Started in 2017, the ‘Cursed.Aesthetic’ Instagram account has accumulated over 1.8k posts over the four years of its existence, each one creepier than the last one. But considering the number of internet users and how many of them likely enjoy such content, it is safe to assume that people are waiting for more.
Statista revealed that as of April this year, there were nearly 5.2 billion people using the internet (4.8 billion of whom reportedly are social media users). To put it into perspective, that’s roughly 65% of the entire global population, or the equivalent of people of over 15 USAs put into one.
It’s not easy to explain why some people are more prone to viewing disturbing or disgusting content. According to neuroscientist and author of Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play, Shirley M. Mueller, humans vary in their predispositions to disgust. In a recent interview with Bored Panda, she suggested that this individual susceptibility depends on several factors, one of them being underlying anxiety or emotional distress.
“It is also affected by early environmental factors where parents responded strongly to pathogenic cues, which were then imitated by the child who carried it over to adulthood,” Mueller pointed out, adding that the level of disgust is also regulated by an extraneous parasitic environment to which the individual is exposed.
You might still be wondering who enjoys viewing images as weird, disgusting, or horrifying as the ones on this list, or why. And, even though providing an exact answer is difficult—if at all possible—researchers have found what influences people’s inclination to a certain kind of horrendous content.
According to a 2020 study, individuals with strong beliefs in paranormal things gravitate towards horror media related to supernatural phenomena, while those less fascinated with paranormal activity tend to choose natural content-based horror media.
The study also revealed that people who enjoy sensation seeking and are of high intellect and imagination are drawn to the intellectual stimulation and challenge that comes with the initially aversive effects of horror content. They face the aversive side of viewing such content in order to simulate threats and receive a positive response from coping with it and adapting to it.
Another reason why it’s difficult to answer what kind of person enjoys horrifying content is because the latter is very diverse. Let’s take movies, for instance—different people might enjoy different aspects of one and the same movie.
“I prefer horror as a genre because of how broad it is,” the co-director of the annual Abertoir International Horror Festival, Nia Edwards-Behi, shared in her TedX Talk. “The types of experiences that one can have watching a horror film are varied and they will themselves vary from person to person as well, of course.
“I can watch a horror film and be scared, sure, but I can also watch a horror film and laugh, or be moved, or be disturbed, or be inspired; the best films, of course, are those which can elicit a number of these reactions, if not necessarily at the same time, then throughout the run time of the film.”
“For me, it’s the potential to be frightened that’s more important than the fear itself. Fear, of course, being a thoroughly subjective sensation,” Nia Edwards-Behi pointed out.
The way we perceive fear and the effect it has on each of us is indeed a subjective matter, but there is one thing in common that arguably plays a part in why we enjoy fear-inducing content; it’s our ancient ancestors.
Verywell Mind revealed that, according to the scholar Mathias Clasen, humans of the ancient civilizations had to constantly be vigilant in order not to become the prey of someone or something bigger. Nowadays, individuals live in a safer environment, which is why they don’t encounter scary situations as often, which results in paying more attention in the somewhat rare cases they do.
Another theory of why we enjoy horrifying content presented by Verywell Mind is excitation transfer theory, formulated by an expert in communication and psychology, Dolf Zillmann. Based on this theory, horror media evokes a certain physiological arousal, which then provides a euphoric high when relieved.
In an interview with NPR, researcher Coltan Scrivner delved deeper into what makes scary things so appealing to some people. She suggested that there are three types of horror fans: the adrenaline junkies, the so-called white knucklers, and the dark copers.
The first group includes people who enjoy being afraid. They enjoy the built-up tension (likely because of the euphoric sensation after it is released, coming back to the excitation transfer theory), which is why they seek it again and again.