Khloé Kardashian has always been the more relatable member of the reality family, sometimes for better and sometimes for much worse. Her social media usage has helped that image, with her latest admission on X/Twitter hitting close to home for a few people.
While struggling with X’s seemingly ruined structure and functionality, Kardashian reveals that she’s got a “low-key” fear of the ocean fueled by some full-on fear of whales. “This has been a phobia of mine for years. I don’t want anything ad to happen to whales and I know the phobia is totally irrational,” Khloé writes. “But we don’t pick our phobias. I low-key have a fear of the ocean, but a whale I can’t even look at, it freaksme out so much.”
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Fear of whales is a real phobia, cetaphobia, which takes its origins from the word for large fish, cetus, and the word phobos, better known as the Greek God of fear. Or is it the Greek word ketos, or sea monster, and phobos? Seems like there are a few paths to the same conclusion, people are afraid of whales even if they’ll never get close to one in their lives. The Atlantic‘s Kate Horowitz wrote a piece on her own cetaphobia, hoping to prove to readers that fears are real, even if they’re irrational.
The discussion online seems to come as a result of the latest episode of The Kardashians, where Khloe reveals she is in a group chat labeled “No Whales” and mistakenly spills those beans while on vacation in Mexico with the rest of the clan. “Why is this whale season? Like, what are they doing? Mating? That’s sick,” Khloe says in the episode. “And why do they come to the shore? That is way too close for my comfort.”
It seems that Kim Kardashian, who was with her sister, was in the mood to needle her a bit on the whales. She also reveals later that her daughter, True, has learned her mother’s fear and leans into it.
“Off the coast of California, you didn’t hear about the couple that got swallowed up by the f-ing whale and then got spit back out because it was an accident? Uh uh. This f-ing thing is so big you don’t see it coming and there’s no ripples, there’s no warning. That’s weird,” she says. “And my daughter bullies me. She draws me photos of whales just to f— with me and she thinks it’s so funny. Everyone turns into a f—ing ass— at some point, oh my god.”
Plenty of fans were sympathetic to Khloé’s fears. She’s far from alone in this fear, especially when you’ve got orcas attacking boats, bullying sailors and going on rage-fueled vengeance sprees against mortal enemies. It also highlights that we’ve got a severe lack of friendly jumping whales in today’s media landscape.
