Dr. Strangeride
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Roller Coaster
Haters and lovers
I imagine that growing up in a middle class family in a developed country means that you get to visit a big amusement park at least once or twice a year. As a little kid, you get to enjoy all the kiddie rides like bumper cars and carousels. But by the age of 10 or so, you manage to grow past the “You must be THIS tall to ride” line on the board by the big roller coaster at the park.
Which means that you might have to make the big decision: To ride, or not to ride?
For boys, this becomes one of their first rites of passage into adulthood. The huge, scary coaster is what separates the men from the boys. Eventually, the cool boys end up riding the coaster together, while the wimps who chickened out are doomed to stick to the “family friendly” rides, possibly forever.
For girls, I believe that the matter of riding the coaster doesn’t directly affect their intrasexual hierarchy. However, by the age of 10 the boys’ and girls’ worlds start slowly merging together, and the importance of their respective preteen intrasexual hierarchies wanes, as a new common mixed group hierarchy starts coming together.
Relatedly, the Redpill / evo psych notion that women are attracted to men at the top of their intrasexual hierarchy seems to be true for women of all ages, even the very youngest ones, who are just starting to experience the strange feeling of being attracted to the opposite sex. So, if a girl wants to hang out with the cool boys as they spend most of their time on their special day at the amusement park chilling together in waiting lines and lay foundations for her future status and membership in the newly forming mixed “cool people” group, she has to be up for the ride herself.
I know I might be exaggerating the impact of riding coasters on teen/tween social dynamics here. Still, this represents a common adolescent pattern for stuff like drinking, smoking, partying and having sex: the cool boys want to try it first as their next rite of passage, the cool girls do it as well to keep up with the boys, and at least initially, the rest thinks that the cool boys and girls are crazy.
But typically, the normies eventually start doing it too, and the Current Thing becomes the new normal for everyone except the low status nerds. Whereas the decision of whether to ride the big roller coasters or not seems to set the kids onto a fixed path towards one of the two common adult amusement park customer identities:
The coaster lover, who just enjoys riding roller coasters.
The coaster hater, who thinks that coaster riders are crazy idiots.
A typical behavior of a coaster hater at the amusement park is pointing his or her finger at the big coaster in the distance and exclaiming with contempt:
That looks horrible. I would NEVER ever want to ride THAT!
When confronted by the coaster lover, the coaster hater either tries to excuse him/herself by bringing up stuff like motion sickness and other real or imaginary conditions, say that the just don’t enjoy it (category error - you can’t say whether you enjoy something you’ve never done) or act defensive by asserting that everyone should be allowed to just do what they want.
Needless to say, this is a cope.
The coaster incel
By now, you might have already started wondering why a mid-30s guy is rambling on about the impact of roller coasters on teen/tween social dynamics. And if you have, you most probably think this is because a long time ago, that same guy turned out to be a teenage wimp who chickened out when his friends rode the big coaster and became a coaster hater, and even though many years have passed, he is still suffering from some sort of an inferiority complex.
However, that answer would only be around 20% right.
I was not lucky enough to grow up in a developed country, at least not by amusement park standards. The only amusement park-like things available in the 2000s in Poland were the crappy traveling carnival fairs, and one stationary park that looked like it was built by the communists in the 50’s, most likely because it was literally built by the communists in the 50’s. Everything looked old, rusty and unsafe, as if it was made from spare parts from a Soviet Cold War bunker. Some attractions were fun, but otherwise it was a sad, depressing place.
When I was 18, I visited the Parque de Atracciones in Madrid during a trip to Spain with my friends. This was my first and only chance to ride the big roller coaster as a teenager. And I blew it big time.
I figured that I’d better start with something smaller and then work my way up. Unfortunately, the smaller thing I decided to try first was the Tarantula spinning coaster - “one of the taller and faster spinning models out there”:
I vividly remember how I screamed loudly throughout the entire ride.
It was horrible. I hated it.
My friends who got to ride both the big coasters and the Tarantula told me that the big ones are a lot more fun and the thing I rode was actually the worst one. But still, I decided that I was done with coasters. I became a coaster hater.
In fact, having had no access to amusement parks for most of my life, and blewing the only shot I ever had at the glorified teenage coaster ride probably made me a special type of coaster hater: a coaster incel.
Redemption
After the fall of the pro-Soviet socialist regime in 1989, Poland experienced rapid development, driven by the idea of catching up with the cultural, economical and social standards of the Western developed countries.
10 years ago, Poland finally became a Western developed country, with the opening of the Energylandia amusement park. Over the years, the park has grown immensely and now includes 19 roller coasters, including two hypercoasters with current or former world records in some categories.
I pondered the idea of visiting the Energylandia park once in a while. However, for most of the time, a family trip to a roller coaster park with my wife - a stark coaster hater with a severe case of motion sickness - and a baby girl didn’t seem like a good idea.
But this year, our daugther turned 4 and we were invited by my wife’s sister to tag along on their trip to Energylandia for her daughter’s birthday - we couldn’t say no, and we visited the park last Saturday.
As a good father I obviously planned to have fun together with my family… for most of the time, at least. As the girls and the adult coaster haters lined up for a Christmas gingerbread workshop attraction, I politely excused myself and snuck out to get my chance for coaster redemption.
I first rode the mid-sized Dragon coaster, the largest one in the “family” section of the park - it was all right, so I felt like I can one up. I didn’t feel like hitting the hypercoasters, but I did end up riding the Mayan - a big, fast and twisted coaster with lots of inversions (loops, corkscrews, barrel rolls) and tight turns:
It was awesome. I loved it.
Not only did I manage to redeem myself. I converted - I’m a coaster lover now.
As a former coaster hater, I now have insight into both coaster hater and coaster lover experience and line of thought. Based on that, I believe I can describe them in a way that could allow both groups to better understand each other.
A good coaster is a fun coaster
As a coaster hater, I thought that coaster lovers are crazy. More specifically, I estimated that ~10% may have some kind of a psychological or physiological disorder, like an adrenaline addiction or a vestibular system dysfunction. The rest, I hypothesized, are probably playing some sort of a costly virtue signalling status game, trying to follow their leader or fit in with their group.
My alternate theory was that the coaster lovers are like chilli pepper eaters.
I like spicy foods, but I have my limits. For most of my life, I thought that people like the competitive chilli eaters either simply love spicy food more than me and probably made their mouths and throats numb from eating progesively spicier peppers over time. Or maybe they have some sort of dysfunction and they just can’t feel the heat.
However, the episode of the Netflix docuseries We Are The Champions about competitive chilli eaters shows who they really are: masochists. It burns like hell, yet they crave more of that feeling. At least the ones interviewed for the show turned out to be severely broken people with a history of traumatic experience or substance abuse. The cathartic experience of burning their mouths and throats with the world’s hottest peppers became their vital coping mechanism.
I kind of thought that the coaster lovers were also like that.
All of this was based on the false assumption that riding the big coaster must feel awful. This is the top level coaster hater cope, itself rooted in lower level copes based on ignoring - either inadvertently or deliberately - the laws of physics, biology and social proof.
One can’t help but notice that the big coasters are by far the most popular rides in any given amusement park. Some travel for hundreds of miles and then stand in line for over an hour just to experience a one minute ride on their favorite coaster. But the coaster haters fail to notice that the waiting lines wouldn’t be that long if most coaster riders hated and regretted their experience. But they love it so much, that rather than checking out some other, less popular rides, they want to do it all over again, even if it means spending another hour in the waiting line.
Coaster haters don’t believe in the wisdom of crowds. They classify roller coasters as one of the things that are wildly popular, yet bad or stupid, like fast food, gambling, alcohol, tabloids, soap operas, reality TV, video games and social media. They think they’re better than that.
Obviously, the crowds are bad at choosing things that are smart or good for them. But they are great at choosing things that are FUN. People can be masochistic, but the crowd never is.
Another thing is that the amusement parks are like music festivals. The big coasters are like headliners - they gather the biggest crowd and sell most of the tickets. So, if you’re running a festival, you better make sure to sign on some great artists as headliners. The supporting bands that warm up the crowd before the big stars take the main stage, the indie artists playing on the small stage on the far side of the venue - it’s not a big deal if they suck. But your headliners must be top notch.
This explains the existence of crappy mid-sized coasters like the Tarantula spinning coaster I rode in Madrid. They are for masochists, people with unusual preferences and adrenaline junkies who need a super extra kick. But it doesn’t matter if the experience sucks for everyone else.
Maybe people can appreciate the ride on the big fun coaster more if they can compare it with the horrible experience of riding the crappy one. Or maybe this is the amusement park’s way of conditioning by punishment: “You didn’t want to spend another hour waiting for your next ride on the big coaster and wanted to try something else instead? Shame on you! You got what you deserved, now get back in the waiting line.” Selling expensive tickets to an enclosed area where various services are offered and then somehow making sure your customers spend more time in waiting lines than actually using the services (or buy skip-the-line tickets which cost more than the entry ticket) is a great business model.
The physics/biology cope is based on how horrible riding the big coaster looks and feels from the outside. The coaster hater sees coaster lovers go upside down in loops and corkscrews and into sharp turns and concludes that they must be enduring physical torture.
However, the impressions of coaster haters are completely irrelevant. What matters is what the coaster lover sees and feels in his highly non-intertial reference frame.
The knowledge of physics actually allows us to model and understand what the coaster lover feels based on what he sees. The Mayan coaster I got to ride is rated at 5 G, which puts it among the highest G-force coasters in the world. But in the video above you can see that for most of the ride, the rider sees that the track before him is going upwards. Loops, corkscrews, banked turns - all of these, no matter if upside down or not, are seen and felt like riding along a track that’s going upwards. Which means that what the rider feels for most of the ride is just upward acceleration.
Due to gravity, we constantly feel the equivalent of 1 G of upward acceleration. And the human body evolved to endure momentary upward acceleration of up to 5 G, which can happen when landing jumps from a moderate height. In our present-day sedentary culture, hardly anyone jumps, but I’m pretty sure that in our evolutionary past, there was a lot of jumping. Landing a jump from a height brings some risk of limb injury, but the critical systems are fine - your brain won’t melt, your lungs won’t collapse and your heart won’t stop.
The closest thing to spaceflight you will ever get
When you think of it, the whole roller coaster experience is actually very similar to what astronauts experience during launch and reentry.
The peak G force during launch is typically between 3 and 4.5 G. It typically takes around 8 minutes from liftoff to the end of the orbital insertion burn, which is considerably longer than a typical roller coaster ride (yet, it’s around the same as a ride on the world’s longest one), but still within the same order of magnitude. The rocket accelerates upward during launch, and the capsule decelerates during reentry, but in both cases the astronauts are facing upwards and therefore experience forward acceleration. This is different from roller coasters, but is actually more comfortable, as humans can handle forward acceleration far better than upward acceleration.
Obviously I’m not an astronaut, but I believe that the Gemini 8 launch scene from the First Man movie is a very realistic depiction of the astronaut’s experience during launch:
Basically, it’s a bumpy ride with a lot of noise and G forces up to 4.5 G in a comfortable direction - a lot like what you experience on a roller coaster.
But there is more.
A big part of both the astronaut experience and the roller coaster experience is the decision and anticipation. It’s about reaching a point of no return. It may seem like this point is where you squeeze into your seat and a guy is about to strap you in for your ride. But the true point of no return is actually way before: as you step into the waiting line or sign up for the astronaut program. If you quit, you will show both a lack of courage and also no respect for the unique opportunity you were given - something that hundreds of other people would like to wait or sign up for.
As you wait, you look up at the giant machine that will soon send you flying across the sky. And you start hearing voices of the Freudian agents of your psychic apparatus:
The Superego is mostly content that you are following your commitments and social norms.
But the Ego is a little concerned about safety:
Look, that thing right there, is an engineering marvel. The engineers did a really good job here. It has all the safety certifications and inspections in place. Surely, there is some risk. These things have failed in the past, maybe like in the 60’s or 70’s. But back then, they were still figuring this stuff out. Now, they have truly perfected it. So even if these failed in the past, it’s not gonna happen here, it’s not gonna happen today. Right?… Right?
And the Id is just very pessimistic about what’s about to happen:
Way to go, dumbass.
Just look at this thing, you bloody idiot. It’s huge.
There is no turning back now.
You’re a fucking moron.
I can’t believe you signed up for this.
You are so going to regret this.
Both astronauts and coaster lovers are able to trust the engineers and the system that creates and sets up the giant machine and give up their agency and bodily autonomy to embark on a wild ride with absolutely no control over what’s gonna happen to them.
All you need is love
Both the roller coaster and the astronaut experience are about submitting to the raw power of a powerful external entity that will control you and toss you around at least for a couple of minutes. You know that it has the power to hurt or even kill you. But you trust it enough to believe that it won’t. So you agree and let it do it’s thing to you. It’s a mix of fear and excitement. But you let it go and get carried away. And after the fact, you realize that you really enjoyed it.
But recently, I read a description of an experience that, at first glance, seems nothing like riding a coaster or launching into space, but oddly enough, is pretty well described by the paragraph above:
A submissive woman enjoying sex with a dominant man.
As as man, I never really understood the idea of sexual submission. It seemed like a purely feminine thing to me. Due to physical differences like size, strength and shape of genitals, a woman just can’t dominate a man the way a man dominates a woman. You can try to emulate it with the BDSM stuff like pegging, asking your girl to tie you up or having a dominatrix hit you and boss you around, but it’s just not the same thing. It’s possible for a man to be physically dominated by another man in a non-sexual way (the Fight Club movie explored this), but due to evolutionary reasons, this feels bad, so it’s not the same thing either.
So, a man cannot enjoy submission from neither a woman nor another man. Stuff like the rodeo, bull fighting and aligator wrestling are probably attempts of using wild animals for that purpose. But it’s also not the same, as you can’t trust a wild animal, especially not as much as a woman trusts her male sex partner.
A very religious or spiritual person might possibly be able to achieve a similar experience by somehow connecting with the Almighty Father, or maybe just deeply contemplating the vast expanse of the cosmos.
But for most men, the only way to enjoy submission is to be physically dominated by a powerful inanimate entity.
For example, something like an orbital rocket or a roller coaster.
So, there we have it. If Freud lived long enough to witness the astronaut and roller coaster times, he would probably conclude that both experiences are rooted in a deep, unfulfilled desire for sexual submission.
But he would be wrong.
As an armchair evolutionary psychologist, I can’t help but look for a deeper, more basic reason for enjoying experiences like spaceflight, roller coasters and submissive sex.
And I believe that thing is: parental love.
Every human is born no agency and bodily autonomy. First, the mother carries her child inside her for nine months. Then, the parents have to carry their baby in their hands for many months. If a baby is crying, and it’s not because it’s hungry or wet, sometimes it’s enough to just pick it up. Other known methods of calming babies include rocking them in a cradle, taking a walk or a ride in the car.
Even toddlers and preschoolers who already know how to walk and move on their own love being picked up and carried by their parents, especially in moments of emotional or physical distress. At some point during primary school, the children become too heavy for their parents to carry them. Coincidentally, this is also when they start distancing themselves emotionally and socially from their parents.
The most basic trope of therapy culture is that the problems you’re struggling with in your adult life are rooted in your childhood trauma and the poor quality of your relationship with parents. Yet, it seems very plausible to me that based on the above, the quantity and quality of parental love in childhood could correspond to the willingness to engage in submissive experiences with someone or something else replacing the role of the powerful and caring parent in adult life.
One of the surprising revelations of my coming-of-age trip to Spain was that my best friend - a calm, reasonable and nice guy - turned out to be a coaster lover, whilst I - a committed crazy thrill seeker - emerged as a bitter coaster hater.
But the thing is that my friend has always had a great, loving relationship with his parents, whereas I had to witness with my parents’ marriage falling apart, separation and divorce. My friend quite possibly may have missed his parents during our trip to Spain, but for me, being almost as far away from my parents as possible without leaving the continent was one of the best parts.
At first glance, it might seem like becoming a coaster lover or a coaster hater depends on whether you’re a thrill seeker or a chill seeker. Yet, I became a coaster hater even though I have always been a thrill seeker.
My preferred way of getting thrills were action sports: riding down big ramps, launching myself over boxjumps or throwing myself down big sets of stairs. In action sports, you are fully in control. You have to gauge the risk and decide if you have enough skills and physical capability to attempt a trick you’ve never done before. Your fate is in your hands. You are responsible. You develop agency. Thus, it’s a great coping mechanism for someone who didn’t get enough love from his parents.
Giving up my agency and submitting myself to the power of an enormous machine? That was unbearable for me. But for my friends who were raised in happy and loving families, this was no big deal.
So, if you graduate from an Air Force academy, you can either sign up for the astronaut program, or become a fighter pilot and take full control of your aircraft.
If you’re a woman in a sexual relationship, you can be naturally submissive, or become a controlling, dominant girlboss.
If you go to amusement parks, you can be a coaster lover or a coaster hater.
Also, if you’re a thrill seeker, you can either ride roller coasters or skateparks, ramps and dirt jumps.
The choice highly depends on whether your mommy and daddy loved you enough.
Fun, safe and smart
Why did I decide to stop being a coaster incel in my mid 30’s? Was it FOMO? Early onset midlife crisis? I am not sure, but what I discovered was that deep down, I am still a thrill seeker. As a coaster hater, I thought that coaster lovers are crazy, but as a thrill seeker, I thought I was crazy too. Maybe this is how I figured that the coaster is where I belong.
As a teenager, I was an agentic, risk taking thrill seeker. But then, the usual things happened: work, marriage, parenthood. Gradually, I saw my juvenile, risky thrill seeking as childish and immature, and removed it from my life. This was a smart, reasonable thing to do.
Yet, an adult thrill seeker can either commit to a thrill-free live and become miserable in the process, or indulge in more adult risky thrill seeking behaviors like dangerous driving, substance abuse, blowing up their marriage, having an affair or even arguing with their wife. Neither are optimal in the long run.
Enter the roller coaster: a brilliant invetion that brings thrills and an illusion of risk without any actual risk. My specific thrill seeker/coaster hater cope was that roller coasters suck because they are fake risk. But that’s their entire point - to present a loophole, a fun and thrilling, yet completely safe experience.
If, by any chance, you’re an adult thrill seeker and also a coaster hater, I highly recommend to try riding that big coaster at your nearest amusement park.
You will not risk your life, but instead, you might actually save it.
True story: my grandmother attended a state fair and wanted to ride a roller coaster. A ride that, by our standards, would undoubtedly be a Pygmy. Alas, her date for the day was scared and refused. A gallant young gentleman interceded and offered to take her on the ride.
That gallant young man: my grandfather.