There are lots of reasons why people enjoy weird, strange, disturbing, and scary things. For one, horror-related content can be quite unique and entertaining. It’s an adrenaline rush and a mood booster.
On top of that, having fun with horror can actually be an extremely important tool for learning, according to the director of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark, Mathias Clasen.
“We learn something about the dangers of the world. We learn something about our own responses: What does it feel like to be afraid? How much fear can I take?” he told The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, a research scientist at Aarhus University’s Recreational Fear Lab, Coltan Scrivner, says that some people are able to challenge themselves to face their fears.
According to Scrivner, by playing around with their fears, people could “learn some emotion regulation skills for how to feel because you’re expressing them and feeling them in a safe place.”
What’s more, by exposing yourself to this type of scary content, you can develop psychological resilience to real-life threats and risks.
The creator of the ‘Things Only Get Weirder’ page opened up all about the project and why people enjoy weirdness so much during an earlier interview with Bored Panda.
According to Brian, he started the project on Facebook as a way for him to store the strange and creepy images that he was saving on his phone.
“I wanted a quick way to store them [the photos] online without having to spend money, so I created a Facebook page. This would allow me to bulk upload my images, and I could easily find them, and while it wasn’t a goal at the time, I left it public so others could stumble across it," Brian shared with Bored Panda earlier.
The creator was happy to share his perspective on why weird, creepy, and strange content resonates so strongly with internet users.
“For some people like me, we just get something out of being made uncomfortable in a way by certain images. Almost like how horror movie fans like to be scared, I like to see something so incomprehensible and weird that it invokes a sense of anxiety,” he explained.
"For others, I think that we live in strange times, transitory times, and even scary times. And I feel like trends in artwork a lot of the time reflect the times we live in. Like the advent of Liminal Space imagery, pictures of transitory spaces, a longing for older days now abandoned. Or dark images that reflect the state of the world we live in. I think, on some level, subconsciously, these types of images can resonate with people even if they don't know why,” he shared his perspective about why weird content is so magnetic.
