Though the Mildly Disgusting community on Reddit is relatively modest in the grand scheme of things—clocking in at just 16,000 members—it’s an active and even dedicated one. And it’s ranked in the top 5%, and that’s saying something.
It’s essentially a place for “stuff that *almost* makes you want to puke.” It likely won’t, but some of it has great potential.
#4 This Customer Came In Today And Said “My Computer Doesn’t Turn On”.. Maybe Because It’s Infested With Roaches?!
#6 Drank All The Milk From A Coconut...opened It Up And It Was Full Of Fungus
We’ve already discussed why disgusting and weird things draw us in so much in a few other listicles. If you haven’t caught that, it’s because there’s this evolutionary thing in our brains that essentially tells us “hey, that can be dangerous, focus on it like you’re a cat seeing something super foreign to them even though it’s just a baby.”
It also ties in with the concept of benign masochism—a tendency where people deliberately seek out seemingly negative experiences to get a hit of that adrenaline rush within a limited degree of risk. There is definitely something exhilarating about seeing animals duke it out in the wild, and so that same thing can apply to mildly gross (or any degree of it) things.
#12 My & My Wife’s Exact Same Pillowcase (I Am 1/2 Portuguese, With Oilier Skin)
And it doesn’t help that Reddit—in fact, any modern social medium—is designed in a way that it never ends and so the scrolling keeps on giving. Once you start looking at it, it’s sometimes hard to hit the brake pedal.
If you think it’s no big deal, 80% of Brits admit to scrolling through things mindlessly, which averages to a total of 3 hours a day. Imagine what you could’ve done in that time.
#14 I Cooked A Chilli Con Carne And Left It To Cool. Within Seconds A Fly Had Laid Eggs On It
#15 After Tearing Up Carpet At A Rental House; This Is How Much Dirt Was Under The Carpet
This also leads to the term doom scrolling—very appropriate for mildly gross content, if I might add—which is essentially the same as regular scrolling, but it focuses on that which is negative and bad. It doesn’t matter if it’s news, memes or any other kind of content found on social media. If it’s dark in nature, it fits.
Folks speculate a number of reasons why scrolling, let alone doom scrolling, is so addictive. The most prevalent explanation is the idea of dopamine being associated with whatever that we can find on our phone through scrolling.
Other reasons include fear of missing out (what the kids these days call FOMO) and social media design, which, of course, will be designed in a way to keep you engaged because money.
