The Most Insidious Kind of Horror

80,000 HOURS ➤ 80000hours.org/...
Please, please take this opportunity to check out 80,000 Hours. They exist PURELY to help you find a job that will enable you to change the world, and they're offering all their resources to you entirely for free! At the very least, it's certainly worth giving a look!
-
Today's episode explores the relationship betwe-BOO!
Did we scare you?
▬▬▬▬ Tale Foundry Community▬▬▬▬
Support us on Patreon! / talefoundry
Come join our community! thetalefoundry....
▬▬▬▬ Tale Foundry Team ▬▬▬▬
• Talebot - The Talent
• The Taleoids - The Talent's Helpers
• Benjamin Cook - Writer, Director, & Voice Actor
• Abbie Norton - Art Director & Asset Artist ( www.behance.ne...)
• Alexander Cuenin - Animator, Editor & Project Manager (www.alexandercu...)
• Bazz Bartlett - Audio Engineer (www.bartlettau...)
• Becca Ghusn - Researcher & Writer
• Rachel Doud - Packaging & Asset Artist ( / jae.sketch )
• Tommy Tenneber - Publishing (www.thewidescr...)
Additional Music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com

[@TheTaleFoundry]

80,000 HOURS ➤ 80000hours.org/talefoundry Please, please take this opportunity to check out 80,000 Hours. They exist PURELY to help you find a job that will enable you to change the world, and they're offering all their resources to you entirely for free! At the very least, it's certainly worth giving a look!

[@sauceman-dv3lf]

Tale foundry, you should check out the 60's band the monkee's backstory they had a movie named head that flopped but the masterly level of horrors of television and how being a television character changes your real life drastically

[@kharijordan6426]

Accidental preventable deaths are weird when humans do it. Edited: mosquito eating till it pops..fun now you know. Finding a way unintentionally...to eat until you die and before you do you finally realize you have eaten to much ..but it's too late to do anything..and all you can do is look at a beloved family member before you drop to the ground. Dose scare me It's not someone or something distorting your reality so that you kill yourself..you just one day doing what you usually do ..stop perceiving reality in a specific way that you kill yourself before someone could stop you but not so late as to not see you die.

[@Pock4855]

this ad is very good I even click on it

[@DreamxCreature]

The category is the grotesque. Gross exaggerations that break hardwired expected norms in an unsettling way with both comedy and horror aspects. This can come in many forms- visual distortions, people who become exaggerated caricatures, things that are gross or unsettling being hyper focused on by the creator rather than the usual repulsion response, or even a grandmother who is horribly cruel instead of kind etc. breaking down expected mental patterns with exaggeration of both the unsettling and unexpected factors

[@upg315]

Is this supposed to be, like, some sort of meta thing? Because nothing in this video made me more uncomfortable and anxious than the ad, to the point where I was briefly convinced that you were doing a bit. Your voice suddenly went from relatively earnest to almost ... oleaginous. I mean, I know sponsors are a necessary evil, but there was just something about this particular spot that really rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the almost cultish way that it promises you the world, the apparent solution to late stage capitalism and personal malaise, with such a sense of certainty and optimism, which is, to invoke a term used in the video proper, incongruous with the visible, obvious reality all around us, how it assures the viewer that it doesn't want aaaanything in return. They just wanna heeelp us. That's all. Just want to hand out our dream jobs, solve both poverty and unhappiness in one fell swoop, at no cost whatsoever, out of the purest goodness of their hearts. Cool ... I guess? How do they make money then? What fund did they pay you from? Where's the buried lead? If it's a corporate training and recruitment site, a job board of sorts, why not just say so? Why present it as some sort of grand, altruistic exercise? The "high impact advisors" seem to be mostly made up of the US Government, Techbro companies, and AI peddlers, so it doesn't strike me as a particularly desirable spread of options for anyone trying to stay ethical, but even that aside, why not just call a job board and/or recruiting pool by their name and be done with it? That really did feel like a Wham City joint. Hell, I was more creeped out by the sponsor segment than by anything they'd ever made. Side note - Wham City was great, Resnick is brilliant, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is fun, but y'all know that there's more than like five pieces of media in the world, or the internet, yeah, even when you narrow the category down to something like "surrealist and/or absurdist video art?" There is an ocean of that shiz out there, and we're just skating on the surface of the lake, in the shallows. All of that stuff was fabulous the first time I saw it, and remains fabulous on the hundredth viewing, but chewing on the same five delicious steaks for two decades isn't optimal and doesn't add much to the broader conversation. Heck, why not start with the fact that none of the above pieces were made in a vacuum, and that all share a common and long standing artistic lineage. Why not talk about the works of David Lynch, especially the shorter, more experimental, and more obscure stuff, as a likely antecedent of this kind of material, or go all the way back to the original surrealists, absurdists, dadaists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. If so much of this discussion is concerned with labeling and definitions, then the inciting movements and historical influences that informed and led to the creation of these works seem like a good place to start, no? Not that this was poorly made or that the thoughts within weren't, if taken in a vacuum and ignoring the fact that it's very well trodden territory and has been for much of the past century, insightful or provocative. It's just ... there is SO much more out there, and probably a lot more to be said. The kids who are going to watch this are going to wonder why nobody has ever made anything with the same level of quality and impact as "This House House Has People In It" before or since, and the rich history of artists who paved the way, who HAVE made those things, who are being directly quoted and referenced by Wham City et al, will be lost to the mists, and, worse yet, the artists that have followed and done genuinely interesting work since then (not just binary code analog horror squeezits) will recede into obscurity before they get seen at all. Content creators are the contemporary curators of culture, like it or not. Y'all have power and influence. And we all know what that means by now. I know it's hard, and I know there's a lot of obstacles in the way, but it's just something to think about. Curation is an art in itself, and can make a huge difference.

[@freegarlicchip]

I remember reading a quote where someone said that 'horror is just comedy without the punchline'. Your comment about being held in that moment of suspense instead of having it alleviated made me think of that.

[@lancesmith8298]

Horror and comedy are the same process, working in opposite directions. You can remove the laugh track from Big Bang Theory, and find naught but awkward silence. Conversely, you can modify FNAF to replace a jumpscare with an animatronic Default Dancing on you. It takes great effort to turn fantasy into scifi, but bad comedy is okay horror, and bad horror is decent comedy.

[@Acatinabox]

That's such a good quote, I've never heard it before but it's so true

[@cevichegrace]

My girl garnet once said "All comedy is derived from fear," and i think that strikes the same chord.

[@leeshajoi]

I've heard Jordan Peele say it in an interview. I figure he of all people would know about both horror and comedy.

[@akhilnair1137]

​@@leeshajoi i think peele was talking about how comedy and horror is the same just with different soundtracks.

[@MelancholicBodhisattva]

I like to describe it as the horror of absurdity/absurd horror. The impossibility of what I'm looking at, the clash between reality and something i can only describe as a violation, creates such an interesting gulf between the known and unknown.

[@gothnerd887]

Dadaist horror?

[@KBbookcorner]

I've seen it called absurdist horror as well. It's one of my favorite sub genres

[@lancesmith8298]

Absurdist horror briefly deposits you into a universe where your understanding of reality has broken down. While its counterpart, absurdist comedy, uses it to poke fun at the day to day or just be merry about it, absurdist horror makes you look at something strange, and either say to yourself "this is wrong, why are you doing that" or "if this is normal, then what am I doing?" It is horror, minus logic, and for all the good logic does, it also makes things predictable. I can boil down a horror movie into elementally pure tropes, but an absurdist work of horror refuses and outright antagonizes at times the idea of rationalizing what is happening exactly. Bo is Afraid is a movie about the fundamental cruelty of being born into a world that does not fit your perspective on life or needs at all. I don't think it's a coincidence the movie starts with him talking to a psychiatrist.

[@austinrimel7860]

That works

[@mackthisarrowhearth295]

I agree as well, as I think pace here places a big role in what it does to each persons. Too short and people don't get hooked, too long and they get familiar with it, and this varies wildly per person.

[@geofff.3343]

Oh my God, I first saw "Unedited Footage of a Bear" at I guess 4 AM in my late teens because I was up fighting off a fever, and until someone said to me like six years later, "Hey have you ever seen 'Unedited Footage of a Bear'?" I had no idea this was a real thing and I thought it was just a fever nightmare I had.

[@chillcreep4926]

This was my experience with the surreal music video for "Black Hole Sun". I couldn't sleep; I had an upcoming flight to go back home from my grandparents' place, and there were coyotes howling around their home as the sun was coming up. I decided to get up and pack my bags. I turned on the TV, and after a couple of ads, the music video for "Black Hole Sun" came on. The video focuses on various happy people whose smiles and eyes keep getting larger and less realistic as we watch. It was terrifying in the moment and I wasn't entirely sure was real until I saw the video again years later.

[@chanceroneill5792]

First time I ever smoked my friends put it on and it left me reeling for days hahah

[@ZKP314]

Saw the first half of that once, and didn’t realize it wasn’t a fever Dream until I started watching Night Mind.

[@thenumber1procrastinator]

Holy shit I swear I saw the top comment before but I’ve never watched this video

[@mayalakshman9102]

Not technically horror, but the fourth-wall break at the end of The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals reminds me of this. Like when the cast is bowing and Emma screams "Can someone help me, please?... WHY ARE YOU CLAPPING?" Really funny, really unsettling, and also implies that you've technically been infected too.

[@krakios3950]

Holy hell, a TGWDLM reference in the wild

[@mayalakshman9102]

@@krakios3950 A fellow Starkid enjoyer?!?! Hi :D

[@samspam1182]

love that musical :D

[@wompadillœ]

Eyyy Starkid mention! I agree with you; TGWDLM’s ending is so clever and sad and it’s unfortunate that so many reactors don’t watch until the VERY end. It’s a perfect, last little gut punch after the already tragic ending of the show.

[@YouveBeenMegged]

@@wompadillœ They don’t think about the implications

[@nehpets216]

My friend called this "Questionable sanity" as an artform.

[@Acatinabox]

That's a good name for it

[@Nuhbuddys]

It should become some kind of industry😅 ​@@Acatinabox

[@robertlong9591]

I think the Magnus archives said it best when describing the Stranger, “The familiar made wrong.” Taking something known and established in your mind and tweaking it just a few centimeters of in kilter creates a subtle sense of anxiety that gradually grows until the difference is glaring. By the time you realize what’s wrong the thing has your throat between its jaws.

[@averyfields8183]

Hell yeah!

[@elvergalarga6016]

Describes the uncanny valley perfectly

[@AidaKittyBoy]

I was JUST THINKING about TMA with this. I was thinking about the Distortion/Spiral, though. Things twisted and confused and gaslighting you into believing it's all normal. My boy Micheal would love this stuff,

[@atheistsgod]

"At least when you're afraid you know when to run" is one of the best comments on what living with an anxiety disorder feels like dude. Real life turning into this kind of horror where you don't know if you should laugh or run away from it and you can't realistically ever run away because the horror is inside of your brain instead of a real threat you can escape from. And laughing can only help so much before it isn't funny anymore and you just break.

[@dyjhjfrtt6607]

Theres a game called squirrel stapler which is 100% a horror comedy and perfectly encapsulates the whole line between fear and comedy. You stapling squirrels to your wife’s corpse is dark comedy, but when she starts moving and leaving notes it is terrifying.

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Nice. Nothing says "I love you, but please stay still" like metallicly attached arboreal rodents.

[@Daelyah]

Blue Kid's "The Dismemberment Song" came to mind, for somewhat similar vibes, since the song feels like a wife snapping and violently torturing and killing an (implied) abusive husband, but most of the track sounds like it came from a cheery musical. More dark comedy, I guess, but still gruesome in some of the lyrics.

[@isaac11037]

squirrel stapler is awesomely designed. Love the writing on the wall off the start

[@insertusernamehere3173]

Reminds me of rat shaker

[@Der_Muffin_Mann]

@insertusernamehere3173 That's what I was thinking lol

[@haylied1265]

This house has people in it is an ENORMOUS rabbit hole that I've spent hours watching analysis videos about. The horror doesn't get much clearer even when you have nore information. I'd love for you to talk about it more!!

[@lancesmith8298]

This House keeps getting less and less scrutable the further you dig into it, to where the only sensible conclusion about any of what happened is that some guy on TV is full of crap, and whatever happened here needed to be recorded in full detail, either for profit or research.

[@samtinkle9076]

There's a video by Night Mind that goes into ALL of it, and I highly reccomend it!

[@crosana01]

As someone with cripplingly severe OCD I was going to comment on uncertainty and anxiety before I even got into the video but I'm glad you mentioned it. It really is incredible, in a horrifying way, just how excruciating unending uncertainty and anxiety can be. Before the onset of my symptoms I would have never fathomed that something so seemingly ordinary could result in so much suffering. So yeah, I definitely agree that uncertainty and anxiety can often be worse than straight up horror.

[@zoebelle8970]

YES I was hoping someone would talk about OCD and uncertainty. In my experience with OCD, it can be 10000000 times more excruciating to feel uncomfortable and unsettled rather than knowing what to be afraid of...

[@Darthzim950]

The best word I often associate with these sorts of creations is “disquieting”, something that could be viewed as entertaining in a deeply uncomfortable way.

[@ravefox6766]

Salad Fingers is 100% what this video is talking about. i remember watching it and thinking that i can't figure out to laugh or be horrified, but i also couldn't turn away. makes my skin crawl just thinking about it again

[@mageyplss]

Seeing jack Stauber, Too Many Cooks AND Don't Hug Me I'm Scared being referenced in the same video made me feel so validated

[@mayleespann4552]

I had no idea DHIS would freak me out as much as it did

[@alextrill1746]

"How does it makes you feel?" Humber. It makes me feel humber. That emotion is designed specifically to feel about such things =)

[@amandasain3769]

This might be my favorite kind of horror. It plays on the fear of the unknown so effectively by making you unsure of what exactly what you're witnessing and creates this deeply unsettling feeling that haunts the audience well afterwards

[@sirmcmoneyston4449]

This house has people in it 🔥🔥

[@goodolmemo]

Can confirm i was the fire that burned it down! 🔥🔥

[@samtinkle9076]

Seconded; I was the bottle of Claridryl sitting on the shelf! 🔥 🔥 Edit: YOOOO I WASN'T EXPECTING HIM TO MENTION UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A BEAR

[@sirmcmoneyston4449]

I was the missing bedsheet 🔥🔥

[@Shewhospeakesinverse]

​@sirmcmoneyston4449 you mean you werent the knockoff sonic? Dang

[@ethanlivemere1162]

Lynks disease 🔥🔥🔥

[@Wintergreen_]

I never thought Going To The Store was unsettling until seeing it without the music

[@TheCakeIsntEat]

Fr when I first watched Going to the Store I thought it was the funniest shit but without the music and the filter over it yeah it became quite unsettling

[@zoyadulzura7490]

Even without the music, I still hear the music in my head. It is too funny to be unsettling. To each their own creepiness.

[@dazzlingdexter5060]

😂 I found it hysterical

[@jessicagalvin4598]

There is a huge difference between scary and creepy. Scary is like a bear charging at you. It’s immediately recognizable as a threat, and rapidly makes you choose fight or flight. Creepy is like the antique doll you inherited which keeps changing locations when you look away. Is it possessed or is it your roommate? You don’t know, and not knowing is the worst type of fear. It’s that high-cortisol uneasiness where you can’t decide what action to take.

[@davidsenra2495]

Great example.

[@christiandauz3742]

Great horror knows how to utilize both

[@ThePhantomSafetyPin]

"Art should disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed." Of course horror and comedy both go together. I'm surprised you haven't discussed Scream yet in that sense. It would be a good fit for discussing satire, especially in the context of horror and humor.

[@oshuhua]

Or Evil Dead 2…

[@Varatho]

It occurred to me while watching that one anime, My Deer Friend Nokotan: All comedy is horror from a certain point of view.

[@DrKhaos23]

I think a pretty good example of this would the podcast, The Silt Verses. Where everything feels wrong yet all the characters are just fine with the appliances made out of sacrificed humans.

[@Amethyst_Topaz]

I haven't listened to that one but what you just described tells me you might like Welcome to Night Vale if you like Slit Verses

[@DrKhaos23]

@@Amethyst_Topaz oh yeah. Definitely check it out. First season is a bit of a slog to get through cause it's the first season but it gets better by the second season.

[@rosep6453]

The Silt Verses doesn’t scare me…but it disturbs me deeply consistently. The episode where Paige is introduced in particular gets me.

[@DrKhaos23]

@rosep6453 Saaaame. That episode was so fucked. Gotta feel bad for Paige... watching her friend like that

[@thegood9]

Nick Nocturne over at "Night Mind" turned me on to this form of horror a long time ago, as I never watched Adult Swim, and, yes, you make great points. I remember EVERY SINGLE ONE of these, and they made a huge impact on my brain. "Insidious" is exactly the word for all of this. Great mini-doc here!

[@ScrimmyBingus42]

FINALLY SOMEONE REMEMBERS ALAN TUTORIAL

[@vermis0161]

i still think of "military time watch" at least once a month

[@WaterShowsProd]

Bob Costas asked Mel Brooks what is the difference between comedy and tragedy. Mel Brooks responded that tragedy is if he gets a papercut. It's going to hurt, he's going to put iodine on it, a badage, and he's going to worry about it. "Comedy is if you fall through a manhole and die."

[@tmountain1]

This is exactly the stuff I love. I just call it liminal - it's not this or that, but both and more so it can't be pinned down. Regular horror doesn't do much for me, but this stuff that eludes my grasp is endlessly satisfying.

[@sagejungwirth4155]

Yes! I'm the exact same but I didn't know what to call it. I like what you call it, liminal is perfect 😁

[@wa5657]

could you recommend more pieces?? even cooler if you know some full length movies

[@SteveBlais5791]

@@wa5657 Skinarmarink is a perfect example I think of what you're looking for. It's highly divisive and some people hated it while others say it's one of the scariest movies they've ever watched. Some aspects of it I did find terrifying, mostly based on thinking back on how terrifying it can be to be a child with an underdeveloped sense of reality.

[@Strikerdude213]

Dont hug me I'm scared always freaked me out a lot more given I just cant stand puppets or claymation at all. Something about it, alongside the shows premise, just never made me able to properly watch it. It's probably the one thing that truly haunts me when I see it and I kinda love it for that.

[@spyro2002]

Interestingly, despite also having had a huge fear of puppets as a kid and being really scared of dhmis when I first learned what it was, once I actually watched it I actually fell in love with it and it became one of my favorite pieces of media from the comedic angle rather than the horror one. It's weird, it's as if someone acknowledging this creepiness I've felt towards puppets my whole life and putting it on display is what it took for me to overcome that fear.

[@MegaJani]

Storytelling. Storytelling never changes.

[@7792pnaurfr]

Lord this comment section is filled with cringe

[@elliart7432]

This is gonna sound super weird to anyone who just knows of them through cultural osmosis, but Dan and Phil actually do this really well. They have this series called “don’t cry, craft” where they just take you through a simple crafting project together. As the video goes on more and more strange things happen that make you go “wait what?” Slowly the music stops, the energy becomes weird and genuinely eerie, and it devolves into some “occult” nonsense. But what keeps you in that uncomfortable place is that it’s never acknowledged as strange, or really at all. They never stop being “Dan and Phil”, the funny and trustworthy people who parasocially feel like your close friends. Your brain wants to rip off the bandaid, accept that the intended feeling is fear and allow yourself to be immersed in it, but the dissonance of that won’t really let you.

[@Zippsterman]

Never thought I'd see "Going to the Store" on this channel

[@Kymlaar]

What you're feeling about all of that is likely a mixture of whimsy and dorcelessness.

[@wompadillœ]

I haven’t watched the whole video yet but I just wanted to mention that I think quite a bit of analogue horror falls into this “uncanny valley” type horror category; the typical twisted grotesquely, familiar comforts of everyday life turned on their heads in a deeply unsettling way, and no one else seems to bat an eye at the utter *wrongness*. Good stuff. Can’t wait to actually watch the video now lol

[@bullishgroup8304]

"it uncomfortable to not know what your feeling" I HAVE AUTISM! I LIVE THAT!

[@Braindouchedotnet]

Might be related to 127% of autists having crippling anxiety.

[@hindsight9213]

Bro is indestructible.

[@ThePhantomSafetyPin]

When people ask me what having autism is like, I show them "Going to the Store". That. It feels like that. You feel like people around you are odd and incomprehensible and in turn you feel incomprehensible to them. You learn you have to appear normal but you never really are. You both feel like the going to the store guy, and feel like people around you are the going to the store guy. And sometimes that's funny and weird, often it's awkward... and often it's unsettling.

[@mekkabon]

i had the exact same thought

[@redpanda6497]

That's alexythimia. A lot of autistic people have it, but not everyone.

[@MISTERASMODEUS]

I love this. Dreams are so often like this. Horror but not nightmares. Wake up and think about it and it is horrifying. Thank you for making this

[@noob19087]

My favourite example of this is the End of Evangelion. More specifically, the whole third impact segment. It's preceded by a scene where the main character and his love interest argue about their relationship, and then finally at the conclusion a happy sort of 'release' song starts playing. Except the release isn't either of their problems being solved, but of the main character suddenly and unexpectedly choking her out of desperation. The song, a calming relaxed reggae beat, continues as the whole cast proceeds to die without any of their character arcs being resolved and the world being destroyed in a spine chilling manner in front of your eyes.

[@chrisdeleuze4493]

Tim and Eric Bedtime Stories is actually an amazing example of this. I found it both funny and deeply deeply scary at the same time. I have no idea where to place it, and that is what makes it unique

[@avacornthelastponybender8583]

"Anxiety might be scarier than terror, at least when you are afraid, you know either or not to run" That is one of the most foreboding things I have ever heard

[@keatonalameda260]

YES !!! I’VE BEEN RANTING ABOUT ALAN RESNICK SINCE 2015/2016 This type of horror are my absolute FAVORITE finds. It’s such a cool way to tell a horror narrative and I love seeing how it evolves & branches off.

[@melasnexperience]

This reminds me of how people would react to the scene in Princess Mononoke where the hero manages to behead a guy with a single arrow with laughter because of that "short circuit" response, and then people got mad about it & thought it was "mocking" the movie instead of being a reflexive WTF response. EDIT: Also, I will forever maintain that the Informercials are the best non-rerun shows on Adult Swim. It's telling that they gained more popularity online than with the block's regular viewership.

[@dionettaeon]

I sort of get the feeling that The Addams Family fits into this category in a way, or at least borders it. If not, maybe it's because this family's schtick of normalizing the macabre has become normalized to _us_ that we more or less know what to expect out of them. Another character that comes to mind is Freaky Fred from Courage the Cowardly Dog. I've heard that a lot of people think this is one of the scariest characters in the show, even though the worst he does is shave people and animals bald. But at the same time, he's perpetually calm and expresses little else than a huge toothy grin, and narrates an internal monologue the entire episode in a rhyming poem.

[@JonFawkes]

From your thesis I figured this would be a video about Resnick, describing his works as anxiety-inducing is quite apt and probably as good as any explanation we could get

[@johnpett1955]

It's almost like a kind of psychological horror. It's horror in the sense that you can't really even fully make it out whether there's a threat or not. It's the kind of terror you get from being uncertain about it all.

[@keldoe1351]

I think a perfect (yet somewhat simple) example of this horror is the dinner table scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just this weird mix of comedy and shock and “what the hell is happening” creating this weird mix of indescribable feelings in the viewer

[@Bennett-BTW]

With regards to the priming section, I think that's what got me with Midsommar. People are so used to horror movies being so dark and grimy, when something so horrific takes place in such a colorful, brightly lit place, its extra unsettling imo

[@polybius8571]

I think a perfect example is Smiling Friends, and some of the scenes in it. The Blackface Demon and Spamtopia are both just so absurd in an already absurd show that I can’t tell if I’m actually supposed to be off put and afraid or if it’s just the same as the rest of the show.

[@TheMightyPika]

Important question humor > fear, it's a "dark comedy" humor < fear, it's a 'pulp horror" so the question is where is the line between the two? where is there the overlap between comedy to fear ratio to change the genre??

[@lancesmith8298]

In any case, I hope to find an exact equal ratio of comedy and horror to produce the first piece of media to be classified as "dark pulp"

[@DeepFleeceheart]

I'm autistic. So, a lot of what lots of people say is "scary" just makes me lift a bemused eyebrow. The stuff in this video feels more like surrealist avant-garde: not really horrific, just dreamlike/nightmarish/otherworldly

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Similar: I don't _think_ I'm autistic, but I did read a lot of 2000AD comics and scifi when I was young, so I think I got desensitized to out-of-context and dark irony.

[@SouthernEli]

"Anxiety. That's almost scarier than terror because when you're afraid, at least you know whether to run." Perfect summary of exactly the vibe we're talking about.

[@Zack-xv2yc]

"The Man in the Bear Suit" scene in The Shining definitely reminds me of this HEAVILY. That messed me up as a kid, but watching it now when I'm at a party completely cracked me up (probably because I was a bit _"tipsy"_ but that's not the point)

[@nawarb.4226]

the beginning of madoka magica kind of had this effect for me, since i knew going in that it would get dark. since i was already on edge, little things stuck out to me as unsettling, like how all the settings were a little too big and too empty

[@GrateGuardian]

There is always something inherently scary anywhere, just depends on where you look.

[@foogriffy]

💯‼️you have anxiety✌️🎉

[@jellyfrenchfries8610]

so happy to finally have a video analyzing not just the works of Alan resnick, but alan himself as the creator

[@Daemonworks]

I'd generally call this The Uncanny. It's sort of a liminal spot of headspace that's unsettling for much the same reason as physical liminal spaces can be. It's almost a familiar thing... but then not. That said, back in '69, Jim Henson made a short experimental film called The Cube, about a man trapped in a featureless white cube of a room. No muppets or anything, just a man, in a cube. It's got a fair bit of this, on the lower-key side of things.

[@PocketChange122]

I love SCP for this reason

[@ianhubble9973]

Me when there's an unknown number between ▮ and ▮

[@miadmahshidi8101]

Love it,tho it can make you pretty nervous because it makes you ask if it actually would happen in the real world...

[@stevenstice6683]

Some start as horror but devolve into dark comedy (like 682 when you get to the termination attempts), while others start comedically but turn to horror (like the multiplying cake, though it turns back to comedy when you realize it's a reference to Eddie Izzard's Cake Or Death).

[@shivers5718]

"It's uncomfortable, isn't it? Not to know how you're supposed to feel?" Is accidentally the hardest hitting line ever when you're neurodivergent

[@dbryant965]

Not nuerodivergent, but I still feel that!

[@davidcummins8125]

It perhaps doesn't cover all of them, but I see a big niche where the media isn't a horror within its own narrative universe, however being forced to live in that universe would be horrifying for us. Our knowledge, beliefs and social cues would not equip us to survive in such a world. That concept is horrifying.

[@lizardperson445]

Absolutely incredible work, the change in accent really threw me at the start

[@AaronL0905]

Alan Resnick's works are my favorite example of this type of horror, comfort from the parts that are normal until broken with the non normal, causing pure discomfort

[@sourwitch2340]

I remember during a Q&A Alex Newell, producer of the Magnus Archives and voice of Martin Blackwood, said this: "Horror is a fail state of comedy. Comedy is a fail state of horror." I think that pretty well explains why you might laugh at something scary, but not shriek at something funny. When the thing intended to be funny does illicit a scared response, it no longer registers as comedy. Or, if, as bad comedy, as comedy that made you uncomfortable, rather than settling you into hilarity. Meanwhile, we can well be aware that something is both meant to be scary, and good at it, and still laugh at it, because we wish it WASN'T good at it. When horror fails to scare you, it easily becomes funny. And if it's scaring you enough, convincing yourself that it's failing instead, that rather than something terrifying it is actually silly, is comforting. There's no real reason to deny that comedy is making you laugh, unless you disagree with the message behind the joke. And at that point, you wouldn't be associating your particular terror at the situation with horror.

[@thenathanimal2909]

I love that whackey naked dancing guy - It brings me so much happiness. I watch that short a few times a year.

[@starlight_talon]

It's almost funny to see Thalasin referenced in this specific context because every time I see a clip all I can think is "Yo, it's my guy dorcelessness!"

[@julesrules7297]

Someone showed me Too Many Cooks for the first time when I was on acid and I had a full blown panic attack.

[@TheSilversepiroth]

If that person was your friend, I hope they aren't anymore because that is _horrendous_ behavior

[@weneedtocook958]

I think it's also related to our 'fear of the unknown'. Something that's been developed in us as a mean of survival. We tend to feel uneasy with darkness because we don't know what's in there, could there be lions that may harm us or just plainly nothing? I could be wrong, great video regardless!

[@Notantoher450]

Bro. I finnaly Found You again. I thought that i lost your channel forever and the oportunity of your content is gone. I am so happe that i could find to watch it again. You have no idea how much i missed it.

[@troin3925]

I love this kind of horror. I like to call it "deceitful horror." Does anyone else remember the game Eversion? While there were a few games before this (some lesser known titles, and I guess screamers like the Scary Maze sort of technically count but not really), the first big example of a deceitful horror video game was Eversion, which was also the first time I've seen a video game do this (it's also not a coincidence that it was one of Dan Salvato's big inspirations for DDLC), and I was blown away by it.

[@Idunnohowabout7364]

1. Makes me feel unsettled and disturbed a bit 2. Is goofy and silly I laughed at it a bit 3. Unsettling and creepy for sure 4.Distressing 5. Confused 6.A bit sad 7. Strange 8. Nothing 9. Nothing again 10. Eerie 11.Curious 12. Silly 13. I know the source material so disturbed These are my feelings to the pictures in the first minute of the video

[@SOBEKCrocodileGod]

This is part of what I loved about Nic Cage in Longlegs. His performance elicits both humor and terror. It’s so uncanny and strange. Like that scene where he starts singing randomly is so uncomfortable, but oddly funny so you don’t quite know how to react

[@GdoubleWB]

This explains why I always laugh at Paul Allen’s death scene in American Psycho. The Priming of Patrick Bateman delightfully describing his favourite album before violently murdering someone with an axe makes it unintentionally hilarious.

[@princecharmling14]

The rubber guy going for a walk killed me. Still does. Its so damn funny 😂

[@elizabethweigle6146]

I’ve heard that laughing used to be the body’s way of asking not to be killed. Almost like an act of submission, like when a dog rolls over to show its belly.

[@9kyuuku999]

Given the tone of Jack Stauber's videos, maybe I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when 'Back' was mentioned.

[@KristofskiKabuki]

I have a theory that when comedy shows/films/etc do tragedy it hits deeper because it’s allowing all emotions to exist within it unlike dramas that take themselves super seriously. I feel like there’s probably a similar thing with horror.

[@tchase4726]

The “new emotions” video is high hilarious surrealism and I’ve loved it from the moment I first saw it. The seriousness of the announcer makes it work.

[@WilliamMacey-g5b]

10:58 my audio glitched and I kept listening for an embarrassingly long time thinking that you were pulling a bait-and-switch on us.

[@SneakyMuffin]

Horror and comedy being so similar is very reminiscent of Jordan Peele's switch from a comedian to a horror director.

[@Blue2x2x]

This kind of horror gets me chills in the good way. I watch something like Local57 or what i call "Corruption Horror".Which these are videos/games that starts innocent and predictable, but slowly and progressively gets corrupted into unease and twisted, till it becomes it's from hell. Like the video game .exe creepypastas. Gets me everytime. Also it's I find it that i get the horror chills if I was the "victim" living in the horror world, rather than being a spectator/bystander. Repeatedly yelling at the oblivious character in the TV to "DON'T GO INTO THE BASEMENT!!". Which breaks the immersion as I get frustrated by it.

[@stevenstice6683]

I assume you know about Spec Ops: The Line and Doki Doki Literature Club. If not, you might like those. The former got removed from Steam though, so you'll have to hunt down a physical copy.

[@Blue2x2x]

@@stevenstice6683 I'm fully aware of them both. Thank you though

[@jankarieben1071]

I think describing what you are seeing isn’t really the description that defines what’s so unsettling about it, I like to think if it as “cerebral horror,” when what you see challenges your core views of your personal reality, like how cosmic horror may not be scary at face value, but the implications are what is truly terrifying about it.

[@kindoflame]

4:55 As someone who has spent time around preschoolers, I can confirm that people do shriek in terror at funny stuff.

[@boredofcorn3151]

I really wish child me could have had horror and comedy's similarities explained to me this way, i just thought more 'normal' children laughing at horror was absolutely terrifying, signalling some debauched hunger I didn't possess, feeling like a porkchop in a room with 20 rabid dogs.

[@Organman2410]

Reminds me of the works or Trevor Henderson, especially the giants. It’s more unnerving when they’re NOT threatening you, when they just…exist, not caring what you believe or feel about them.

[@adamtapparo2168]

I feel like meatcanyon does this really well. Sometimes his stuff is funny, sometimes it’s horrifying and other times I’m not sure which one I’m supposed to be feeling

[@ASM42186]

Uncertainty is always more uncomfortable than that actual confrontation, whatever it may be. I think that's why the anxiety-inducing all-buildup / no payoff style of horror you're describing is "the most frightening" without being overtly frightening. It borders on not just the unknown, i.e. being confused about something you're watching but the UNKNOWABLE, making it almost cosmic in nature. I think it might also relate to our fear of mental decline, wherein we might lose our ability to comprehend or interact with reality, thereby losing our agency. The helplessness we feel as we grasp for some sort of meaning or release in these horror shorts, mirrors the loss of agency we could experience with mental disorders. Either way, this video primed me into thinking the 80,000 hours ad at the end of the video to follow the same theme: i.e. starting out benign and with the slightly jarring change in the tone of your "advertiser voice" and slowly devolve into something sinister or incomprehensible. And i don't know whether or not that was intentional.

[@ShadowReignhart]

A few of the ones in the beginning could be considered Analog Horror, at the very least.

[@foolofdaggers7555]

The way you talk about creating anxiety through conflicting expectations reminds me of experiences I’ve had where I wasn’t sure whether someone was mockingly imitating a demographic, or was actually part of that demographic in a way that just happened to align with stereotypes. In hindsight it was probably the former, but because I’m autistic, I always second-guess my interpretation of the cues for these sorts of things and it makes the interaction super uncomfortable.

[@rikkuwolf4166]

What’s the word for a cat hissing. Whatever that is is how they make me feel, arched back, bottle brush tail.

[@sourwitch2340]

Anarchist

[@ryle4h]

Just went to the intro stinger and you've asked why analog horror is so effective, and the answer for me is that the horror feels the same as when you get scared in real life. The best example IMO is when the lady starts running in unedited footage of a bear. I've been exactly that sort of frightened before. Horror realism.

[@ariannatorres3799]

You're so right for this, I remember my friend showed me the "going to the store" vid years ago and I was on edge the whole time because I really wasn't sure what this was

[@Tugar_Dumkin]

Your animated intro is gorgeous, I love the way your hands look when they move

[@ADudeWhoDo]

I feel like fear mostly comes from thinking about what could happen but is not yet guaranteed, while humor comes from realizing that it doesn’t matter (whether it’s because it’s not real or nothing’s going to change it) and adding a scary setup makes you think about what going to happen and thus makes it seem preventable because you knew that something would happen, whereas a comedic setup makes everything seem safe and casual so what happens next feels unexpected and unpreventable.

[@duddernator]

Finally! This is the kinda horror I enjoy/want to create. The unsettling feeling of not knowing how to feel that lingers with you long after the experience is ever. Now I have words that can help me articulate what I mean.

[@adams5613]

I belive it was in Jonny the homicidal maniac by Velasquez, the creater of Zim, where he describes a movie he wanted to make that was composed of this idea but more. A t rex hewing on a kid..... for 10 minutes a "love scene" where one peson was expelling an alien poison that was making they lose it from everywhere. Then back to the dino chewing. That's just what i remember. No resolution, just hanging on expectation.

[@sirwoodlive4585]

Wow, that's the first time I've seen Alan tutorial actually represented in, for lack of a better word, youtube horror. 👏 Bravo 👏

[@derickwiggins7671]

The scene in Tommy when his mom smashes a TV and beans come out of it all over it shouldn't of scared me but it was one of the most visceral experiences of my childhood still think of it from time to time

[@riffz6065]

Horror is the best genre for so many reasons. One is that it's by far the most creative visually as well as conceptually. Another is that it doesn't have to fit in a category to elicit emotions in you that are extremely effective. This is why I say some of the greatest pieces of horror media aren't even trying to scare you. They're just telling amazing stories and have a way of reaching the feelings that make you human.

[@ThefifthBishopofGord]

I think Cyriak has some videos that are in this kind of category. For the videos of his that fall in this category it matters what you find horrifying or humorous. If you are more susceptible to being sacred it might be scary or if you find it easier to laugh at it might ruin the experience. Possibly even me telling you about before hand would ruin it for you since you have expirations that might change your perspective.

[@austincde]

Cyriak mentioned!! What is...what am I looking at😮

[@PeiceofNick]

If you want a really good and underated example of absurd horror, I high recommend Jake Bowen's Uncle Samsonite series. The fact that the Bowen brothers managed to make an entire series whose the main monster is a poorly made cgi Cat/Pig thing in supsenders that dances to the song Pony by Ginuwine (the song actually plays a mojor role in the entire series in fact) is as impressive as it is fucking insane just from how I described it. If you ever have the time, please, go gove the series a bing watch. Its worth it to "have some fun with Uncle Samsonite" and to "Jump on It."

[@subtlegong2817]

I’ve always found challenging content like Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared or Adult Swim’s more experimental stuff soothing. I’ll sometimes play an episode of Off The Air right before I sleep because it gives my brain dreamlike stimulation. I think that’s the point of works like the ones described

[@ladystein2246]

Comedy in horror should be a break of fear, or maybe a realization of how the situation can be silly for that moment. It can also be a bonding moment for a group. It shows that we are together and can face anything together.

[@Laribhaven]

This type of horror (I usually call absurdity horror) is something that I love. It felt so perfectly made for KZbin and Adult Swim. Because outside of those places is hard to describe this level of weirdness, without looking like a manic when you said you found funny but also terrified.

[@Jeffry58835]

I don’t know how to feel about most things that’s probably because I don’t fully understand my own emotions to begin with