stuff come on perceive reality oh man yeah jesus that would be nice uh maybe that'd be terrible i think a too strong of a fear or too strong of a fetish is both of those is probably rough fetish of public speaking like because well because thing is satiating it right if you have too strong of a fear satiating what that fear inspires means you're avoiding things you're not doing things you're you know

you're not going outside or whatever whatever the fear is satiating a fetish is equally problematic if the fetish is you know not socially acceptable in any way yeah or public or requires you know other people to participate or something like there's nothing wrong with satiating a fetish as long as it's safe and legal but people are judgy man people are judgy bitches there are definitely people that have a fetish of public speaking because of attention but i just imagine you you know, you like Abraham Lincoln was like four score and seven People like afraid of the doctor like people finish that they're like, hey doc. Do I need a booster shot? I'm here for my dental cleaning. Yeah. no i don't need anesthetic i want to feel

what if you fetishize just like having a workaday life you fetishize just being like the normal average person yeah no it's friday no the weekend you go to your job monday morning at a mid-level you know job where they don't pay you enough and you get overworked and you get into your shitty little cubicle and you sit down in your crooked chair and you're just like oh god i'm back let me start typing these reports that nobody reads. Fuck. Oh, it's tax season. Oh, thank God.

Hit me, Mr. IRS man. Your fetish is getting audited by the IRS. You just commit tax fraud constantly. Like, come on, catch it. Check that shit. I clearly lied. I mean, there's people that like uh what's the condition called when you uh want to be doctored like you uh you you you fake illnesses and stuff like that it's not a sexual thing it's just like um um that's i know this being a hypochondriac like

whenever you're faking yeah there's a there's a another thing for the Munchausen syndrome. Oh, yeah. Is a mental disorder in which a person fakes illnesses. They lie about symptoms, make themselves appear sick. I mean, it's not so much a hypochondriac who thinks they're sick all the time. It's someone who intentionally lies because they want to get, you know, the care and like the be in a hospital and like be worried about and stuff like that. It's not very common, but I know it's a thing i've seen it on tv there's an episode of gray's anatomy

where i'm pretty sure a lady takes a supplement of some sort to cause specific symptoms to get diagnosed with a very serious illness it's very dramatic and tv is always right so it was an episode of house the same way except like the twist was the Munchausen patient also had like super, super lupus or something like that. Like it was actually horrifically ill and they had to face the realities of actually being sick. Not as fun when you're really sick. Why does House always get like the exploding pancreas patients? Just the super cancers. House is such a good show.

I loved House. I love House. I always remember House in like the Family guy character of him though yeah where he just i forget the context of the joke but he just shows up on screen he's like get that rule book out of here i don't follow anybody's rules not even my own then he just leaves that's house it's entirely house yeah pretty much also the pills don't forget the pills and the leg in the cane god that guy loved drugs god he loved drugs man you know he's english yeah oh yeah hugh lorry yeah have you ever seen hugh lorry in um black adder black he's like old like 90s english right he's like he's like the servant to like the snotty prince yeah it's so funny to think of house

as that character on black adder but he's because he worked with stephen fry a lot laurie's like an actual actor yeah he did yeah no it's it's great they're like shakespeare shit like real acting also house also house but before we go off on too much of a tangent about house i guess i'll bring us back in good show though good show great show this is a fun episode i enjoyed talking about fears and i guess fetishes there at the end that's the name of the episode fears and fetishes it's gotta be the fetishes are all crammed into the final five minutes hey they're in there just just like wade's prompt at the beginning you know you only have so much time to consider it and it's right at the end but we consider it there the whole time that's fears and fetishes all right tallying up the points mark you lost a lot of points so bob wins yeah math i love math that's how i did the math the fear of math comes back to haunt mark not bob

today oh god i shouldn't have bad-mouthed you you sack of shit you should not have didn't you say you were really mad at him at the beginning what are you mad about mark what are you so mad about no i wasn't was i mad at him was i mad yeah you were like i'm more mad at you right now that i'm letting on but i'm gonna save it right because you didn't listen to the episodes before they came out and now i'm back i would have forgotten about it now i completely remember no no it's back yeah well you lost anyway so let it out you know now i can be mad about it yeah let it out you want to give a loser speech about you i do listen pal listen okay sure the quality of this podcast entirely rides on your ability to listen to it beforehand and give notes so give

notes and there you go i think we know what the quality will be if it depends on that that was a mistake in the design of the show. It's not the design of the show. It's the design of anything. Any creative project. Well, that's a mistake of the design of any project. I love the idea that Wade finally starts listening to the episodes before they go live. And he just keeps sending a message to the editor.

Wade's message this week is needs more clown horns. That's it. That's Wade's one note oh thanks now this episode needs the sound of like a scurrying spider a slithering snake or a sloppy dildo for the fetish part i guess i don't know what does a sloppy dildo sound like oh don't act like you don't know what that sounds like those words left his lips and my brain was like ew i know that sound we all know that sound we live that sound how do you know that sound what is that sound it's literally a dildo dipped in sloppy joe mix and then flopped around on a glass surface so that the slops and slips are very audible. And it's mic'd close.

It's mic'd close. ASMR mic. Way too close. It's really hot. It's hot. You get every little slurp and slip and glurp and everything. Uh-huh. I love those. There is an alternative sloppy dildo sound

where you still dip it in the sloppy joe, but then you grab a stringed instrument and you treat it like a guitar pick and you flop it around the stringed instrument to play music. That poor, poor instrument. Oh, man. Or that lucky instrument, depending on if it's a fear or a fetish. Bob, you're our winner today.

Congrats. You get to host next week. Yeah, I earned it. Thank you, Mark and Bob, for joining. I'm Wade. You can find my friends at, you know, Facebook.com slash MySkirm, YouTube.com slash MarkiplierGame, Twitch.com slash mysqr, youtube.com slash markipliergame, twitch.tv minion777, or youtube lord minion777. Find our podcast on all of the different downloadable podcast sites, probably.

Stay tuned for whatever comes next on Distractible, and I guess we'll see if whatever Bob wants to talk about next week. Until then, PODCASTS OUT.