Phobophilia

I know that everyone is afraid of something (well maybe not Ben Affleck). I also know that as a species we have to have a name for everything. Thankfully we have the Greek language to fall back on to categorize things, and with that in mind I present the Phobia List, a very impressive list of the different phobias out there.

My favorites include:

• Coulrophobia - Fear of clowns, in honor of a close friend.
• Alliumphobia - fear of garlic, I'm surprised there are non-undead that are truly afraid of garlic.
• Atomosophobia & Lepraphobia - Fear of atomic explosions and leprosy, respectively. Isn't this all of us?
• Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - Fear of the number 666, that's just a frakking awesome word right there.
• Phobophobia - Fear of fears. Isn't that ironic?
• Proctophobia - Fear of rectums. No comment (I'll leave comments on this to the Jackal).
• Zemmiphobia - Fear of the great mole rat. Holy specific fear batman!

My favorite fake phobia has to be Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (fear of long words), there's no way this is accurate. Actually I wonder about the accuracies of a lot of them. The website claims that all phobias on the list are from some reference (not sure what that means). Real or not, though, the list is entertaining. Another interesting part of this, if you Google any of these phobias, more often than not a link to ABC or NBC news pops up. A little proof that the medias job is to keep us scared.

I am a tad scared of it's counterpart, a list of "-philias"...