Things that both fascinate and horrify you?

[Blunderboy]

We all have things that we could watch for hours filled with a sense of wonder, and things that make our skin crawl and our spine shiver.
But do any of you have anything that does both?

Mine has to be the ocean.

I mean on one hand it's full of amazing creatures and can be incredibly beautiful.

Sea what I mean? (geddit)

But then I see something like this and I instantly NOPE.

What about you?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Have you ever read Franken Fran? ... There you go.

Humans surgically altered into grotesque monster dogs as punishment, severed heads walking around with surgically attached fingers... It's fucking sickening, yet I can't stop looking.

 

[Parasondox]

I must agree with the ocean too. I am fascinated by the size, the depth, the creatures and even the unknown waterlife that hasn't been discovered yet but oh boy I don't think I would ever face it head on and the second gif. is the reason why. You have no clue on whats beneath and do you take that risk. Yeah that's an adventure but still don't know

Also Artificial Intelligence. Yes I would like to see how far science can go when it relates to AI's but then again wouldn't that also be a risk of a computer system being self aware and being something bad instead of good. Yeah more of this thought is due to movies and novels and shows but we aren't too far off.

 

[Eamar]

Extreme plastic surgery* and extreme obesity. Sometimes the two go together, with stuff like removal of excess skin after massive weight loss.

Both disturb me, but I cannot stop watching anything and everything about either. I find the actual surgery bit genuinely interesting, even though it makes my skin crawl. And I guess with the obesity thing I'm always hoping for them to turn their lives around.

[sub]*Note that I say plastic surgery rather than cosmetic or reconstructive surgery, which is also fascinating but doesn't horrify my.[/sub]

 

[JoJo]

Psychopaths, serial killers, terrorists, sexual predators etc both horrify and fascinate me at the same time. I find real life violence abhorrent, even sickening, but yet I love to read about how these people think, how they justify themselves, how they commit their crimes. Similarly, I've spent a considerable amount of time lurking in forums for extreme conservatives and Neo-Nazis because again I find their views and thought processes fascinating, even though those views would be horrific if ever implemented in the real world.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Horrer stories on the internet. Like this thread on Reddit.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1f9i14
Some are too dumb to be scary but others are a great read.

 

[Queen Michael]

Batman.

And romantic feelings.

And romantic feelings for Batman.

 

[FalloutJack]

Whale-Shark

Actually, that thing is one of the least-violent among the shark family. I wouldn't recommend swimming with one still, but on a scale of 1-to-screwed, you're looking at a 5 at most with him. It's tigers, great whites, and hammerheads that seem to be the most violent.


OT: Mind you, the ocean would have to be the source of my horrific wonder too. I just tend to pick something out of it in which I'm definitely screwed if I meet one: Giant Squid. Because...if you ever meet one of these, you are exactly in the worst place to BE, which is in its feeding territory. And they do not care about what they eat, I'm sure.

 

[Dedtoo]

For me, spiders.

I've got a light case of arachnophobia, so I'm terrified of them.

Yet they are such interesting creatures that I have to read about them and stuff at times.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I'll join you on the ocean. It's fascinating, yet I never want to go out on it. Especially giant squids and prehistoric sea creatures we would certainly refer to as sea monsters if they still existed.

OT: Ghosts and haunted locations in general. The idea of a ghost/demon/shadow person is scary, but I like hearing personal accounts and folk stories relating to supernatural stuff in general. Even hard to believe stories are still a fun read, the ones that sound at least a bit credible are really fascinating.

 

[Jolly Co-operator]

The concept of eternity / immortality, deep space, and spiders.

 

[EHKOS]

Well, insanity for one. Frightful thing to have, I've been close enough to know before stepping back. But the entirety of psychology is fascinating to me.

Also how humans are walking meat, yet seem to have what people call a "soul". And how curiously it disappears after death, yet you keep an organ on ice and you can restart another human with a different heart.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm fascinated yet horrified at the idea of drinking anything that isn't transparent. Particularly if it's got a garish color, like cyan or pink.

 

[Eamar]

But then I see something like this and I instantly NOPE.

What about you?

That's my personal nightmare, right there. Diving into the darkest places in the ocean...

See, to me that looks amazing. Like, I really, really want to be that person. I'd be scared, but that's part of the appeal.

Different strokes, and all that

 

[SckizoBoy]

Extreme plastic surgery* and extreme obesity. Sometimes the two go together, with stuff like removal of excess skin after massive weight loss.

Both disturb me, but I cannot stop watching anything and everything about either. I find the actual surgery bit genuinely interesting, even though it makes my skin crawl. And I guess with the obesity thing I'm always hoping for them to turn their lives around.

[sub]*Note that I say plastic surgery rather than cosmetic or reconstructive surgery, which is also fascinating but doesn't horrify my.[/sub]

That just gave me an even bigger qualifier to my originally intended answer... :/

Which was televised surgery in general. I'm not averse to the sight of blood and guts, but the insides of a human are a truly disgusting sight to behold. Then, think about some individual (or several) with knives, forceps and various implements, usually of the metal and intrusive variety, poking, prodding and cutting at stuff that was not built or designed to be poked/prodded/cut etc. and my eyes are hooked even though I'll have the imagery stuck in my head whenever I eat.

Um... yeah... -_-

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

The First World War. I find everything about it so horribly fascinating, the actual battlefields, the gradual changing of opinion from 'those back home' and the poetry.... oh the poetry ! It's one of the most fascinating, grim, depressing, amazing parts of history in my opinion. The effect it had on pretty much all of Europe's consciousness was astounding

 

[Alssadar]

Impossible geometry.
It is something I long to see within my lifetime, but their sheer existence would break all common understandings of physics that we hold so close to writing the laws of our universe. A triangle with its angles being more than 180 degrees, and square with more than 360.
To see something and try to rationalize it (trying to imagine it hurts my brain) might possibly render someone incapable of thought, as all of our logic would dictate reality to exist otherwise--but it still exists.

By all means of the common sense, it is not horrifyingly scary or terrifying. But the simple ideas behind it that break our most basic concepts of the world is breathtaking.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

I'm fascinated yet horrified at the idea of drinking anything that isn't transparent. Particularly if it's got a garish color, like cyan or pink.

So no strawberry milk for you? :[]

I have to go with the ocean. All the different sea creatures and the general area is beautiful and fascinating to me. But I'm thalassophobic. You'll never see me in the ocean. Ever.

 

[Brian Tams]

Sharks (but not whale sharks. How dare you insult that gentle creature!) terrify me.

To put it into perspective about how much I'm terrified with sharks, when I was four my parents got me a stupid inflatable boat toy for the bath. One of the things about it was that there was a tiny see through bottom, and some jerk of an artist had drawn a tiny outline of a shark on it. Terrified me so much that I refused to take a bath for two weeks, all because of an outline of a shark.

And yet one of my favorite movies of all time is Jaws. When I was in High School, I was seriously considering being a Marine Biologist with a focus on sharks. I haven't missed a shark week yet.

Its one of those weird things where I both love, and am terrified, of sharks.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm fascinated yet horrified at the idea of drinking anything that isn't transparent. Particularly if it's got a garish color, like cyan or pink.

So no strawberry milk for you? :[]

You mean like yoghurt? I can drink that. I was thinking more like a fuchsia-colored daikiri. Generally I can drink transparent, black and white though.