Amusement park rides and the illusion of safety

[nancylebov]

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/06/irrational-fear-irrational.html

This is sick and funny.

I recommend reading the comments, too--much fine stuff about fear of insects and fear of zombies, and especially the comment near the bottom about fear of spelunking.

Anyone know whether women generally like scary amusement park rides better than men?

Link thanks to liz_marcs.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

and especially the comment near the bottom about fear of spelunking.

DAMN YOU I READ THAT AND I AM CLAUSTROPHOBIC.

...I'm going to go and spend the rest of the week curled up in a ball now.

Scariness

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

Very few amusement park rides frighten me. I look at them all, and some just look like I wouldn't like them. So I don't bother with them. This also includes boring rides, like the flying swings. I do not like being turned upside down, and refuse to be so. So those are out. Roller coasters are fun. Unfortunately, I do not find parks as amusing as I did 25 yrs. ago. My sensitivity to mindless crowds has increased to where I can't go among them sober. I'm still okay at folk festivals, but other things are either difficult or disgusting. Pennsic gets a little borderline at times, but is almost always okay.

I don't have any irrational fears except a bit of claustrophobia. I can go on elevators and drive small cars, and even go on tours of big caves (things Mom cannot); but let me get stuck in a too small shirt that won't pull off, and I will shred it in my panic to get loose. Otherwise, I'm neurotic enough to have a million small fears and fatalistic enough to drive around DC. Perhaps my intense dislike of hymenoptera borders on irrational, except that I've been bitten and stung enough times to feel justified in exterminating anything but honeybees. I won't die of a sting, but it swells up and itches for nigh a month.

Is this kind of what you were asking? On the other hand, I never was a normal girl

Re: Scariness

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

No--a couple or three of the accounts were by men are terrified by amusement park rides but get on them because they have a wife or girlfriend who loves rides. That might be a likely combination, or it might have just been chance, or it might be that a man who loves rides who pushes a woman who hates them into taking the ride anyway would look like a bully, while a man who's pushed into a ride by a combination of his self-image and his girlfriend can be presented as amusing.

Re: Scariness

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

Oh--no. I'm too macho to admit to the faintest twinge of ride fear. And it's only on ferris wheels, anyway. As long as no one thinks about rocking the seat furiously, I enjoy them. And back when I was actually going to amusement parks, the guys still had that sense of immortality. Sorry.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

I think you're right that more men are scared of such rides than women. Personally, none of them scare me per se, but if I can tell that the maintenance is neglected, I decline. There are some rides I don't enjoy, but none that scare me.