Fear of the Internet and Other Phobias for the 21st Century

Learning about strange afflictions like barophobia (fear of gravity — damn you, Sir Isaac Newton!) and arachibutyrophobia (the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth — damn you, Jiffy-delicious peanut butter) got us thinking about irrational fears. Fear of snakes or the IRS may be our most primal phobias, but surely there are some things we fear that only make sense in this ever-more-daunting information age. Here’s what we found …

1. Nomophobia:
   We’ve had this. Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Imagine the panic that sets in when your phone has no network coverage or your battery runs out. Yikes! If you panic without your trusty cell phone, you are described as being “nomophobi.” Another fear associated with this is paranoia that the Verizon wireless dude will show up dating your sister, going “Can you hear me now?”
2. Vidigameaphobia:
   Hey “World of Warcraft” fans, this is the fear of video games. This could range from just being plain scared of the games (don’t get us started on “Frogger”) to fearing that the video game might come to life. (Again, don’t get us started on “Frogger.”) If you have “Tetris” nightmares where big colorful blocks fall on you from the sky, see your doctor now.
3. Interphobia:
   Oh yes, fear of the Internet or World Wide Web. One notorious sufferer is Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Sites like Twitter, YouTube and Flickr are how Iranian protesters got the revolution word out to the rest of the world. That dude should get a Facebook page and lighten up.
4. Dextrophobia:
   How fun would it be to have a fear of everything to the right of your body? Though you’d probably want to avoid England, where you have to look right to see if cars are coming. Ideally if you had this phobia, you would date someone with Levophobia, which is the fear of everything on the left side of your body.
5. Coulrophobia:
   Scary clowns! Though it sounds strange, the fear of clowns is one of the top 10 most common phobias. Clowns are just plain creepy and never really funny. As a kid they frightened the hell out of us. Symptoms of coulrophobia can include high anxiety to outright panic attacks when around those floppy-shoed fools.
6. Alektorophobia:
   While it’s generally known to be an extreme fear of live chickens, we imagine an alektorophobic has an extremely difficult time going to any of our more popular fast food joints. Known side effects include an extreme reaction to people that look like Colonel Sanders.
7. Pupaphobia:
   The cruel half-cousin to coulrophobia is pupaphobia: the fear of puppets. Maybe it has to do with a bad early childhood “Sesame Street” experience with the Cookie Monster. This should not be confused with popeaphobia, which is the fear of the Pope.
8. Sesquipedalophobia:
   This very long word describes one who has a fear of very long words. You’d think they would pick a shorter word to describe fear of long words? Maybe the first step to curing sesquipedalophobia is not to panic when reading about the term that describes your condition.
9. Cathisophobia:
   This would suck if you work at a computer all day, or are a bus driver. Cathisophobia is the fear of sitting. If you suffer from this, you’re known to crave shows that only get standing ovations.
10. Genuphobia:
    Imagine having a fear of knees. Think of panicking every time you saw someone’s knees. Going to a basketball game would be your hell.
11. Phobophobia:
    This is the most ironic of phobias, being it’s a fear of fear or phobias. Imagine being diagnosed with the fear of fear. That would set you in a cyclical panic, as your nightmare is the fear of developing a phobia. Help!

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