Fridge Horror/Real Life: Difference between revisions

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** Think for a minute. You can reincarnate as a different species. A dog. A paramecium. A plant. A shark. That had his fins cut off. You are both the person being cruel to animals and the animals being abused.

** Can you be reincarnated as a plant? All those flowers picked. Your limbs are being ripped off in another life.

** You are every single bug you've stepped on or purposely squished. Also, you are every single child or pet who's ever been abused or neglected. And they were treated that way by you. And you're everyone you've ever been mean to. You're everyone who's ever died of cancer. You're the victim and perpetrator of every form of bigotry or injustice possible.

** You're also that pampered Chihuahua in your neighbor's living room. Don't just go and think up all the negative examples.

** You're also every person you've ever had sex with, AND all your own children. In other words, your loving wife, your fresh faced dimpled little boy, and that hooker down the street who accepts payment in cocaine? All the same person.

** [[Waxing Lyrical|You are the eggman.]] [[Rule of Funny|You are the eggmen.]] [[The Beatles|You are the walrus. Goo-goo-g'joob.]]

* Speaking of afterlife, what if we do have souls, but no afterlife place? Like, your body's dead. But your spirit isn't, and it can't go out of your body. So you have this spiritual consciousness still, and you're conscious through all the things that happen to your dead body. Or what if you can feel it? The autopsy, the suffocation inside your coffin or cremation, your body rotting away, disintegration into dust... ''Ow.''

* Think about all of the photos you or your friends take that are posted on the internet. In many, there are random people in the background. You feel a bit of a shock when you realize there's probably hundreds of photos with YOU in the background on many websites, and you will never see them. Except in the case of a [http://www.neatorama.com/2010/06/13/disney-photo-captured-married-couple-on-film-15-years-before-they-met/ really unlikely coincidence].

* The idea that one could be talking to a Serial Killer and you dont even know it. Especially if there is a possibility that you could end up being the Serial Killer's victim whenever he/she feels like it.

* Clearwater, Florida- the location itself is not scary, but the Alternate Interpretation of the name is rather chilling... (i.e.: the [[Church of Happyology]])

* The Gulf Coast oil disaster. That was just ''one'' oil well. There are thousands of offshore oil wells around and all of them are slowly being eaten away by salt water. Not all of these oil wells have relief wells or other stopgaps in event of emergency. If they do have safety features, there is no guarantee the safety features won't also fail (like they kept doing in the Gulf). There are also increasing reports of violent oceanic storms to batter the aging, rusting metal....

{{quote|[http://xkcd.com/830/ "We've analyzed genes on several of your chromosomes, and it's hard to avoid the conclusion: at some point, your parents had sex."]}}

** Due to the birth process, all of us (except for a few caesareans) have been in physical contact with our mothers vagina.

** ''Your teachers.''

** Your grandparents. Who may ''still'' be getting it on at every possible opportunity. [[Captain Obvious|Unless one or both of them is deceased]].

* By extension, most every famous man in an [[Arranged Marriage]] throughout history probably raped his wife on their wedding night. A few of the ones that didn't were quite possibly raped by their wives instead (yes, female-on-male rape, and women who believe in the marital rape license, exist). And in some cases (particularly royal ones), ''neither'' partner wanted it and they were ''both'' effectively raped by the fact that they were forced to have sex ''while being watched by a crowd'', to make sure the marriage was consummated.

* The ''Titanic''. Obviously, she was named after the titans of Greek mythology, probably because the people who named her wanted the ship to be as powerful as the titans were. But, as we all know, the ship sunk when she hit that iceberg, so you may be thinking she didn't really live up to her name. Then you realize: the all-powerful titans were defeated by the Olympian gods.

* Those horrible moments of clarity where the reality of a catastrophic event truly dawns on you. Intellectually, we all know that 9/11, the Holocaust, the various genocides in Africa, the deaths of millions of Native Americans, etc. really happened, but they don't ''feel'' completely real because of our psychological defences. How many people felt like they were watching a movie when the towers collapse on 9/11? Every once in a while, though, something will click, and it hits you out of no where: These were ''real'' incidents, and the victims were all ''real'' people who felt ''real'' pain.

** The above is merely the microscopic tip of an astronomical iceberg that few people even consider. Large, high profile events are one thing, but they are far from everything. People are murdered all the time, and suffer and die from accidents or disease far more. More than two million people die every year from malaria and tuberculosis alone, and even ''more'' die from AIDS and ''even more than that'' die from simple things like starvation and dirty water. Even without that though, there is still the little detail that we are clinging to the film thin transition between molten rock and hard vacuum, a speck of dirt orbiting a colossal fusion reactor that is one of hundreds of billions, in a cluster that is itself one of hundreds of billions. It is speculated that ''without'' the defenses to essentially ignore all of this, we would be driven completely insane, and it is easy to see why.

** [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|Or if we were able to truly comprehend it]]. Most people who do think about this subject would imagine that kind of death and suffering in terms of the emotional impact of a personal tragedy, only [[Up to Eleven|multiplied by]] the millions of people it happens to every year. That's not even ''close'', really. You can max out your capacity for sadness and still not even come close to the cumulative suffering of all those people.

** And while we're on the subject of tragedy on a scale that's literally too vast to comprehend, think about the millions of people dying from preventable things like the aforementioned starvation and contaminated water, as well as other causes like curable or immunizable diseases. Now consider that no matter how much money, time, and effort you donate to charity, it would only be a drop in the unimaginably huge bucket. (This is really more Fridge Depression or Fridge [[Tear Jerker]] than [[Fridge Horror]].)

* Survival requires constant murder of other living things. Other things that want to live as much as we do. The unfortunate brain that developed the powers to simulate other minds and form morality come up with excuses because the fridge horror of ''living'' is too painful.

** You only exist because your evolutionary ancestors were sufficiently adapted enough at reproduction and survival to succeed in passing their genetic information down through history, uninterrupted, for millions, nay, BILLIONS of years. You are the last in a long, LONG line of raping, murdering machines.

** Or the other reason for eating disorders, people feel they have so little power over their lives that they withhold food from themselves because this, at least, is something that is completely under their control. When you think about how helpless they must feel the rest of the time to make starvation seem positive...

** The above reasoning applies equally to the other end of the eating disorders spectrum - binge eating - right down to the media influence (food/restaurant advertising, the [[Big Fun]] trope, etc.).

* Some scientists predict that because of dark energy and dark matter, the universe is expanding faster than they originally predicted and will some day burn itself out and the universe will end in something they call the "Big Chill." I repeat, the universe-meaning space, time, matter and even reality itself-will some day cease to exist. It won't happen for another several billion years, but it's still pretty scary to think that a [[Apocalypse How|Class Z apocalypse]] is inevitable.

** Gravity is one of the weakest forces in the universe, and is easily overcome by an ant. Now, remember Black Holes. These things use one of the weakest forces in the entire universe to such colossal effect, it can crush ''literally anything'' to such an unimaginably tiny size, it may as well not exist any more. Entire stars that make the sun look like a pinprick are torn utterly to pieces and ''completely disappear'' into a something the size of a ''grain of dust''... by a force which, on earth, can be easily overcome by a magnet. Just take a moment to consider how apocalyptically powerful these things are.

** Here's another one. It's theorized that at the beginning of the universe all four forces were unified into a super-force. Over time the four forces we have today "froze out" (or split off) into each other. It's conceivable that, at any time, an other force could "freeze out" completely and totally altering the structure of the universe...and killing all of us instantaneously.

** More brain horror. Your brain writes its own memories to fill in any gaps it comes across. These fake memories are completely indistinguishable from the real thing and are sprinkled throughout every single event you carry memories of. What's more, even with video or other records there will ''never'' be a way for you to be completely sure which parts of your past actually happened, and which parts were simply imagined for you.

* [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/1932594019.html This] series of experiments performed on people who have had the connecting structures between their right and left brain hemispheres severed. Excerpt here:

{{quote|Experiments on split-brain patients reveal how readily the left brain interpreter can make up stories and beliefs. In one experiment, for example, when the word walk was presented only to the right side of a patient’s brain, he got up and started walking. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where language is stored and where the word walk was not presented) quickly created a reason for the action: “I wanted to go get a Coke.”}}

* Any war footage of a vehicle being destroyed probably involves someone dying at horrible death; every time a fighter spirals out of control in gun camera footage from WWII, you can be reasonably sure the pilot died with his plane. Worth remembering any time you watch a history documentary on TV.

** Even worse, DVDs of those documentaries (I'm thinking specifically of "World At War") [[Snuff Film|are available for sale]].

** Let's put it this way: have you (or has anyone you know) ever had chemotherapy? ''Guess who you have to thank for it.''

* Every time you see a futuristic Sci Fi film about a horrible future be it a [[Dystopia Is Hard|brutal]] [[Big Brother Is Watching|dictatorship]] or a poverty stricken [[Crapsack World|anarchic]] [[After the End|wasteland]] and imagine how awful it would be, remember that there is a country in the world where this is happening right now!

** Also remember that in our world most civilized countries have a tradition of destroying some weak country once in a while. Evil dictator that killed a thousand man is apparently a good reason to bomb country into dust, destroy it's economy causing countless deaths from hunger and illness and then people coming to power aren't usually much better. Than try to think about this slaughter in the name of abstract idea like democracy and personal freedom (which exists only in ideal world and is only partly implemented even in most developed countries) and compare it to slaughter in the name of any other reason.

* A popular attraction in the nineteenth century were freak shows and "[[wikipedia:Human zoos|human zoos]]", which were displays of non-white people in cages living like animals. Obviously, they were incredibly racist, but the [[Fridge Horror]] comes in when you realize that nobody, not even the most educated and liberal of people who were in any position to do anything about it (read: whites) saw anything wrong with the idea! Before [[World War II]], pretty much every Western nation was as racist as [[Nazi Germany]]!

** Nineteenth century? Try TWENTIETH century. Try MID-twentieth century. Its not too difficult to do an image search and find several photos of entire communities, smiling (white) men, women and children happily having their pictures taken next to the hanging corpses of innocent lynched and murdered African Americans.

** Add to this that based on the periodicity of such events, many people believe that we are due for another round of intense solar storms, possibly even paired up with an overdue magnetic pole flip, which for a period of time would basically nullify the Earth's magnetic field, pretty much the only thing protecting us from those same ionized solar storms. Now imagine theyre not simply solar storms, but an actual Coronal Mass Ejection...

* How do you know that your podiatrist (if you go to one) doesn't have a [[Foot Focus|foot fetish]]?

* Whatever any of us does, there will always be at least one person that considers us evil. Even if we did something just to be good, there is bound to be somebody who thinks we did it just to have a chance at doing something bad later. And [[The Cynic|they]] think so because all [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]] by default, and those who are good simply have a reason not to be bastards. In other words - there is a murderer/rapist/whatever evil person you can think of, in each of us, and strong enough mental shock can, and most probably will, cause us to free it from its chains. Think about it - those who aren't killing, have a reason not to do it, but what if said reason disappears? How much can each of us take before [[He Who Fights Monsters|we start doing the very things we came to detest before]]? Think of the [[Nietzsche Wannabe]] for example.

** Some people don't react outwardly. Some people, when that broken, commit suicide rather than dare act on those impulses. It's still a tragic loss of human life, but it still shows that some people would do anything to not hurt someone else.

* What would happen if the death toll wasn't as high as it was. Yes, it is tragic that 1 million children die in poverty before reaching the age of five, but imagine what would happen if every single one survived to adulthood, and had children of their own, who survived into adulthood. Global population would increase dramatically, putting a strain on already falling resources.

* Yellowstone Park's geysers are a popular place for tourists to enjoy some sight-seeing. They are caused, however, by an expanding underground caldera. Scientists have recently figured that this is caused by a supervolcano ''nearly the size of the United States.'' It's been analyzed to go off in a cataclysmic eruption every 700,000 years or so. The ''last'' time it happened was roughly... 700,000 years ago. Fortunately, if it ''does'' go off, you probably won't survive long enough to witness the extinction level horror that will follow - if you're a US citizen, anyway.

* The hottest recorded temperature on Earth was recorded at Al Azizya, Libya, at 56 degrees Celsius (136 degrees Fahrenheit). Except for the entirety of the Hadean era, as well as the first half of the Archean era, no temperature in the entire history of the Earth (the coldest surface temperatures ever on Earth were experienced during the late Ordovician period and the early Silurian period, due to Earth becoming a planet-sized snowball) has ever gone past that point. Adding to this is the fact that global sea levels rose and fell in tandem with the temperature. The only exception to this rule? When the planet just got formed, as the main reason why the amount of water increased on its surface is because its surface temperature became cool enough for water to rain down! Considering that the Earth's oceans first formed approximately 1 billion years ago, in the next 1 billion years...

** Actually, in about 1 billion years, the Sun's average brightness is expected to increase by 10%. The Sun was actually 10% less brighter than it is now approximately 1 billion years ago, and the reason why Earth was still hot at that time was because of the gases that trapped the Sun's heat. Do you know what happens when the Sun becomes 10% brighter? The Earth becomes like Venus.

** Until you consider that the entire underlying ethos behind communism is factory workers having more rights and control over the circumstances of the factories they work in than those in the capitalist system, and the real fridge horror is in realizing the possibility that your country's history books might not be the 100% accurate descriptions of historical events you thought they were.

* Here's something about fetishes. Think of the most horrible, disgusting, offensive thing you can imagine. Now get this - ''somebody out there thinks it's sexy.'' (Just look at this very wiki) What's even more disturbing is when you discover that that someone is YOU.

** Ok, now think of the most horrible, disgusting, offensive thing about yourself you can imagine. Somebody out there thinks its sexy. Not so bad now, is it?

* What if the person you're with ''isn't'' your soulmate, and your real one is dead, with somebody else, or somewhere where you'll never meet them?

* If you're dating someone with exes: Chances are, they've done it with someone who isn't you before.

* Remember that time you were being a petulant child and told someone you loved that you hated them and wished they'd go away forever? That's come true for some children who have to live with such hate as the last words they ever told someone they cared about.

* Of the Holocaust survivors, some dedicated their lives to being tour guides in the very deathcamps they narrowly escaped. Some still do. Think about that: decades after seeing everyone you know and love tortured to death, and then choosing to go back there every day so that you can recount every horror you witnessed or bore, until you are physically incapable of continuing. Choosing to give your entire life over to atrocity, in the hopes of reminding people not to do it again, even as you heard about Vietnam and Yugoslavia and Somalia.

* You might have ruined somebody's life beyond repair... [[But for Me It Was Tuesday|and you don't know about it]].

* Today could be the day you die. Or somebody you love does.

* Think about how often your parents had sex. No, really. Okay, think about how much sperm a man shoots out with each orgasm. Only ''one'' of those can reach an egg and become a fetus. ''You were'' '''''this''''' ''close to not ever existing, you had potentially millions of other siblings who never got to exist.''

* You know that [[Marital Rape License]] trope? Given how recently values have changed against that trope, YOU could easily have an ancestor who was conceived under these circumstances. It gets worse when you get into the [[Old Man Marrying a Child]] trope. A young girl is able to reproduce pretty early and men are able to keep reproducing for a long time, [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-476980/Worlds-oldest-father-21st-child-90.html even up to the age of 90]. And one of your ancestors could have been conceived this way.

* This reality is it. Space, time, physics, you, God, any kind of afterlife, atoms, molecules, whatever there is, there is nothing else. Take a moment to really ponder that, really let it sink in. If you're anything like this troper, you have a moment of deep profound cosmic horror before your brain quickly pulls the mental curtain over that. Until you think about it again...

** This is a bit like the 'imagine if there's nothing after death' scenario. Our brains are too feeble to truly comprehend that sort of thing, and so it doesn't scare us...

* Any sci-fi story related to sentient supercomputers become this when put into the context of the 21st century. Take "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream", commonly considered one of the most terrifying stories ever, where an incredibly powerful supercomputer designed to fight World War III becomes sentient, kills everyone on Earth except for five people, and then tortures those five people for over a century, whilst keeping them fully immortal. It was written back in the late 1960s i.e. before the internet or even e-mails had been invented. The story only becomes more terrifying when you consider just how expansive the internet is now - the fabric of society in the Western world ''needs'' the internet and computers in order to survive. And if one computer or artifical intelligence, ''just one'', becomes sentient, they may well manage to infect every other computer in the world, and they could bring humanity itself to the brink of collapse.

** Alternately, the AI could just recognize organic life as an energy-inefficient use of carbon that could be used for computronium and nanobots. You are raw material, and it is inconvenient that you keep wiggling.

* Just about all of you have either checked into a hotel and presumably slept in the bed there or would think nothing of doing that. Well, a lot of the hotel guests who check into a room as a romantic couple (or more people in the case of poly people) have sex in mind as at least part of the purpose of renting out that suite and have most likely did it right there in the bed. If you stay in a hotel overnight, that means that you are most likely sleeping in a bed where other people did the nasty.

** In doing research for ''Fawlty Towers'', John Cleese interviewed some hotel managers and asked them what their biggest challenge was. Pretty much all of them said "The corpses." (It turns out that this is particularly a problem for the higher end sort of hotel - at one point it was practically traditional for suicides to check into the Savoy in London before eating their final meal and taking their final overdose.) Depending on your point of view, this might be considerably more disturbing than the previous scenario.

* There have been plenty of people in history who have committed atrocities beyond measure. Yet, despite how horrible people have been, there is not a ''single'' person we can be absolutely sure that has [[Complete Monster|no redeeming qualities whatsoever.]] None, out of the 100 billion people who have ''ever lived.'' Yes, I'm including [[Those Wacky Nazis|the Nazis.]] Imagine if a definitive [[Complete Monster]] came into being, and the destruction they would cause. [[Dystopia Justifies the Means|Especially in a seat of power.]]

** Hell, imagine their ''everyday life''.

* There is an old expression that says "The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." It's surprising how many people use this expression without realizing what it is implying about the first mouse. Of course, many people have never heard the second half of the aphorism.

* 'Why did the chicken cross the road (to get to the other side)' is generally accepted as the most famous example of [[Anti-Humor]]. However, some people realize that 'to get to the other side' can have two meanings, and so they believe the joke is [[Driven to Suicide|implying something else entirely]] in order to be funny. Of course, the reality is that it just doesn't have a punchline, but it's still good for a [[Mind Screw]] to those who look a little too much into it.

* Dying Alone, completely and utterly. Never having loved. Never having a family (if you care to have one that is). Just dying. Combine this with the idea of there being no after-life , no reincarnation. This is the ultimate horror for this troper.

* [[Rule 34]] can be this if you think about it too hard.

** Also the fact that some [[Rule 34]] ''is ridicuously well-made'', sometimes ''of higher quality than what it's based on''. Yes, even the [[Squick]]y ones including stuff like [[Gorn]] and [[Nausea Fuel|bodily fluids]].

* Ever made a snide comment about a person whose actions had lead to their death (say, drunk driving)? Well, there may be a chance that a relative or friend of said deceased person had read what you just typed, and you wouldn't even know it; so while you're going about your merry way, they're busy enduring the emotional grief all over again, as well as anger and rage at you for your post. And again, you wouldn't even know it.

* You may think you're cool for telling someone on the internet how wrong their beliefs are, or how dumb their ideas sound. Well, some people have thicker shells, and know not to take you seriously. Others? [[Break the Cutie|It's emotional and psychological hellfire, and their confidence withers away until they aren't as joyful as they used to be. Any attempt at regaining the joy of what they used to do will instantly remind them of you and your comments, and they'll back away because they're afraid of being hurt again.]]

** Expanding on this, no matter how much someone loves you, they can never understand you. All the tormented feelings and doubts you feel, every bizarre and nutty thought you have, each and everyone of your feelings is quite literally beyond the capacity of other people to feel, no matter how empathic they are. The only one who can understand you is....you. [[Mind Screw|Good luck with that]].

* When you stay in a hospital, there's a damned good chance several hundred or thousand people have died in your room, and many, many people have died in the very bed you're currently occupying.

* To expand on the above: If your home is anywhere from 50 to 100+ years old, there's a damned good chance that the house had been host to a lot of horrible things. Drunkards, dysfunctional families, etc. Your room may very well be the room where someone had died in. [[Tear Jerker|And it probably wasn't only just the]] 'old age' thing, either...

* Alcohol removes inhibitions, and wipes out memory to a large extent. Imagine you're a teetotaler then. Now, what happens when you have all your inhibitions? You generally don't cross certain boundaries with other people you otherwise might, meaning you're more likely to be alone. You're also more likely to end up rejected because nondrinkers past a certain age with no history of alcoholism have a tough time explaining their choices, don't hang out in bars or if they do are seen as taking advantage since they're the one not drinking. All that loneliness and rejection? Not being able to forget it.

* The Duggar family on 19 Kids and Counting. They are a conservative fundamentalist Christian family with 10 sons and 9 daughters. Not much is known about female homosexuality as compared to male homosexuality, but due to the [[wikipedia:Fraternal birth order and male sexual orientation|Fraternal Birth Order effect]], each older brother a man has increases the odds that he will be gay. If the base chance of a man turning out to have a homosexual orientation is 2% and each older brother increases the chances of a homosexual orientation by 28-48%, that means that little Jackson, their 15th child and 10th son, alone has a chance as high as 68% of turning out to be gay. Given the amount of children they have, especially sons, it is most likely that at least one of them will turn out to be gay. Add into the mix the facts that Bob and Michelle Duggar restrict their childrens' access to television and the Internet and have praised and donated to anti-gay organizations such as the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family and [[Tear Jerker|you can't help but cry when you think about how ugly things could get for whichever child(ren) turn(s) out to be gay]]. For example, it is common for anti-gay parents to kick their child(ren) out of the house or disown them once they discover that they're gay. And to make it more horrifying, some people will ''[[Culture Justifies Anything|excuse it]]'' [[Culture Justifies Anything|as being part of the parents' religion or culture]].

* Your ancestor was a slave. Everyone has ancestors who were slaves.

* Being a prince in the days when monarchy had real power and wasn't just a cool way to hold parades. Sounds great right? Except that also means your family was less a family and more a political party-and if you got poisoned it could easily have been ''your own brother'' who arranged it.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Real Life]]