Do you know if they adapt the shows to the countries they're in? I'm wondering how universally understood clowns are.

So nice

I was at that FOO Camp, just scrolled through photos and found myself & friends. Thank you for the memories :-)

There's quite a few of these circus outreach projects (off the top of my head I know performers without borders and the flying seagull project, but there are lots more) and they all seem to be small, scrappy, run by one or two long term organizers and with projects staffed by volunteers. It's not the type of charity that receives enough money to grow big enough to have the structure and paperwork that can be evaluated against the metrics used to judge larger organisations. I know that they often seek grants from larger charities and that requires a decent level of review & documentation.

I know someone who's worked with them and it seems like a very legitimate scrappy organization

Interesting question. I don’t know if there is but I presume there isn’t, unlike doctors, artists, or journalists, engineers usually need a lot of thing to come together to perform our specialized skills, which means we probably need local and financial support far greater then the previous.

It can be argued that the same applied to doctors, and I agree with that, however MSF is such a massive organization, with such high recognition that they are able to perform a lot of good work despite the complexity of logistics and support needed.

Perhaps the immediate benefit of even rudimentary medical aid is still highly appreciated even if lacking compared to if there were systems in place to fully support the skill. I think the benefits of skilled engineers are not nearly as universal without support.

EDIT: I found this article called A-To-Z Guide of the World’s “without Borders” Groups[1], which included a Technology without Borders group[2]. And I see some of the areas they focus on include water, energy, and waste. I can actually see how rudimentary waste management infrastructure can be of great help for impoverished communities, so perhaps I was wrong to doubt it.

1: https://matadornetwork.com/change/a-to-z-guide-of-the-worlds...

2: https://www.teog.ngo/?lang=en

At one point this existed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geeks_Without_Bounds

Their website doesn’t seem to be doing well at the moment though.

I originally learned about it from https://seagl.org/archive/2017/open-source-from-standing-roc...

Probably less triggering at scale, but similarly to a lot of comments posted here, my mother is deathly afraid of magicians. I have seen the blood drain from her face as she grips the arms of her chair and looks around in a panic at the mention of magicians. I have witnessed full out panic attacks on encounters with real life magicians, and discomfort that one would only typically associate with watching "torture porn" or a particularly squirm-inducing Dr Pimple Popper when magicians appear on TV. Revulsion when learning that the actor Ricky Jay was more known for his work as a magician.

Conversely my mother had regular conversations with a woman who worked as a clown at a local restaurant, which caused her no displeasure.

My thought is that clowns are very good at making people laugh and perhaps less at installing healthcare infrastructure.

Also spreading joy can be just as important as material needs. It's an orthogonal dimension.

For those unsure of the reference, bednets are arguably one of the most cost-effective ways to make a positive impact in people's lives:

https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities <-- see Against Malaria Foundation

(I don't have coulrophobia)

The distortion of the facial expressions can make it harder to read and that can cause anxiety in some.

Consider the other extreme - https://twitter.com/SchrebersSister/status/11872730519494082... and that the distortion or the lack of features can be anxiety provoking.

If the clown face is always happy, or always sad, even if the person shouldn't be. Are they looking at you, can you track where they are looking? Are their eyes open or closed?

The facial recognition wiring in the brain could be sending "I don't know what to do with this" signals to the rest of the consciousness and that's leading to the corresponding anxiety that then manifests as a fear of clowns.

---

Tangent of tangent that I was reminded of: Using AI to Find Where Clowns End and Juggalos Begin - https://medium.com/@nhoral/using-ai-to-find-where-clowns-end...

ICP doesn't just stand for IBM Cloud Private.

> ... I don't get it.

That's thing with irrational fears.

Reminds me of Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey from Saturday Night Live:

To me, clowns aren’t funny. In fact, they’re kind of scary. I’ve wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.

For me, it is highly dependent on the context.

If I see a clown in the midst of a performance, it's fine. It feels "right". You're kind of far away from where they are, and them wearing colorful clothes and strange makeup makes sense because it helps a large crowd see their movements a bit easier. It's the "home" of the clown.

If I see a clown doing anything mundane, or just not actively "on" performing in front of a crowd it feels repulsive and weird. Clown just walking down the street? Horrible. Taking pictures with a group of people? Gross. It feels unnatural. It's like the hairy child vomiting photo. [1]

The worst is if I see a clown eating or smoking. A clown is a mechanism of performance and entertainment. For them to be "merely human", to be doing something relaxing evokes a kind of juxtaposition that leads to a kind of horror and disgust I can't quite describe. It's like walking down the road and coming across a Silverback Gorilla casually sipping a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper - it's an incongruity.

Also, I'm pretty sure the initial spark for my weirdness with clowns started with The Simpsons. [2]

[1] https://www.trendzified.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/what-...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZcfGRroiaA

For me, it's a "man behind the mask" thing. Clowns play big, with exaggerated expressions and responses.

The incongruence between the acting and the person behind the acting wigs me out.

I tried making a clown using stable diffusion one day by blending 3 different clown-generating prompts together, and the result that came out was a horrifyingly grotesque inhuman monster. I've never had that happen just blending prompts together to make normal people. The clown makeup screws with how their faces are embedded or something. It ended up with Giger-esque multiple sets of teeth. I can only assume there's a similar phenomenon going on in peoples' imagination.

Dunno for sure, I've always found them creepy and repulsive.

I do recall flipping through the channels as a child and coming across one of the scarier scenes from It. That might have some bearing on this.

Clowns don't bother me, but I think it might be an uncanny valley thing. Clowns have exaggerated human features, ones that could be grotesque if they were real. I think that means they can share an element with body horror, which does bother me.

What causes fear of clowns? Probably the prevalence of both evil clowns (John Wayne Gacy, Stephen King's It, the recent Evil Clown meme). That, and the prevalence of the fear of clowns.

for me it was a hobo clown painting in the family room whose eyes always followed me as a child. told my parents it was scary but it never came down, i just assumed it had a lock on my parents souls or something.

I always thought it was a joke, until I met someone that was genuinely afflicted by it. On the plus side, it's really fun to go through haunted houses with them around Halloween.

The Mossad must be green with envy.

Where can we support Mimes with Borders?