Trigger Warning: Apple Watch UI Might Make You Sick

I have mild trypophobia.

If you’re not familiar with the term, it is the “pathological fear of objects with irregular patterns of holes.” While the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t recognize this as a “mental disorder” (because it isn’t, and marginalizing people with normal human fears and concerns is a pretty scummy thing to do), it is as legitimate as any other phobia. It’s probably one of the more common ones, too, and it didn’t even take some fancy-pants PhD research scientist to figure it out.

In fact, the entire trypophobia “controversy” stems from the fact that it is the first crowd-sourced psychological “condition” of significant merit, having been identified, propagated, and coined entirely on the Internet. There’s a popular website, a Facebook group, an active subreddit, and even a Know Your Meme destination dedicated to to all this wonderful, stomach-churning awfulness. This makes the medical establishment upset, but it makes me very happy.

Unfortunately, if you’ve got a worse case of the holey terrors than I do, the Apple Watch UI might make you very sick:

Indeed, ever since Apple showed off its new wearable last year, I’ve been waiting for the inevitable complaints from my fellow trypophobics. But trypophobia is like so many other fears and discomforts: For many folks, they simply don’t know they’ve got it until someone else points it out. Popular Science explains:

Trypophobia may also be catching. An element of so-called emotional contagion seems to be at work on Facebook, where some group members say they didn’t realize they were trypophobic until they started reading others’ comments and clicking on the pictures. “It’s not unusual to laugh harder at a funny movie if others around you are laughing,” [Ryerson Univerity psychologist Martin] Antony explains. “In the same way, we may be more likely to experience fear in a particular moment if others around us are fearful.”

(Steve Jobs famously said the same thing about our innate desire for revolutionary technology. Coincidence? I think not.)

Did it work? Did I just cancel your preorder?

If you’re feeling sick to your stomach, hang in there. At least now you know why they really made Apple Watch IPX7 water-resistant.