Comment on If you know, you know

• dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Horror is subjective.

  I couldn’t get into this one personally, because there are all sorts of inventions and ways we could do that would explore the holes without ya know… jumping into them?

  Like, I dunno, throw a cell phone camera in there and see where it goes?

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  • Reygle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    But the scariest part of this story isn’t the holes, it’s the irresistible urge to go in…

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    • noqturn@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yea, it’s the fact that it seems impossible to resist. Yes, there are better ways than described to check out the holes, but it doesn’t ruin the story for me. I get those impulsive thoughts to jump off of cliffs or drive off roads so this story is the fear of following those thoughts.

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      • demlet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It’s a very sad story actually, which I don’t think gets discussed much. All the characters who go in seem accutely isolated and lonely. That feeling of isolation from the world, if you’ve ever felt it, well, the story resonates. The characters literally only fit in to their own little place, completely separated from the rest of the world. There’s literally no room for anyone or anything else. But what comes out of living like that in the end? Well, it’s not pretty.

        It’s an examination of modern life and hyper-individualism.

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      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Those impulses are so common the French have a lyrical term for it:

        The call of the void.

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      • seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yeah, that’s the first thing I thought of, too. It’s called l’appel du vide (“call of the void” in French).

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      • DrQuint@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I love that Junji Ito has a bunch of stories that are metaphors for stuff like this. This one. Snail Girl being the same allegory as Metamorphosis. The tall actress being about the anxiety you feel when you know a coworker might ruin the business but everyone else seems to not care. The woman in the window and the window creeping closer is one of the ones most on the nose.

        But then he also has the hot spring to hell which is literally “stupid man experiences stupid horror”. He just felt like making cheap horror that month, lol.

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    • dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      it’s the irresistible urge to go in

      Psychology doesn’t work like that though… and there’s some really messed up crap in real world Psychology that’s horrific enough. No need to make something up.

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      • hi_im_FitcH@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It’s not about how psychology works, it’s the unknown pull to go in. AFAIK our physiology doesn’t turn us into weird gangly monsters if you put pressure on our neck and limbs, but you don’t seem to have a problem suspending your disbelief in that way, at least not in any way you mentioned. I think the urge to enter the holes is framed as almost supernaturally strong. Maybe it was written with a basis in the idea of intrusive thoughts, but its more like a cognitohazard that enters your mind when you see “your” hole that compels people to climb inside. I find the horror comes more from the idea that you might find a hole that you become convinced is yours and would travel all the way there just to enter. (And then the claustrophobic darkness too)

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      • solivine@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Suppose it’s magical and not scientific then

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      • Triyfer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Consider this, then. We understand how psychology works and why this situation is complety outside of any realm of possibility. Yet it is happening anyway. Consider that there is something out there, something external, something unknown, that we aren’t even aware of yet that can have an effect on the human brain beyond the scope of our understanding or capabilities.

        D&D has mindflayers that command a powerful control of the psyche. In that world, it is a logical reason for unusual or impossible behaviors. Harry Potter has the imperious curse as a logical way to accomplish something similar. These don’t work in the real world and we have no real world equivalent.

        But, the things in those worlds weren’t always known about. There had to have been a period of discovery. Same with our reality. There have been many things we never knew we never knew until they were discovered. Applying logic to these situations with the knowledge of the time made it harder to understand or take seriously because we didn’t have a concept yet for what it was. Yet it was there.

        The fault represents that unknown both in knowledge as well as understanding. It isn’t meant to be taken literally as “This thing can cause supernatural brain control.” Rather, it is playing on that concept of discovery of the unknown. The hole we as humans must dive into to understand the world around us. The comic doesn’t reveal the reason for it. But isn’t that the very nature of exploring the unknown? We are driven to it to fulfill a need.

        Sure, it could be that there is an unknown “thing” the comic never reveals, something left to our imagination to fill in the blanks which can often be a lot scarier than anything we can come up with. But it is stirring those thoughts of curiousity to find the reason, the source. The hole is considered “my hole” not because it was made for us, but because that is our personal passion, our special interest, our allure for discovery.

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      • doomer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        If you find a hole hidden under geological eras, and it was made just for you and you knew it… you wouldn’t feel tempted at all to just… take a step in… a unique hole unlike any other in the world, this one welcoming you like your own shadow with its depths… and confirm that someone really did carve out your exact silhouette?

        It’s certainly something I could imagine happening in a dream. Like my recurring dream of driving off of bridges.

        There is a Buddhist element of reincarnation going on which might be lost on some foreign audiences, but the feeling it is trying to summon should be familiar - a strange familiarity of something that should be unknown to you, an inexplicable intuition, something that feels like it could be from a past life, a premonition, deja vu.

        If none of this is relatable to you, that’s okay, but it is relatable to myself and many others. Hopefully you don’t have recurring dreams about driving off of bridges, either.

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  • atomicorange@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think this one rings true to a lot of people who struggle with intrusive thoughts. It’s not about logic, it’s about that weird urge to do the worst possible thing. You get the urge to climb in because it’s scary. So scary you can’t focus on anything else. But maybe if you just did it, at least you could stop worrying about it.

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    • dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If people’s minds were so weak to give into intrusive thoughts, I’d have committed suicide maybe a year or two into my intrusive thoughts.

      As I said before: what happens in this comic is unrealistic. People who struggle with undiagnosed depression can (and do), survive for years despite thinking about killing themselves every day, every hour, for years.

      I know. I went through this. You don’t just “give up” randomly, though the feeling does wear you down and make you anxious over time.

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      • atomicorange@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I totally agree, intrusive thoughts aren’t often acted upon.

        I think the story is trying to capture what it feels like to have intrusive thoughts, how horrifying they can be, and is maybe a way for the artist to work through the idea of “what if those thoughts became so bad - through some supernatural mechanism - that we all succumbed to them?” It’s not meant to be realistic, but just to capture and communicate that feeling of dread combined with compulsion.

        It’s kind of similar to Lovecraft’s way of telling stories. He tells you about horrifying and incomprehensible actions taken by regular people and gives some hints about their motivation. But he can’t really convey the full experience of cosmic horror so he leaves you to fill in the blanks. Some people are really affected by it, and for some it’s just too vague and speculative.

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