# Diogenes the Cynic, I think we need to discuss this a little bit more **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 21, 2005, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517 "2005-07-21T18:55:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/1 "2005-07-21T18:55:42Z")
I’m putting this in the Pit because that is the appropriate place, not because I want to see you tarred and feathered or piled-on. In the interest of fighting ignorance, I think we need to discuss [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=326010&page=3) post (near the bottom of page three) a little more: > [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > \ > I admit, I’m not exactly Mr. Sensitivity on stuff like this. This thread reminds me of a co-worker with whom I once spent a summer running a children’s summer day camp. I liked her and we got along fairly well. One day, for some reason I know longer remember, this person told the rest of us that she had a deathly fear of cotton. That’s right- cotton- as in the little fluffy balls. If there were cotton balls in the room, she wouldn’t go near them. It was weird. I wondered if it was some kind of OCD thing but she refused to explain where the phobia came from. I discovered that if someone tossed a cotton ball at her she would scream and flinch away like it was a tarantula. So I did what any other guy would do…I started tormenting her with cotton balls. I didn’t acually pelt her with the balls but simply holding one up and making threatening throwing gestures were enough to freak her out. Before I get jumped, this wasn’t something I did all the time, just once in a while in an idle moment in (what I thought) was a light hearted manner. Some part of me just never really believed she wasn’t kidding. It was such a bizarre thing to be afraid of that I couldn’t take it seriously. > > One night we were running a sort of carnival event at a rec center and we had a cotton candy machine. It turned out that this co-worker was also bat-shit scared of cotton candy and wouldn’t even go in the same room as the cotton candy machine. I felt that this new revelation obligated me to chase her around the rec center with a huge cone of cotton candy while yelling “Cotton candy…gonna get it on you,” interspersed with singing the occasional refrain of “The toooouch, the feeeel of cotton- the faaaabric of our liiives.” > > She didn’t think it was funny and got really, really pissed. I wasn’t really going to touch her with the candy but she just didn’t see the humor in it. When I later tried to figure out what drove me to do that. The impulse to torture this person with cotton was out of character for me (I am usually not in the habit of that kind of behavior and I despise bullying). After some self-examination, I think that some part of me was just really annoyed at what I considered to be a ridiculous fear and I think my behavor was my way of trying to show how silly I thought this person was being. I believe that I have a bit of the same reaction to people who freak out about having their pictures taken. I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s a failing on my part. I’m almost overly sympathetic to people who I see as legitimate victims who have been done real harm or suffer real injustice but I’m incredibly impatient and even insensitive if I think a person is being irrational or overreacting to (in my view) a petty slight of ettiquette. Other people mentioned it in the thread quoted, and you did say that you apologized to your victim and wished you hadn’t mentioned this whole episode here, but I also got the feeling that you still don’t really get why what you did was wrong. Your co-worker has an irrational fear - a phobia. If you’re lucky, you’ll never have one. If you’re unlucky, you might develop your own some day, and then you’ll probably feel a whole lot of shame for doing what you did, once you understand in your gut how you treated your co-worker. And don’t for a minute think you are somehow exempt from developing a phobia because you don’t take them seriously. It is not for you to say what is or isn’t irrational or an overreaction. There are people in the world who are phobic of any thing you can possibly think of. People who are phobic are completely legitimately afraid of the object of their phobia; they’re not faking it, and they don’t appreciate other people deriding their unrealistic fear. And so you know, most people know extremely well how irrational their fear is; that doesn’t change the emotional response one bit. They may try to hide it from people like you, who are un-sympathetic and make no effort to try to understand their point of view, and actually use their phobia to hurt them. Your co-worker also had no obligation whatsoever to tell you the origin of her phobia. It should have been enough for her to tell you she had one, and expect you to respect it and her enough to leave it alone. There is treatment for phobias, but it does not include making fun of people who have them, and chasing them around with the object of their fear. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/2 "2005-07-21T19:00:27Z")
How do you develop a phobia of cotton? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/3 "2005-07-21T19:10:42Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > How do you develop a phobia of cotton? How does one develop a phobia about spiders, snakes, wasps/bees, or any of a hundred other really interesting things one might encounter in life? I don’t think you get a nice, clean rational answer to an irrational aversion. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/4 "2005-07-21T19:11:34Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > There is treatment for phobias, but it does not include making fun of people who have them, and chasing them around with the object of their fear. It also does not include telling them all about your latest or most shocking experience with said object of fear. I think the next time I tell someone I have a phobia of needles, and they launch into their “well, I tried to give blood, and they had to stick the needle into me 57 times before they got any” story, I will start discussing in detail my latest poo, or an especially gross pimple that I popped and what came out of it. I wonder if they would get it that I’m as revolted by their needle stories as they are by my poo or pimple stories… > [@smiling bandit](#): > > How do you develop a phobia of cotton? I don’t even know how I developed my phobia of needles (though I can guess it was through some experience with shots or stitches, I can’t point to an incident and say “before this I was not afraid of needles, after this I was”). Oh, and **DtC** , it’s your fault that I have that stupid “Cotton: the fabric of our lives” song in my head now. I have no phobia of cotton, but damn, I always hated that commercial… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/5 "2005-07-21T19:12:31Z")
Go bolling? ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/6 "2005-07-21T19:15:07Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > How do you develop a phobia of cotton? I blame the Confederacy ---
**Author:** ![vetbridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/7 "2005-07-21T19:17:10Z")
I wonder if she has a hatred of Eli Whitney. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/8 "2005-07-21T19:17:11Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > How does one develop a phobia about spiders, snakes, wasps/bees, or any of a hundred other really interesting things one might encounter in life? I don’t think you get a nice, clean rational answer to an irrational aversion. Well, at least spiders, snakes, wasps, bees, etc. have the potential to hurt you. At least some species. I have yet to see anything harmful about cotton in any way, shape or form. > [@elucidator](#): > > Go bolling? That was uncalled for. ---
**Author:** ![Kneepants\_Erasmus\_the\_Humanist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/54ee81/32.png) [@Kneepants\_Erasmus\_the\_Humanist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kneepants_Erasmus_the_Humanist)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/9 "2005-07-21T19:18:18Z")
Bees, wasps, and snakes can cause harm…maybe not very much (unless, obviously, if one is allergic to these things) but, I don’t know anyone who enjoys being stung by a bee. But…cotton??? Is she afraid of things made with cotton too? T-shirts? ---
**Author:** ![Homebrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Homebrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Homebrew)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/10 "2005-07-21T19:19:15Z")
I have a friend who is afraid of cotton balls, too. Not cotton fabrics. Just the raw cotton or cotton balls. It’s really strange. She says the texture creeps her out and she won’t touch them. ---
**Author:** ![Kneepants\_Erasmus\_the\_Humanist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/54ee81/32.png) [@Kneepants\_Erasmus\_the\_Humanist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kneepants_Erasmus_the_Humanist)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/11 "2005-07-21T19:21:27Z")
Jesus H., Neurotik. Suppose that’s why that pesky preview button is there. ---
**Author:** ![Binarydrone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3da27b/32.png) [@Binarydrone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Binarydrone)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/12 "2005-07-21T19:21:48Z")
featherlou, Not sure if I am reading this correctly, so please help me out. The quoted post seems to show a great deal of introspection, he apologized to the victim and this so you are Pitting him because, what, he still sees a fear of cotton balls as sort of stupid on some levels? I mean, I do try to be sensitive and accommodating of others quirks and special needs in my day to day life but I have to say that I would have trouble with this one. At least internally. Because it is pretty fucking stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/13 "2005-07-21T19:24:43Z")
Yeah, **featherlou** , you seem to ultimately be taking the position that a fear of cotton balls isn’t stupid. But it is. It may be explainable. It may be something that occasions pity. But it’s still stupid. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![cowgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cowgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cowgirl)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/14 "2005-07-21T19:27:06Z")
I have an otherwise completely sensible friend who is reduced to a quivering pile of terror at the sight of foam rubber. Although I can’t help laughing when this happens accidentally, I don’t deliberately torment him with it. (Because if I do, he will stretch an elastic band in my presence, and everyone knows that’s simply terrifying.) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/15 "2005-07-21T19:27:42Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, at least spiders, snakes, wasps, bees, etc. have the potential to hurt you. At least some species. I have yet to see anything harmful about cotton in any way, shape or form. But only “some species” (the number of which is vanishingly small in North America. It hardly explains people who are phobic of Deb’s mild little pythons and boas. And the woman in question does not appear to have had a phobia of cotton, _per se_, (I presume she wore denim pants and cotton shirts/blouses), she was frightened of balls of cotton (and cotton appearing things). Irrational is irrational. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/16 "2005-07-21T19:28:23Z")
I have to pull the cotton balls out of medecine bottles for my wife. And sometimes if she touches fabrics ‘wrong’ she doesn’t like it. I’m afraid of Grizzlies when I’m backpacking in Montana. They are kind of like cotton balls, only they have fangs, claws, and can eat you. But if folks are afraid of cotton balls, don’t listen to Tom Cruise. They’ve got drugs now for that sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Greathouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greathouse/32/2992_2.png) [@Greathouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greathouse)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/17 "2005-07-21T19:29:44Z")
I don’t see what the big deal is. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/18 "2005-07-21T19:30:12Z")
> [@captaindoesnotlikeyou](#): > > Bees, wasps, and snakes can cause harm…maybe not very much (unless, obviously, if one is allergic to these things) but, I don’t know anyone who enjoys being stung by a bee. > > But…cotton??? Is she afraid of things made with cotton too? T-shirts? Oh for og’s sake, educate yourself. [quote] [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=phobia](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=phobia) pho·bi·a _n_[ol][li]A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous. [/li][li]A strong fear, dislike, or aversion. [/ol] [/li][/quote] [http://www.phobialist.com/](http://www.phobialist.com/) ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/19 "2005-07-21T19:32:58Z")
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is an irrational fear of long words. I couldn’t help myself, especially because it’s true. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2005, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517/20 "2005-07-21T19:33:01Z")
> [@Anne Neville](#): > > an especially gross pimple that I popped Didja use a needle? Anyhoo, I find it hard to picture a title I’m _less_ likely to bestow on DtC than “Mr. Sensitivity”, on _any_ subject. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diogenes-the-cynic-i-think-we-need-to-discuss-this-a-little-bit-more/313517.md?page=2)