WikiHow illustrations may resemble drawings from children’s books. Yet they still make some people feel uneasy. Many may feel the same way when they see Airbnb’s Barbie DreamHouse in Malibu, California.
For those who don’t know, it is a hot pink structure built ahead of the Barbie movie’s July 2023 release. And seeing it for the first time might give some of you the creeps.
Interdisciplinary scholar Dr. Joana Jacob Ramalho argues that the Barbie DreamHouse, and perhaps these wikiHow illustrations, also evoke uncanny emotions.
“Through its myriad revisions over the years, the concept’s core idea has remained unchanged: the defamiliarisation of the familiar generates ambiguity and temporary disorientation, eliciting a sense of creepiness, dread, or horror,” Dr. Ramalho explained.
On the flip side, the fake captions people came up with suddenly made the images less off-putting. Here, the Relief Theory is at play. Research suggests it’s when laughter acts as a decompressor, like a pressure-relief valve on a steam boiler.
We tend to feel nervous energy when we see something even slightly bizarre. Laughter releases that nervous energy.
Another reason these captions work is that they poke fun at things people can easily relate to. As psychology professor Dr. Dara Greenwood explains, finding comedy in the mundane always works, which is why improv comedy appeals to so many.
"They subvert what we normally think of a situation by taking a silly perspective that exposes how rigid we are,” she said.
As informative as wikiHow is, it is also fun to see captions that make its images easier to digest. The best part is that the text comes from the internet's most underrated comedians: Reddit users.
Now, we’re curious: which caption completely changed the way you see an image? And have you come across a wikiHow illustration that weirded you out enough to stick in your memory? Share them in the comments.
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