this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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Phobias are by their nature irrational, some level of personal responsibility falls on you to protect yourself when going online.
Dafuck are you talking about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNR8hedwo_M
Yes, and I practice that but that's not universal and there are many instances where that doesn't work.
And I'd argue: why are we including blown-up, close-up, screen-wide images to posts of interest about programming when the image is completely unrelated? Articles about Python are especially egregious.
I ask precisely because it's out of my control.
Heres the thing: we don't just know about your phobia. First im hearing of it. I still dont know for sure what it is. I can't adapt to that.
And since phobias are definitionally irrational, i cant just logic it out. I literally can't even try to accommodate you unless you ask and explain. If you can't do that, i don't think you can socialize.
And some of my irrational triggers aren't bad things, i don't ask people to accommodate them, because the world needs more of those things; i just cant with them. I handle it on my end.
Yes, unfortunately, you're reading the consequence of me having already advocated for this sort of thing with people being less than friendly, and now me bitching about it and getting my ass handed to me.
Anyway, the only thing I'm asking for is not to include huge pictures of common phobias. You know, a small subset of animals and obvious themes like evil clowns in places where they don't belong. So that's three fair qualifiers:
This is a fair request, and I'm not asking for anything else. If you consider this scenario, I don't think I'm asking for anything unreasonable. I can handle everything else.
Tell you what: I'll be considerate if you try to get at the roots of it and figure out what drives it and how to maybe heal at least partway, maybe cope when i fuck up.
Or do you take offense at that?
I feel this way about artworks/memes depicting, real or drawn, infantilized and/or oversexualized women.
Though it's not a phobia but a severe adversion to the material to a point it can ruin my day, it is my responsibility to block the stuff from my view. If it becomes overwhelming, I disappear from online spaces entirely until I'm ready to try again. That's my responsibility to handle my emotions and how I react to things.
If a person has a phobia to spiders, can we logically get rid of all spiders? Of course not, same thing here. Block buttons are meant to be utilized.
A lot of the internet is just serving heaps of content in which no one asks if you want to see, before it shoves itself in your face. That's the nature of scrolling vs intentional use.
People can be mean, I hope I'm not coming off mean here, I'm not trying to.
Yup, and now add to that the jumpscare, the heart racing with the palpitations, the strong headache, the mood change, and the subsequent stress. If it were just "oh, I'm just not going to think about this," it'd be great, but there's a visceral physical reaction on top of the emotional one that no doubt includes stress hormones. I'm entering fight-or-flight for a split second, and not an ethical dilemma.
This conversation always comes back to this every time I bring it up, which is why I included so many hyphenated adjectives trying to be specific. I'm saying, why are we including huge pictures that take up the entire screen when they aren't necessary and contribute nothing to the post? Small images are fine and I can manage, but these are 1200x900 pixel images to give a rough estimate. I've been flashed with 1920x1080 pictures of a snake in videos about Python when it wasn't necessary and was completely unrelated to the topic. I don't have a button for that.
Here's the last image I had to block from a post about Python to give you a better idea:
Warning: close-up of a snake that's probably not even a python.
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d1038c9e-5089-4917-86c1-711b07fb39b4.jpeg
And yes, I do actively use uBlock Origin's element picker on desktop but its behavior is not consistent and it doesn't exist on mobile apps for Lemmy either. I have to maneuver around this in the most impractical way, exposing me to this for far longer than I'd like. If I could manage, I wouldn't say anything for getting so much backlash, tbh.
Same here! No worries. I hope I'm not coming off as angry in trying to express the frustration behind this. :)