As someone afraid of clowns, this is a catastrophic failure of clown containment.
I get the fear of crazy looking ones like Pennywise, but how is that different from the fear of any non-clown maniac with a crazy look on their face and intent to murder? You could put a guy in a Pluto (Goofy's dog) costume with a serial killer grin on his face wielding a machete and I'd be just as scared.
I will say thought that as an adult perhaps a dislike for clowns cause they're terribly unfunny is logical. Cause someone trying hard to make you laugh especially through slapstick humor rarely works out. But I'm sticking to the fear definition of phobia and not dislike definition.
But a fear of all clowns just cause .... I don't get it.
That's thing with irrational fears.
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 mean many children are scared of Santa due to it being a stranger in their house but I see no adults say they are scared of Santa.
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.
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.
The incongruence between the acting and the person behind the acting wigs me out.
The way it makes me feel is a little like the response evoked by the movie Coraline, which used dolls with big black button eyes and no noses to evoke a queasy kind of horror-lite response.
It doesn't have to be large features though, it can be exaggerated small ones too. For example, Art the Clown has a small black dot on the tip of his otherwise white nose. It's unsettling.
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-...
Edit- higher resolution pic: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/344736546477294864/