I'm Scared of Rollercoasters. Can I Get Over My Fear?
January 27th 2025 | Video
Dearest Being,
The Idea of the Week is live:
Tom Scott, 2022
Potential Ways Into This Idea:
View it as a profound analysis on human fear.
See it as an artist using himself to capture truth.
Relate Tom’s emotional journey to a phobia of your own.
Absorb it as an outright comedy piece.
IDEA | VIDEO
How Do We Capture Emotional Honesty?
I had been a relatively close follower of Tom Scott when I first came across this video on his second Youtube channel, a space where he focuses on long-form versions of his usual work; mini-documentaries with him as the subject; a science-based style of gonzo-journalism.
The thumbnail and title leads one to believe there will be a certain level of goofiness pervading the video, or at the very least, a certain shallow clickbait element, designed to draw you in, and ultimately, disappoint you.
But here, the opposite is true.
Tom underplays what I found to be one of the most moving pieces of Art I’ve ever absorbed on the platform. Something smothered in a rare element of genuine humanity. Nothing forced or held back to save face or seem strong. Just an honest expression of emotion. A creative piece ripe to resonated with.
Tom’s ability to communicate his honest feelings in real time, through a sort of verbal stream of consciousness, offers a strangely direct insight into how the human mind processes fear — specifically in its phobia form.
It’s odd to see a person say they strongly feel one thing and then, without moving an inch, suddenly say they feel the exact opposite. And it’s even more odd for this to resonate, or seem truthful, to an audience member like myself.
But it does.
If this was the climactic scene to a film, for instance, where the protagonist was to finally overcome his fear and transform, we’d probably hurl something at the screen and wonder why the fuck we just wasted two hours of our lives.
But the mundanity of it all is closer to the truth. We often don’t face grand moments of heroism that change our personalities in a matter of mere moments. No lightbulbs appear above our heads when a life-defining idea manifests. No signs shine when we change a core opinion. No cartoon heart leaps out of our chest when, suddenly, we realise that we’ve fallen in love.
Often, the monumental shifts of our psychological lives come with subtle actions. And if we decided to freely talk through these experiences, as Tom does here, maybe we too would find ourselves marking a broken-through mental barrier with the seemingly out of nowhere chant, “Yes. Have it!”
But I suppose, with art, this is often what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to cram an emotional evolution into a short timeframe. We’re trying to show a character’s transformation with actions, rather than words. But there’s no denying that I feel something profound every time I watch a frozen Tom Scott strapped into a child’s Choo Choo Train ride declare that he’s just found pure delight on the other side of absolute terror.
And I think that’s because there’s such little room for dishonesty here.1 It’s just a man, a rollercoaster, and a camera. No one was asking for this. Grown men crying on rollercoasters isn’t Trending. This was just something that came from the heart, a real affliction. And perhaps, if there was more pageantry involved, I wouldn’t be as moved as I am by the end.
What Scott accomplishes here, perhaps indirectly, is what most artists strive for in their work. An honest communication of how feelings travel through our bodies, take control of us, and ultimately, shape our perception of reality.
So, how do we capture emotional honesty in the things we create? Well, it’s hard. No fucking shit. Some could even argue it’s impossible. Whenever we try to capture something we strip it of it’s unbiased truth. It’s almost necessary in order to share it in any consumable form. Decisions like what to film and how to edit brands our perspective onto the piece. It now has our scent, whether that was intended, or not.
One answer, though, may lie in the realm of comedy.
There’s a definite humour aspect to this video, but not in the calculated way you might think. Tom is not that funny (Sorry Tom), and yet, I find myself laughing out loud when he’s panicking on the coasters, before he breaks through his mental barrier. And this is an interesting thing to note about the nature of comedy, and perhaps creation too. It’s the honesty of the situation that makes it resonate, not any performance or well-written joke. It’s just Tom’s real “Pit-of-the-stomach dread,” and his honest relationship to it.
As artists, we strive hard to manufacture an experience that seems to come ever so naturally when the emotional context is right. And it begs the question: What if, more often, we try to shift our craft from inventing things that only seem real, to instead, figuring out a method to accurately capture sincere shreds of our humanity.
Alas, I think I’ll end the Idea of the Week with this final point:
Our friends are often their funniest when they’re being themselves, and almost never because of a joke they’ve spent days crafting. We fall in love with people because of who they genuinely are, not because of some scarf they’re wearing. We feel empathy for the people we can truly relate to on some level. And so, if we wish to capture some form of emotional honesty, we must be willing to play the fool, like Tom does here. We must be willing to be totally ourselves, publicly, without sugar-coating anything, especially when it doesn’t suit. Because the likelihood is we’re not alone in how we feel.
QUOTES | TOM SCOTT
“Yes, this is fine, as long as — What happens if I try and panic?”
“This is fine. This is a kid’s ride. This is absolutely (Big drop)…You’re fine.”
“That’s so much more and you’re legs are dangling and erm…”
“Yes! Have it!”
“I like rollercoasters. I love rollercoasters.”
“All the years of my life that I spent not going on things like that because I was scared. I have spent so many years being scared, and I’m not anymore.”
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Tom Scott
Tom Scott is an educator of the specific, unusual, and profound, often using himself as a human guinea pig.
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Ok, there’s an advert shoved right into the middle of it all, but even here Tom makes a point of bringing it to an honest place. ‘They gave me this script, but I thought I’d just tell you how it really helped me.’ If anything, the advert provides context for first-time viewers of Tom. We get a sense of his genuine baseline persona. Something to compare against the wailing man on the rollercoaster.