What Is Trypophobia And What Does It Have To Do With The New iPhone?

The word “trypophobia” was trending on Twitter after Apple Inc. AAPL introduced its new iPhone 11 Pro, giving millions an opportunity to learn a new word, and leaving sufferers pleading that their unusual fear is a real problem.

Trypophobia is a fear of small holes, particularly clustered together.

The new iPhone 11 Pro has three cameras clustered together in one corner of the back of the phone. People with this fear of small holes really didn't like it.

For some on Twitter, it raised fears of something popping out of one of the camera holes. Or crawling out of it. But lots of things with holes — honeycombs, pancakes, coral, the eyes of certain insects — seem to make trypophobes squeamish, according to people who have the condition, and people who study it.

"It's something you don't see in the natural world -- except in poisonous animals," Geoff Cole, a visual scientist at the University of Essex in England, told CNN.

Actually you do see it in nature.

And now some see it on the iPhone, too.

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