A Halloween look at Mac fears and phobias

Posted by Dennis Sellers Oct 31, 2006 at 3:03am

Happy Halloween. On this day of trick or treating, I thought I’d talk about some common fears and phobias, as well as some pretty weird ones. I’ll also be introducing some new phobia definitions for Mac users, as determined by the Macsimum News gang.

Did you know the greatest fear, as determined by most studies, is the fear of public speaking? That rates higher than other common fears such as death (yep, more people are afraid of public speaking than dying!), gaining weight, taking tests, closed-in spaces, the dark, spiders and insects, swimming in the ocean, high places and dating.

Remember when you were a child and suffered from clinophobia (fear of going to bed) because of bogyphobia (fear of the bogeyman)? Or perhaps, as a child, you suffered from lachanophobia (fear of vegetables), something my 21-year-old son, Matt, still seems to have. When it comes to unusual fears, there’s Chaetophobia (fear of hair); Ophthalmophobia (fear of opening one’s eyes), Peladophobia (fear of bald people), Verbophobia (fear of words) and, ironically, Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (the fear of long words). And imagine what would happen if a Chaetophobe and a Peladophobe met? The ensuing tragedy would be enough to make you pull your hair out.

In the interest of scientific research and the advancement of psychoanalysis, Yours Truly and the rest of the MN crew have developed a list Mac specific fears. They include:

° Dvorakphobia, the fear of baseless Mac-bashing columns;

° Analanalysisphobia, a fear of reports of the Apple’s demise;

° Steveleavegrievephrenia, a fear that Steve Jobs will leave the company;

° FauxLemminginia, the fear of others learning that you use a Mac;

° RTFMophobia, a fear of reading manuals (subcategory: Indexia, the fear of searching for an answer in a manual);

° Macsectomitis, a fear of opening up your Mac;

° Terminal Terror, a fear of command lines and the Terminal utlity;

° Lamegameophobia, the fear that new games ported from Windows to Macs will stink;

° Realitydistortionatonia, the inability to return to the real world after being exposed to Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field.

° dayafterigotmymacthenewonecomesoutaphobia—the dreaded and paralyzing fear that, no matter how long you wait to buy your new Mac, there will be a newer version released just over the 14-day return mark. There’s no treatment for this emotional disorder unless you pre-order on the day new hardware is announced and can deal with the fact that it will recur once your shipment arrives.

Would you like to contribute to our list? If so send your Mac fears and phobias to daseller@earthlink.net

We’ll present the best ones on this week’s Video Sandbox vodcast.

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