Trypophobia might be one of the Internet's most talked about phobias that you haven't heard of by name. The term is Greek for "boring holes"—trypo—and "fear"—phobia—and amounts to a fear of clusters of small holes.

The term entered the popular lexicon around 2009 when it was coined by a student at SUNY-Albany who created a Facebook page for anecdotal and self-diagnosed incidences. Since then, interest in the phenomenon has skyrocketed.

Online forums on Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook serve as a seemingly schadenfreudian hub for people to express their shared revulsion while sharing images of the marked images.

(When I shared an image of a lotus flower on my Twitter account, responses ranged from people who were confused about why it was disturbing