im currently visualizing a purple apple thats rotating along alternating axes. now a worm is emerging from it and he has a gun. aphantasia havers get owned
Stop toying with my brain
One person is enough at the wheel already
I visualize a mix between this emoji and an apple. Worms come out of the applemoji, the applemoji starts screaming, a snake with long legs is breakdancing two meters behind it. Zoom away from the emoji, there are wild strawberryplants 1.5 meters in front of the applemoji, tho they bear no flowers or fruit.
I really wish y’all would stop playing with my brain
What’s more interesting about this to me is… This man writes novels. I’ve always experienced fiction as a “Movie in my head” kind of experience. When I get really into a book, the world around me falls away, and I feel very literally in the narrative.
So how does one experience a novel, if they can’t visualize the story in their mind?
I just like, absorb the info? Like, I can watch a movie and understand what’s happening. Or read words and understand what’s happening. Converting words to a movie sounds like an unnecessary step, but idk, I don’t experience that.
Here’s another mind fuck: you don’t need to internally verbalize to have thoughts.
Complete 5 for me. Also, I have an internal voice, but that voice is just me. Basically just putting thoughts into words so that I can express them, nothing different from whatever the “I” or “self” is.
For the record: I always score very high on tests of spatial memory, those tests where you are supposed to have to rotate objects to find the answer, and stuff like that. I enjoy reading fiction; I like reading more than watching movies for the most part. And in general don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything, or that aphantasia gives me any problems thinking at all. I often can’t tell who someone is from seeing their face, but I think that’s the autism.
I’m not sure if I’m 4 or 5 to be honest and it’s hard to explain why, because thoughts are so intangible. I don’t have an internal monologue myself and it confuses me how people do. How can one think so slowly? I perceive my thought as a very thick, fast stream going on at all times. I’m fully aware of them, but they’re not akin to speech or images like in the 1st. They very much are and in great quantity. I have ADHD, not sure if that may affect this. The sole time I have internal voice is sometimes when I type and when I was a child and was thinking on how I should’ve approached dialogue better in retrospective. I too have issue with recognizing faces, I think it may be linked to my photophobia making me stare at the ground, because, I shit you not, I can tell everyone I know from their legs or asses alone, and I don’t stare at their legs nor asses, just look down, because it’s hard to look at the light expanses above, as it causes me eye pain. I usually also can tell people from the sound of their steps alone. I think faces aren’t as important to human recognition.
I simply directly access the Platonic Forms with my brain. These 1-5 visualizations are pale imitation of the Form of Appleness.
It’s 1 for me but if I try to actively think about a thing (like someone says picture an apple in in your head, instead of me daydreaming about a platonic apple), I can’t sustain it.
Like when you’re trying to reach underneath a bed for something you’ve dropped and you can run your fingers along the whole object but trying to grasp it, it’s slips away.
This is exactly my experience too. It’s very similar to the issue I always have with mindfulness practices. I can focus on a particular thought or image, or even just “observe” my inner monologue for the smallest fraction of a second, but then it’s right back to the noise of uncontrolled thoughts. Just like you said, I can picture the apple just fine, even in extreme detail, but as soon as I do, it vanishes again and I have to reimagine it anew.
I’ve likened it to being like a game of Hot Potato my brain unintentionally plays with itself. The same instant I’ve grasped the potato (or apple in this case) it’s tossed away again. It’s not hard to catch it again after I toss it, but I can’t help but toss it as soon as I do.
I’m level 2 I can only visually imagine emojis for objects.
Pretty sure you can train and improve this. I don’t think it’s a skill that you either have or do not have, I don’t think the mind is a fixed thing. Much like muscles they can be exercised, trained and rewired. With the right practice drills and routine I’m fairly sure that you could change this in a person, although I’m not sure exactly what drills or routine you’d do for it. Our minds are really moldable and none of this stuff should be viewed as fixed, much like playing an instrument isn’t an inherent skill you either have or do not have, it’s something you can learn and improve in.
F’s in chat for our comrades with aphantasia who cannot rotate a cow in their mind.
Sadly I can’t rotate a cow in my mind because it always just wants to dance to that Polish song instead
My mental mindscape has everything. Narrator, mind’s eye, high-level concepts conceptually connected like a mesh, everything. My mindscape is a chaotic ocean of sensory inputs, memories, raw emotions, and high-level concepts. I’m always a bit surprised when someone is missing a part.
When someone says “apple,” I think about the color red, the tartness of the skin, the sweetness and sourness of an apple, the sound of the crunch, oranges-as-a-concept-not-as-a-visual (from apples and oranges), Isaac Newton, apple pie, the pixelated apple tree from Stardew Valley because I don’t have good visual memory of apple trees in real life, that time I drank apple cider during Thanksgiving after eating apple pie, how “an apple” used to be “a napple” before the “n” shifted away from the word, how I don’t pronounce the “l” in apple, but treat it like a vowel so “apple” sounds like “apo.”
I’m similar. I didn’t realise it was possible to not have images in your head. I get so many images that sometimes when I’m reading a good book I experience it as images and it’s a pain to pull myself out of it to read the words to keep the story going. Like being woken out of a dream. Not just with fiction and not just with concrete nouns. The same thing happens with technical, abstract non-fiction. Strange how minds work.
His follow up tweet and replies are pretty bad. Bordering between weaponized incompetence and just straight up ‘Im baby’ levels of airhead.
that’s john green for you
what does “weaponized incompetence” mean here and how could it apply to a tweet.
Weaponized incompetence is a trait of toxic masculinity where men express inability to perform regular personal tasks. Being unhygienic or unorganized because,“Honey, I can’t help it because I’m just a dumb guy”. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman that would tolerate this kind of behavior in this tweet. Gives me big time never puts the dishes away energy.
Edit: I also love the reply where someone links a study that he may have OCD, a serious mental health issue. His response: wow
The inability to visualize things could be placed in the same neuroatypical bucket as autism and ADD. Why do we accept some measurable deviations but not others?
Yeah that’s uh… Not what this feels like to me.
If he followed that up with “And that’s why I never step foot in the kitchen and make my wife to it for me” then yeah ok. But that’s not what’s being said.
In the context of the initial tweet about the inability to visualize things in ones own head, I this tweet makes perfect sense. “I have x experience. It leads to y problem”.
Gives me big time never puts the dishes away energy.
Ngl, I think you’re just reading your own unrelated grievances into a tweet, cuz you dislike the guy for being a lib.
Edit: I also love the reply where someone links a study that he may have OCD, a serious mental health issue. His response: wow
Doesn’t he actually have OCD? That feels like a “No shit Sherlock” kind of response.
I definitely think this guy is a stupid lib farting out nonsense. Reading @SerLava’s take oh how this whole discussion is inevitably fucked because we can’t communicate these issues effectively is what’s going on here.
sounds more like an object permanence issue to me, tbh (the cabinet thing specifically)
which some people with adhd have, for exampleOmg it has a name. Thanks for the link. I’ll literally cook a meal then ‘just do something quickly before I sit down to eat it’ and completely forget that there’s a meal on the side until I go back into that room to eat it. It doesn’t happen often because I know it happens so I have an order for doing things to make sure I don’t stray too far from the task until I’m finished.
E.g. I could put the toast in and the kettle on then brush my teeth while I’m waiting. That would be efficient. But I’ll completely forget. So I brush my teeth, then put the kettle on, wait, get everything else ready, pour the tea, put the bread in, put some things away, butter the toast and leave the rest of the stuff out till after I’ve eaten. Otherwise, the kitchen will be spotless but I’ll suddenly remember at 3pm that I haven’t eaten and maybe I should start again with the cold over brewed tea and ‘toast’.
Just call him removed lol
I also love the reply where someone links a study that he may have OCD
He literally does have OCD, though. Which is probably why he gave that response.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman that would tolerate this kind of behavior in this tweet.
you don’t know many women, do you?
Lack of commitment is the #1 reason of divorce. I know which of my male friends are slobs and generally their partners complain.
I know which of my male friends are slobs and generally their partners complain.
but they;re not divorced, are they?
You don’t have apples in your head
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I can play entire movies I’ve made up in my head but even though I know how long an inch is if I try to imagine what an inch by inch cube would look like in my hand my brain goes fuzzy.
I love asking people about this. Both whether they have an inner monologue or whether they’re able to visualize things. It’s always fascinated me. It’s something we take for granted. I have an inner monologue I can’t turn off, and I’m definitely a 2 or 1 depending on how tired I am. Being a 5 on this scale is called “aphantasia”
One of the smartest people I know and one of my best friends has aphantasia and no voice in his head, but got perfect scores on calculus and engineering exams, even those for which I had to visualize the forms and calculate based on that. Like multivariable calculus is all about 3D and eventually all other D shit and he got perfect scores with no concept of imagining the shapes. We discuss this a lot generally, because he still works in a research field that I can only grasp visually and he has absolutely no ability to do so but understands it better. He also reads so fuckin fast because he doesn’t have to wait for the voice
He also reads so fuckin fast because he doesn’t have to wait for the voice
Yes, this shows how important neurodiversity is to human kind. People who are seeing this as a disability are missing the upsides.
This is why I’m optimistic that attempts by tech bros to create devices that can read minds will fail. Everybody created their own brain software. Deciphering it will require at least 3 new scientific disciplines.
