Is this weird:

[lovmelovmycats]

When I look at the open ocean, or even scantly inhabited swaths of land on online maps, I feel fear akin to fear of heights

Comments

[baronlaw]

You know those scenes in the opening of movies where they just film out the bottom of a helicopter while flying over skyscrappers?

Those get to me. :)

[lovmelovmycats]

Yeah, like West Side Story? It's funny what can trigger these kinds of fears.

[baronlaw]

Modern movies are much worse, the sense of realing hanging over nothing from a great height... think I'll go grip the Earth for a moment. ;)

[lovmelovmycats]

Yeah! I get ya.
I love West Side Story.

[devonapple]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassophobia

It sounds like a known phobia, probably similar to Agoraphobia.

[lovmelovmycats]

But I'm not afraid of the real ocean or empty space, I'm only afraid of the Google Maps pictures of them. The Pacific Islands page of a physical atlas doesn't bother me, but looking at small islands while zoomed out on Google Maps does. I don't know, the blue is too dark or something. On paper maps, there are lines and text and the blue is such an unrealistic light blue, and that helps keep me grounded in reality, I think. :)

I was doing a Google Maps flyover of Canada this morning, and it freaked me out too. There were NO settlements marked in Yukon, Northwest Terretories, or Nunavut at the level I was zoomed out. When I zoomed in a little bit more, there were still no towns, just some National Parks. Now, I'm sure the map would show me towns at some level of zoom, but to see them I would have to scroll/crisscross a lot of empty space still.

[devonapple]

Oops: I parsed your opening sentence in a way you did not intend.