Nokia’s trypophobia phone is not that trypophobic

A few days ago, Nokia released images of the Nokia 9. The internet went kind of wild because there’s a few holes in the back rather than just one. The phone is supposed to be hell for those who suffer from trypophobia.

We’re a little sceptic about this meme. The Nokia 9 is a rather elegant design and yes, it has a few holes in it, but so does basically every phone with a camera. But first, let’s explain what the criticism is all about:

Now, you may be unaware, but the fear of small holes incites horror in some people. And, of course, the entire reason we’re bringing this up is to show you why.

This is what causes trypophobia

This makes people feel trypophobia

If you’re comfortable watching the above (this author is NOT), you probably don’t have trypophobia. Theories suggest this fear may be based in evolution. Not much is known about the fear of these patterns in the scientific world, but the thought is that these patterns signal disease or danger. The internet, however, is ruthless and went nuts with this particular fear a couple of years ago, resulting in articles like this horiffic shitshow from collegehumour.

However, there’s a certain aspect of the patterns of holes that the Nokia critics overlooked. These holes have to follow organic patterns. In other words: they have to look like they belong in nature and could mean danger or disease. The Nokia 9 has a perfectly symmetric pattern of perfect circles. Nothing organic about that, and certainly not a pattern of holes that’ll make people go apeshit. So, the critic below was a little off…

Twitter went wild on the trypophobia phone

Could we have just pointed that out at the beginning of this post rather than leave you with an uncomfortable, slightly noxious feeling? Sure. We could have gone without the explanation of trypophobia and visual examples… but what would have been the fun in that?

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