That did not solve my boredom.
I made the cow walk upright, gave the cow a bardiche, made 665 more cows like that, and made them raid a village.
That was entertaining.
I like to give the cow a jaunty hat and galoshes! Then two men hatch from the cow.
This is very Zen. Im going to keep this.
deleted by creator
There is no cow level
Don’t kill the king!
A polish song about doing cocaine playing quietlyThat was the same cow I was just rotating.
Hey! Get your own cow!
You wouldn’t download a thought-cow
Me: Low chuckle
Mind police: “Hands up!”
Consider the consequences of your actions, please!
That image could have a Peta watermark, and I wouldn’t question it.
Is it worth it? That depends. What percentage of the boys does it bring to the yard?
There’s a metal cover of that song. I don’t know anything beyond it existing because I heard it in passing while biking to work last week but it made me laugh when I realized what it was.
I gotchu, it’s Goodnight Nurse
I think we need to run a controlled experiment to determine the ratio of boys brought to one’s yard.
According to the pic, at least 2
as an aphantasiac I will literally describe the worst possible scene and you will be forced to picture it
and I will win
:3
You’re also free from seeing horrific things you’ve experienced over and over again. What are your dreams like?
That might not be specifically aphantasia, but closely related symptom called SDAM(severly deficient autobiographical memory), but yes, I’m immune to seeing or reliving any of the past traumatic or bad events. Lived through past or experiences don’t exist for me.
I don’t have dreams or at least the handful of times per year i have something that might resemble a dream. It’s forgotten within minutes after waking up.
Fellow aphantasiac here. Dreams are just fine, and in full color.
Same!
Yeah i’m like 80% aphantasiac, I can picture maybe the last time I saw a cow I, could probably imagine something else in the static scene, I can’t even really make it turn it’s head.
There’s no rotating it.
All I got is dark gray static. No cows. The occasional moving blob of different dark gray static.
I can think about how a cow looks, colors, patters, what a cow might do but I can’t visualize anything. I didn’t know there was a word for this or that people could actually visualize things in their mind. I thought it was just a turn of phrase.
That’s conceptualizing.
Edit: for some reason i forgot the link. https://aphantasia.com/guide/
A better description of it with a ball experiment than i can provide.
Does this affect dreams?
Nope, dreams and nightmares are good and vivid.
My dreams aren’t visually detailed, but i’m not sure that’s necessarily unique. I also have trouble with faces, but I can remember really long selections of words and numbers.
Oddly I can do a really good job drawing 2d and 3d things from reference art if they’re 1:1
It’s probably not so odd, it doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on creative skills. A friend of me has aphantasia and she’s a tattoo artist.
I have an idea or a concept of a cow. Turns out that’s not standard either and falls under aphantasia.
Concepts of a cow
Same, but I remember that I used to not be able to stop rotating things in my head… wonder if aphantasia can develop with age or maybe brain damage (yay covid, messed up some flavours and smells for me too, artificial mango flavour stuff tastes like TV static)
Sadly I can’t help you out with that one. I haven’t done any deeper research into it than a basic reading of a newbie guide.
I remember everything. :(
Literal superpower. You hold us all at your mercy.
No, I will imagine a rainbow farting unicorn singing Bohemian Rhapsody instead. I win.
And in my mind I will make it happen to a bunch of clowns in DC, and enjoy every second.
Nice try ;)
I have seen aphantasia mentioned many times but don’t forget about hyperphantasia
Thank you for sharing.
I have a thing were I can imagine speech without having to imagine sounds. I don’t know how to call that. That is some sort of quiet internal narration for my imagination that happened when I read a lot. When I watch a lot of movies, I end up imagining camera mouvement, like traveling and zoom in/out. It is like I can imagine vividly but the way my imagination express itself is out of my control and depend on my recent environnement.
When I used to have to go to church as a kid, I’d imagine I was starting a new save file of Zelda Ocarina of Time. By the time mass was over I’d usually be up to one of the first rooms in the Great Deku Tree, in my head. It was only decades later I learned I was also autistic, but that’s a story for another day!
Well… shit. That’s what it was?
I did the same with watching Pulp Fiction and The Phantom Menace in church
Aphantasia enters the chat.
and here I am able to taste a tomato while you say tomoto
Poop
A condition with a prevalence rate of 0.8% is not worth thinking about, let alone considering in the context of a meme.
I’m with you, blindness has a prevalence rate of 0.2%, fuck them no more image descriptions on Lemmy.
/s if it wasn’t obvious enough
I mean, it’s a pretty hard thing to understand if you don’t know about aphantasia. Since we can’t know what other people experience in their mind, what we perceive is considered ‘normal’ because that’s all we know.
I didn’t realize I had aphantasia until I was 18. Doesn’t mean I suddenly became aphantasic at that same time.
I was 48 when I discovered that I had Aphantasia. I was blown away that when I learned that people could imagine pictures in their mind’s eye.
Same here. I think it was actually this meme that did it. I saw people commenting that they could not and I’m like “ha yeah, of course you can’t, who can do that?”. The lots of people are like, yeah, I can create a complex 3d shape in my mind and manipulate it, turn it, get closer, etc. I’m like WTF who are these megamind savants who can do this. Turns out, most people.
I felt very alone and very incapable after that realization.
Man…same. Had no idea people could actually picture something in their mind until I was well into my 20s. Wasn’t until that point where I felt like I was at such a major disability at work compared to everyone else…the amount of times I was told, “picture this…” not realizing they meant literally.
Since we can’t know what other people experience in their mind
I am curious about this condition. What goes on in your head and how did you figure out you had aphantasia? Now I am trying to imagine a rotating cow after reading the comments (didn’t imagine it when I saw the meme), and I can only recreate in my head the gif somebody posted in one of the comments.
I got recommended a video that introduced the term to me and it was a very jarring realization.
Personally I’ve always struggled with expressing my thoughts in general. Before I learned about aphantasia I had started saying it was like I think in concepts instead of words or pictures. I know what I’m thinking and it’s not like it’s a vague idea, but for whatever reason actually translating it into a real language is really hard for me. I have an easier time writing out my thoughts than I do speaking them at least.
The most I can visualize are a few ‘vivid’ images that I spent a lot of time curating, usually from listening to music or remembering a dream I wrote down. Even then, When I try to think about those little exceptions, it’s still only a tiny fraction of the whole image that I can really come up with. Thinking about it now, it’s super weird to describe! I got super intro writing after I figured out I had aphantasia (shattered my hopes of being able to draw. But that doesn’t mean aphantasic people can’t draw. I just learned how to draw incorrectly and it screwed me over) and I like to think I’m decent at describing visuals despite all this.
To use the gif as an example, I can really only imagine the frame, moving images are practically impossible for me. And it’s really only the sillohuete I can make out.
I also realized I’m face blind too, and part of me wonders how much that correlates to aphantasia
I think I understand what you are saying. I have a hard time imagining scenes, especially when I am reading, and definitely not in any vivid detail. For example, there is a kitchen scene in a book I am currently reading. I vaguely picture the kitchen of the house from my childhood but that is pretty much all I can come up with. I don’t think that is aphantasia, though.
It’s like knowing a cow is the room next door. You are aware of the cow but you can’t see it. If someone says the cow is brown, you are now aware the cow in the room next door is a brown cow but you can’t see it because it’s in another room. Except the other room is your mind.
I don’t need to see a cow to imagine it in the next room. Same concept.
It’s easy to figure out if you have aphantasia. Think of a cow. Do you see a cow?
It’s not a condition or a disability, it’s just a different way that some brains work. Don’t fall into the trap of - it’s outside the majority so it must be a deficiency. Most people with aphantasia don’t even know they have it.
Also, strangely I can rotate a cow in my mind, but there is no visual feedback. I “feel” the cow rotating. I choose where in the physical space to project the imagined cow and there is the imagined “physical” sensation of the cow spinning as if it’s an extension of my mind. I can imagine sound as well. But I don’t see anything.
I have an easier time feel it moving that seeing it. But I can see it and I doesn’t rotate on the same axe than all those GIF. The legs goes up until it is on its back then back where I can’t see them and on its legs again.
Its estimated that almost 95%+ of all cases of it go unnoticed or diagnosed. It was only officially recognized 10 years ago.
Its estimated that 1-4% of the population have complete audio or visual aphantasia. 1-2% have both and roughly 30% of the population has some level of partial. And these are conservative numbers.
And that’s just based on the last few years of study of somethingt that most people don’t even know exists, is non life impacting in a way to get people to speak out assistance. And thus goes mostly untalked about outside a few online circles for the most part.
Either way, if you just include people with complete visual alone that’s still a fuck load of people.
It’s always worth considering people who function differently, even if it’s just a passing thought.
While a prevalence of 0.8% may seem like a tiny amount but when applied to a large population it’s a significant number of people. Let’s say a city has a nice round 100,000 people, a small city by any measure. That’s 800 people, not such a small number anymore. The lives of those 800 people are worth thinking about. Granted in the context of a larger population but it’s still something.
For actual refence it’s estimated that between 1% and 4% of people have either complete visual or auditorial aphantasia.
With a much larger percent of the world’s population, having some sort of partial aphenasia. And a smaller percent having complete aphantasia of both types.
The disorder was only officially recognized in 2015. Has basically had no real research put into it outside of the last 10 years as well.
It’s non-life impacting so rarely goes diagnosed if ever. And because it’s so new, very few people know about it and go most if not their entire lives not realizing they have it.
I’ve seen some estimations putting it as high as 8 to 10% have complete of one type or the other. It’s a lot more common than people realize. Especially because it’s considered a gradient. The majority of cases are not complete lack but more commonly a middle ground. Such as the inability to picture, color rotation, shape, distinction. All audio typically is more along the lines of knowing or monologue or the inability to recall sounds in their head.
I’m one of the lucky few who has complete aphantasia of both types. I am unable to visualize anything. I have no inner monologue and I cannot recall sounds.
There’s no static. There’s no fuzz. There’s no darkness there’s nothing. It’s just sort of empty. I recall most things through a conceptual connection to other things is the best way to describe it.
The only reason I even know that a inner vision is possible and what made me go down the rabbit hole to look into it. It’s because I still dream. I understand that I have full visualization in my dreams but when I wake up it’s empty. It’s gone. I know I saw something but I cannot recall it. There’s a complete lack of any visual memory.
It’s very weird feeling. I tried to learn to lucid dream at one point as well and I came to the realization. The moment I realized I’m dreaming. Everything goes from visualize to pure darkness and then nothing. Exactly as if I’m awake. It’s very trippy.
representation matters.
How many people don’t have any <1% conditions?
0.8% means I encounter roughly 1.5 - 2 people like this every two weeks. That’s actually crazy.
The problem with this approach is that I will sooner or later imagine the cow as a cube. A cowube, if you will.
Blasphemer! The one true cow is Tetrahedragon Cow (3 reasons: first it’s made of triangles and you can’t beat triangles. Just ask particle cow. Second I forget number two but number three is that there’s a dragon in there)
As someone with full auditory and visual Aphantasia. This is extremely fucked up and ableist. (I am honestly only half joking this is very ableist either way)
I can’t rotate cows in my head. I can’t even hear cows in my head.
The cops still can’t stop be tho.
Lol if they had said that you can count your fingers then we’d have someone in here without arms saying how ableist the tweet was
saying
How dare you, some people are mute and can’t say! /j
Hard to write without fingers too. Doable but harder, very abelist again!!
Some people are in a coma. Just don’t do anything!
Everyone must cut out their own tongues and chop off their hands and feet, for inclusivity!
I’m able to do it if I’m half asleep. Problem is i get so excited at my ability to create anything I want in amazing detail that I wake back up
Sounds like you will need to rotate a real cow while in international waters.
Well planning all this and executing it you won’t have time to be bored.
I can’t even hear cows in my head.
I’m curious about that part. Does that mean you also don’t get that weird thing where you hear like, people chattering/ music/ something falling down just before you fall asleep? Or are dreams/half-asleep hallucinations not affected by aphantasia?
There’s also exploding head syndrome. That one’s a real bitch
you hear like, people chattering/ music/ something falling down just before you fall asleep?
What the hell are you on about??
Probably Hypnogogic hallucination, which is a normal and common transitional phase between wakefulness and sleep characterized by vivid hallucinations incorporating any or all senses.
I didn’t even know that was a thing. That’s really cool. I’ve never experienced that
I have this too. Music, people, simulated falling, stuff like that right before I fall asleep. I always thought this was common?
Nope. I don’t think that’s common at all. Maybe the occasional monkey reflex where my body thinks I’m gonna fall off a tree and yanks me awake, but that’s it.
Yea if you’re possessed by a demon maybe /jk
Never experienced it and never heard anyone else mention it before.
Never had this. I either fall asleep and wake up later. Or I’m getting half-awake dreams before I fall asleep, where I’m not I’m still a bit in control at first, but then lose control. (I know I’m dreaming, I just can’t steer it)
I can remember these half-dreams, but not the real dreams later
Exploding Head Syndrome maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome
Mayhaps
I have full apantasia audio and visual. I can still dream. I know I can and I know I see things and hear things in my dream. But when I wake up I can’t recall any visual or audio.
I tried teaching myself the lucid dream at one point and all it did was when I realized I was in a dream. Everything goes away. Exactly as if I’m awake. It’s a very bizarre feeling. It also causes my fight or flight instinct to kick in real hard and gives me panic attacks. So I kind of stop doing that. Ain’t fun and very unpleasant very weird. Far worse than waking up with sleep paralysis I must say.
Apparently dreams aren’t necessarily affected by aphantasia.
I feel like when I do have dreams they are extremely vivid and real because I am seeing my thoughts which isn’t normal.
Wait, what? Is that something people experience?
… I think so? Never questioned it honestly, guess I’ll have to do some research now haha
edit: this website says they’re fiiiiine, although the auditory ones are rarer than visual and somatic ones. Somewhat related to Narcolepsy though, so I guess that’s another thing to mention when I get evaluated for that haha (getting on adhd meds somewhat fixed my daytime eepyness so I’ve been procrastinating on getting it checked out)
Auditory hallucinations aren’t as common as you seem to think haha. I have them too sometimes.
Or is it that auditory hallucinations are strongly associated (not clinically, just the way they are always talked about) with bad mental health problems like schizophrenia, which makes them taboo, so people choose not to talk about them, even to doctors?
I get auditory, gustatory, and olfactory hallucinations all the time, due to chronic headache and migraines. Wish I got visual ones too, just for the variety, but alas. I hate peanut butter so so much (my most common hallucination is the smell or taste of peanut butter). My auditory hallucinations aren’t usually voices talking, though, they tend to be cats meowing or chickens yelling, because that’s what I hear most frequently in my daily life, so that’s what I’m trained to listen for.
Wow that sounds like it sucks, though the cats and chickens is kinda funny :) I usually hallucinate loud noises like something falling or a door slamming or something.
The only thing I’d classify as that is “feeling” like I hear far-away inaudible voices.
I would like to know more
100% of theoretical physicists would agree that cows are spheres. You could do mental math in which you calculate changes to the cardinality of the distributed mass.
It should look something like this: 0⁰
Fuck, it’s the police!
How/when did you discover this?
Not OP but also have aphantasia.
I discovered it when I was…23? My whole life I figured people were saying “picture this…” figuratively and it didn’t even occur to me that it could be otherwise because it was self-evidently impossible to me to “see” something until I learned the word “aphantasia” and that the inability to visualize is not considered the norm/not universal.
Yeah took me 36 years.
It takes actually knowing that people actually see images to know that you cannot do that.
Counting sheep never made true sense to me. How is keeping a tally of “imaginary” sheep jumping over an “imaginary” fence supposed to help me fall asleep?
Makes sense when you realize people do it to stop their brains from randomly sending themselves other imaginary that’s going to keep them up. It’s like choosing to turn on the TV to something you could fall asleep to is my understanding.
Yeah, with that one in particular I thhough everybody was just beating a dead horse with the same joke on “counting sleep.”
For you and @Sludgeyy@lemmy.world , do you find it affect your memory/recall at all? Especially for reading something, do you need to read aloud? You dont need to answer by the way, I have my suspicions that someone I know might have it but they aren’t aware.
Memory or recall of facts. No.
Memory or recall of life experiences. Yes.
From my understanding people can play a “movie” of something like their last birthday party. See who was there, what they were wearing, etc.
Unless I make note of something I’m not going to remember it. I can “subconsciously” make a note of something and recall it but I cannot re
But other than a list of facts I have about my last birthday party, I cannot recall or experience it again.
As for reading. There’s no difference between me reading a biology textbook or a romance novel. I read, soak up knowledge, critically think, and remember.
I have to subvocalize to read. I’m curious on why you assumed we had to read outloud. I don’t know how other aphants read.
Edit: Wait, subvocalize is different than inner speech is what I just read. I have to have my inner voice speak the word.
I would say I generally have an excellent memory with better recall for what is read vs what is said. Not that helps you, but I’m a merely anecdotal case.
Maybe more than recall ask them when they read fiction if they pictures the characters orbjust kind of glaze over during prolong descriptive sections. Do they complain about movie casting? I never picture characters so even if I think a performance is bad, I’m never mad that the actor doesn’t look like how I imagined them.
I’ll never forget trying to read Redwall as a child and trying to remember what character was what animal. I had to write down a cheat sheet.
I have full visual in auditorial aphantasia. No visualization, no inner monologue and no ability to recall. Sounds in my head.
All of my thoughts are basically conceptual connections between ideas. Sort of like everything is a gut feeling? Like if I know something I just know it. I really don’t have a better way to explain this.
It makes it incredibly easy to just do things that I know how to do. Nothing gets in the way and that’s incredibly reliable recall.
The moment I have to explain to anyone else I am completely at a loss. I very rarely can give any reference directions or any meaningful help short of just saying do the thing.
Like you want me to do a 35–step process exactly repeatedly without any error. I can do that. Not a problem.
You need me to walk someone through a three-step process and one of those steps involves something they do automatically like beat their heart. Yeah no I’m not even getting past the first step. Good luck.
How do you read?
I have aphantasia and I have to subvocalize each word that I want to read.
Edit: Wait, subvocalize is different than inner speech is what I just read. I have to have my inner voice speak the word.
Is this ableist? Doesn’t seem prejudicial at all. /g
What does /g means?
It means genuine, as in I’m asking a genuine question.
Thank you.
For reference: https://tonetaglist.carrd.co/
Oh nice! Thanks again.
No problem :D
My guess is /genuine
Thank you.
No, it isn’t.
I can hear cows in my head, but seriously it’s not that great. All they say all day long is, “kill them. Kill them all.”
It’s kind of monotonous.
