And every day, I still have to prove to the world that it is real.
There is nothing I would love more than a quick ride in the elevator without heart palpitations.
It is a real issue.
It's hard when people crap on that.
Redditor nitin_is_me wanted to hear about everyone's "invisible" fears, so they asked:
"What 'rare' phobia do you have, and people refuse to believe it?"
"You would never catch me swimming with dolphins. Too smart, too smooth, too many teeth."
- bubbarae91
accurate GIF Giphy
"Not me, but I had a friend who is afraid of inflated party balloons, which I learned about the hard way."
"One time for my birthday, my GF at the time had arranged for my housemate to let her in 2 friends and they spent a few hours blowing up balloons and filling my bedroom. The next day, my neighbor (the friend in question) asked me about the surprise my friends left in my bedroom, and told her to go check."
"She screamed and ran back home crying, which I did find odd. Wasn't until an hour later that her bf called me a c*nt for making her go into a balloon filled room. Only after I looked very confused did he ask if I knew about her phobia. I did not."
- uitSCHOT
"I don't see mine yet. I have a fear of tall staircases with spaces between the steps or winding stairs where you can look over the rail and see straight down. It's not heights. It's stairs. Any stairs where you can see through them? So there's a tower in this state park we go to where you can see through the slats the whole way up, and I can't do it. Or I'll force myself to and then can't get down."
- Hedgehog_Insomniac
"My brother is terrified of butterflies. He says it's something about the way they move. He found out when we went through a butterfly house at a theme park. They wouldn't let him go back out the entrance, so he was army crawling and sobbing through the whole place. It's super irrational. He's shoved his girlfriend into the street to get away from them, and he'll jerk his car out of the way."
- dumplingdoodoo
"I’ve had bouts of casadastraphobia, which is an irrational fear of falling into the sky, especially at night. It’s worse if I’m lying on my back. Yeah, I know it’s impossible, but it’s very similar to the fear of vertigo if you were to look down off of a tall building. It sucks."
- Killybug
"I have this. I didn't know there was a name for it. It was worse when I was a kid, and worse walking through an open area like a sports field where there were no other objects around me, especially on a clear day with no clouds in the sky. I can remember as a kid, I'd have to stop and touch the ground when I was walking through an open space. Weird feeling, like I'm about to fall upwards."
- Lace000
"Large human statues like the Statue of Liberty. It's a form of megalophobia. I can't even look at photos of them and not enjoying writing this.
- Roots_Manuka
Statue Of Liberty Rave GIF Giphy
"I knew this guy in high school who was absolutely jacked for the time and had some weird phobia of cotton balls. He ended up telling a friend somehow, and then he got pranked by people stuffing a bunch into his locker. When he opened it, he freaked out super bad, and it was a bit crazy to see. After he was done freaking out he got super pissed and wanted to fight his friends who did it. It was very unexpected to see."
- Lakiteflor
"Hair. I know it’s insane. I’m disgusted and so freaked out by hair that’s not attached to someone. I can’t touch my own hair out of the drain without some layers of paper towels. A pube or a leg hair in the bathroom from my husband makes me want to puke. Random hair in a public sink? I’ll have nightmares about it that night."
"Edit to add: what a revelation and relief to find out I’m not the only weirdo who would genuinely scream and puke if someone touched me with a random hair off a chair or something 🥹🤣."
- macaron1ncheese
"Mine is arachnophobia, which isn't rare, but I believe it's much rarer than people claim. Most people claiming arachnophobia simply don't like spiders, or worry about their bite, or slightly fear them."
"I am truly phobic. There's no logic or reason. I am not scared of bites, even tho I grew up knowing multiple people who lost large amounts of tissue from brown recluses, & black widow bites are VERY common."
"The only thing I fear regarding the bits is the fact they'd be TOUCHING ME."
"And I actually try to avoid saying anything about it, b/c people think I don't like the creepy crawlers & so they WILL purposely put a daddy longlegs or harmless house spider on me as a joke."
"But I've been trapped in a room, helpless & crying, because a spider is between me and the door. I want to throw up when I see a larger one."
"And the hypervigilance means I see so many more spiders than other people. I'm constantly terrorized."
"I envy rare or even most others. You can easily avoid most fears like heights, clowns, drowning, etc. Other creature fears, like snakes, are rare. Spiders? I know exactly where the 5 are in my home right now. 🥺."
- ScribbleMuse
"Lumps. If there's a lump in food that's not supposed to be there (eg, lump in custard), I have an involuntary reaction where I spew whatever's in my mouth, with ungodly force. I don't think about it; it just happens.
"It's led to very embarrassing situations. Now I do my best just to avoid those potential landmines. Funnily enough, if the food is supposed to have lumps in it, then I'm fine. So I'm fine with sago pudding - as long as the sago hasn't clumped together into a bigger congelation."
- RonanH69
"Anything man-made in water. I can’t go to a swimming pool because of drains, ladders, those floating things that separate lanes, etc. I wouldn’t go in the water near a pier or bridge, or a boat. Even if someone put a plastic chair in a pool, I would get panicked."
- Jadeinda
Water Swimming GIF by America's Funniest Home Videos Giphy
"I can't deal with anything eye-related. I can't use contacts or put in eye drops. I have to look away if others are doing it. Even watching my girlfriend put on make-up gets me."
"I can watch gory horror scenes, but when the second eyes are involved, I'm a total baby."
- Pissed_With_A_Boner
"I fear that at any moment, a space disaster could happen without warning. Like the sun exploding out of nowhere, Earth stops spinning all of a sudden, Earth colliding with another planet or an asteroid, killing me or something."
- Dunder6002
"If it makes you feel better (the asteroid part), Jupiter’s gravitational field affects us in a way that it actually averts most if not all asteroids that head our way :) Jupiter is like our protector in a way!"
- urlessies
"Talking into phones, radios, speakers, etc. Idk what it is, it seemed to just develop around the age of 18, where I would burst into tears if a phone was ringing and nobody immediately answered it. Through constant exposure, I’ve managed to mostly get over it, I still feel uncomfortable and stressed, but I can deal with it now. I always keep my phone on silent, though."
"My Uncle has a phobia of buttons. Like, he could never wear a shirt with buttons because it just repulsed him."
- Sajiri
"Bellybuttons. Seeing one isn't a problem, but seeing one being touched... I'm really not comfortable even writing this."
- MicroCosno
"My brother was watching The Matrix when I was pretty little, and all I remember seeing is the bug in the belly button scene. They’ve freaked me out ever since."
- annoying-sl*t
tummy GIF Giphy
Oh, bellybittons are weird.
They freak me out as well.
And don't get me started about eye drops.
Stay away from my eyes!
And my teeth.
I'm just going to stay at home alone.
This thread is freaking me out.
"I've been way more offline lately, tried all the apps for a bit yesterday and man! It's rly dark on here!"
"I think it's very unhealthy to be on social media, it feels like a ghost town of depression, bitterness and pictures of beautiful women doing [sexy] things."
"I feel like this is a massive moral failure of all the apps. And it's causing great harm to society."
Her high level of activity—posting on X a dozen times on May 7 alone—continued for most of April and the first week of May, but then fell off dramatically, ending with only a few posts for the rest of May and the entire month of June. The Canadian musician and artist dropped in occasionally to share performance scheduling news or to promote a book.
During one brief stay on X in June, she finished up by stating:
"I must go back offline for cognitive security reasons."
"I will be back when the art is ready, but I will be bringing the cognitive security agents with me to clean this place up."
Boucher checked in again on July 7 and had a much harsher assessment for the platform owned by her on again, off again partner Elon Musk. The two share three of Musk's 14 children: 5-year-old X Æ A-Xii, 3 1/2-year-old Exa Dark Sideræl, and 3-year-old Techno Mechanicus.
She wrote:
"Ok I've basically been entirely off social media and returning here it is overwhelmingly abundantly and profoundly clear that this place - and all of these places - are a poison - a prison of utterly short form deep sounding nonsense attached to no one that ur brain will discard imaging its learning."
"The entire thing is a theatre. A sh*tty pale simulacra of a life."
People saw no lie in her assessment of the state of X under Musk's management even if they weren't sympathetic.
@AspexPhoto/X
@Jesusarmy/X
Boucher didn't elaborate on what specifically—if anything—prompted her post.
But she has been a very vocal proponent of AI as a tool for advancement. Her post calling out X came as Musk was under fire for having his employees manipulate the programming of X's generative artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to be more antisemitic.
Musk had previously garnered criticism for having his programmers make Grok push misinformation about a non-existent white genocide in South Africa.
Such manipulations negate the purpose and validity of generative AI, a type that learns from its environment and creates new content—text, images, audio, video—based on user prompts.
For example, search engine AI analyzes and categorizes existing data and reports its findings to the user. Generative AI models learn from vast amounts of data to "generate novel outputs."
Inserting biases or misinformation to promote a specific agenda, as Musk has done repeatedly, corrupts this process.
Boucher has aired disagreements with Musk on X before.
Musk suddenly began bringing their oldest child with him—on his shoulders—to all public appearances in the aftermath of the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. It was a move that prompted many to label her son Musk's "human shield"—especially given his history of neglecting, ignoring, abandoning, or disowning his other 13 children.
Boucher shared her dismay over the move on X, posting:
"He should not be in public like this. I have tried begging the public and my kid's dad to keep them offline, and I've tried legal recourse."
"The state of my children's lives being public is of grave concern to me and I think about how to solve this every day. It's insane to me that there's no way to deal with this."
"I would hope there was some law that would allow a parent to veto small children from living public lives but I don't even trust the law to help me now if I tried to invoke it [to be honest]."
After it became clear the murder was an isolated incident and not an indication of an open season on financially-bloated CEOs, Musk's constant companion was dropped like his 13 other siblings.
