ever been scared to read a book?

relatedly, has a book triggered you?

Yes, I‘m scared of reading or watching or playing "I have no mouth and I must scream".

When some disturbing idea is combined with the likelihood of becoming reality some day, it just messes with my head more than anything else.
Like the idea of being tortured for millions of years if not for eternity is the most frightening thought.

Scared isn't quite the right word, but "The Big Book of Cock" that some guy brought to work was pretty disturbing.

Das Kapital

Scared to read a book? No, not really.
Now triggered by a book, that had happened, once. I was reading a pseudo-psychological book, and in one of the first chapter it started to talk about low self esteem, and similar lacks of confidence, which the book claimed ALL stemmed from having a big ego, and that this huge ego and thinking they are the smartest and best is what causes lack of confidence or self esteem because they feel that other people don't see how special they are, and as a consequence, the solution to low self esteem is to (paraphrasing) get off your high horse and lower your ego.

So yeah that part triggered me as it sounded very manipulative and reductory. After that I tried to push through to finish the book ("maybe it gets better later") but I just couldn't force myself to read more of it, and so I never finished that book. It just felt too evil to read.

Mainly it triggered me because it forced me to imagine the effect of telling someone with a low self esteem that "Actually you don'y have low self esteem, you have too HIGH of a self esteem, lower your ego and everything will be fixed". (deadpan sarcasm) I am absolutely sure this will not do an enornous amount of long-lasting harm to someone who actually has low self-esteem.

Duma Key was scary at certain moment. The book was only trash until...

1984 was a all nighter for me. It makes you think. Something you already thought about yourself. That's the thing about it I guess. I promise you, we do not live in 1984. It's worse, they're literally incompetent. I'm sure. There was once a competent man but he got a burnout but that's logic if you have to work with 149 retards.

People who believe in voting here are funny. They tell you "Where do you want the refugee center? A or B?". You can't even choose not wanting one, what basically everyone's choice is. All the questions are like that. Do you want to get hit on your left or your right cheek? Imagine they people could hate each other over not having power at all. On top of that, dutch politicians are almost powerless in exception having the power raising tax. Almost every country in Europe is doing better than before but still they use you as an ATM. It's amazing.

@SoldierOfCode ah, I read the Google Now news feed on my android phone sometimes to see what normies are being fed and it keeps suggesting to me psychology articles. psychology articles on the internet weren't TOO bad 10-20 years ago but now they're all written by AI and they are MUCH better at gaslighting people into thinking innocuous things mean they have some kind of deeper psychological problem. it doesn't trigger me or freak me out but it does disgust me about humans. At first i thought the psychologists were just off-point and didn't know it but the amount of gaslighting you into thinking you have problems articles kept increasing over the years, and now that they're written by AI it's extremely blatant because the AI is more consistent with its narrative hits

I find in the west people don't seem to monitor their own emotional states and thusly don't detect when someone is trying to evoke specific states in them. maybe it's a slav thing to notice

@SoldierOfCode so I got somehow interested in the idea of confidence, turns out I never read the wiki for it. seemed interesting. they had a list of books on there so i got them. and this first book might be a little incelly -- keeps mentioning attracting women though other than the fixation being annoying the guy isn't mean about it

but I'm reading this book and getting triggered. I do think it's genuine though. I don't think he's telling me I have low self-esteem, I actually 100% am now aware I very much don't lmao. and it's making me understand people so much better, because I really can't empathize with having low self-confidence and it would baffle me and drive me nuts, and now things are making more sense about people instead and that's so calming

but I am high-agency, yet I often listen to the advice of other people and get fucked. I discovered some of that reading the book

also his advice, while well-meaning, really backfires on me. like he wants you to write out lists of what you fear and then do those things -- ok well I fear wanting to suicide at another job, so? lmao

one chapter I spent 5 hours after crying. then I realized I was scared to read the book again. I do want to and I do think it's helpful, both in understanding others but also exploring myself even though his literal advice is not relevant to me. I've never before been moved this way though. I would've expected people who know you to be able to point out the errors in your psychology, not a random book. eesh. kind of makes me feel sad about that

@jestdotty scary probably isn’t the right word. It’s disturbing and is messing with my psyche.

The last thing that I watched that was like that was the Black Mirror episode White Christmas.
It gave me a depression like feeling for a few days. But not quite depression, I don’t know how to describe it.

@Lensflare ooooh that one. that's often a favourite. I guess because it's so dehumanizing and violating

I watched playtest really stoned one night when my roommate went off somewhere and that messed with me. If I was alone I typically would smoke so much weed I'd get altered understanding of reality and binge watch really boring TV and trip out on it but in that case the two combined too well lol