Reading is a form of magic. We are getting thoughts and ideas from ppl long gone.
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working on a computer is not much better
We tricked a rock into thinking.
Xkcd is never wrong. Like its always right. How does one get that brain power?
A guided hallucination
I’m one of those people that can’t picture things in my head, so I don’t hallucinate anything even a tiny bit.
Is this what actually happend when most people read books? They make themselves hallucinate the story?
it’s freaky hearing my wife describe what reading is like for her because it honestly sounds indistinguishable from hallucinations as may be defined in the DSM V.
And like, that’s… normal?! MOST people are just vividly seeing things that aren’t there just because they’re described to them?!
I’m also aphantasic, and learning that most people hallucinate/see the stories they are told I understood why religion delusion spread.
Yes. I assume a similar skill to being able to look at an overview map and then know where you are in a city or country by envisioning the map in your head compared to your location.
At least thats how I get around, but my wife says she can’t understand maps or know location this way.
Me personally I get a vague picture of what I’m reading in my head, but I wouldn’t call it anything close to hallucinations. It’s hard to describe…
For me, yes. It’s somewhat like watching a movie, but I have some control over it, and it’s more visceral. It’s probably why playing TTRPGs makes so much sense to me. I can visualize it really easily. I’ll sometimes be reading and visualizing it, only to realize I don’t know any of the words I just read, even though I did read them and they were included in the imagination.
I don’t know if everyone is as detailed as I am though. It’s interesting to consider. We can’t really compare levels of imagination to each other.
I can only remember a handful of times I mentally imaged a scene. Usually I’m stuck at the words and how the character feels/sees/etc. Yes sometimes I can capture the image but usually thats not important IMO.
sometimes when i read, yeah. I have something kind of the opposite of aphantasia. folks used to say i had an overactive imagination. it is very easy for me to imagine/picture in my mind things that are described in stories (okay, things that are described well in stories. All tall handsome men are Alan Rickman and Henry Cavill and sometimes they hold hands in bookshops I cannot help the way the universe works). Sometimes I have an inner monologue reading along with me. There is always a soundtrack but that is my own personal insanity. It really depends on the genre, how much i’m liking the book, the time of day, my mood, &c how much I’m going to tune out the outside world and disappear into a book.
The opposite of aphantasia is hyperphantasia, if you want to look into it more :) the whole thing is a spectrum from people who see nothing to people who see things nearly as though they were real, and constantly.
I’m on the a- end, sadly, but a very good friend of mine has hyper-, constantly seeing super vivid imagery, and we’ve had some real interesting conversations about that :)
So mine is kinda weird. It’s easy for me to drift off into… I guess I think of them as sense memories? Memories of specific senses that were so strong that they created impactful marks on the psyche. A scar of happiness. That really good crab enchilada at south congress café with the green sauce. That first time you had esquites. The time Scott at the burger place made a new type of burger just for you and the next week it was on the menu with your name. That perfect crisp lick of cinnamon ice cream on a hot summer day. Those are a few of mine. I can just dip in, the smell in my mind takes carries me off and then… Fuck I’m hungry again. It’s kind of like an intensely vivid daydream. You know how you tune out your little brother because he keeps making the mistake of existing? Kind of like that but your brain replaces the nothing and tinnitus sounds coming out of the brother’s mouth with the sound of cookies being baked and shit.
I had to stare at a blank wall for a month straight with nothing to do or interact with or talk to (no that it’s not a joke) so I guess maybe my mind adapted to the boredom? Do not attempt that it breaks you like this
Ah, yeah, no I don’t have the ability to tune things out from any of my senses, unfortunately. I hear that lack is a pretty common complaint for autistic individuals, so it is what it is. I can’t relate to much of your described experience here. My memories are verbal descriptions or a vague recollection that’s immediately translated into words. No other senses get pulled into my memory or imagination. No reliving of experiences in even the most superficial of ways, which is often a blessing tbh. Probably why I’m heavy into living in the moment and for the future and don’t really care about sentimentality or tradition or whatever else people feel tied to the past about.
For me, there is no real nothingness in my head, ever afaik. Tinnitus yes, but there are always words. Closest is I taught myself to suppress the voice when reading because it’s much faster, but my mind is still occupied by words. “Daydreaming” is just thinking through how things work or could work, or ruminating on my anxieties. Like I spent half a road trip lost in thought about how to convert parking garages into hydroponic farms when privately-owned cars are disincentivized in the future. Just a literal monologue, in my own voice, working through what it would take and whether or not it’s worth the cost and effort to do. And that’s pretty standard filler when conversations die off (any talking instantly snaps me back, though).
My parents were kinda incredibly shit, and I was grounded from everything except books and breathing (this is much less hyperbolic than it sounds…) for literal years of my childhood, so I have strong doubts that it has anything to do with being bored. I’m sure there are ways to enhance your internal experience and extreme boredom might be one of them, but I don’t think you can outright change how it works in any meaningful way. You just got lucky like that, and that’s ok :)
FWIW tho I do have some idea of what it’s like to have internal visuals and stuff. I took some meds ages ago, which I definitely don’t recommend anyone take ever, that made my dreams permanently super vivid and largely internally consistent. Thing is, they are typically intensely mundane but negative emotionally-charged dreams where the only real indicator that tips you off to dreaming, unless looking for indicators, is the location. Since I have no other experience with seeing things that aren’t real, I have huge issues determining if things from dreams actually happened. My current strategy is assume it was a dream and wait for someone else to mention it, which they almost never do.
I’m sure degrees vary by person.
But yes as I read it builds a picture in my head. Not a hallucination like seeing a person standing in front of you outside of your body, but more like inside your mind like watching a play with your brain, not your eyes. I get a sense of what they might look or sound like, and good writers can describe things in a way that rooms are a very detailed 3d stage set.
Its always sad when they make a movie and the characters don’t look like I envisioned them to be.
I depends of the kind of media I’ve most consumed recently. When I only read for some time, I imagine meaning without them being necessarely picture. When I’ve consume a lot of image-base content (comics and video alike), I imagine with picture.
Recently, I’ve saw zoom in, out and fades out. And for the first time, I’ve heard music!
Funny thing, my thought is also very dependent of my current media consumption. When I read regularly I have a narration. When I read a lit my thought are grammatically constructed. Like if my thought where phrase without me having to actually use word. Idk how to describe it but I don’t hear words in my head, nor do I read them but my thoughts are speech…
Gotta love that natural high
The rushing heart from reading “He picked up the sword, it was not miraculous but not underwhelming. He stood strong against the darkness” hellz yes swing that sword is my inner dialogue. It adds 15 seconds and 10 now to focus on the text again
I look at a transparent/blinking rock, mostly sand, made to blink by a smart rock with metal bits which is again mostly sand.
That’s where I read my books and meet strangers from all parts of the world.
Your phone? Pls whoooosh me I’m waiting for it
I love this community…
Take living thing, slice its skin off into incredibly thin strips, inscribe runes onto those skin-strips, pile them up into the hundreds, then stare at the runes in a pile in sequence for hours on end, hallucinating vividly.
Sounds normal.
what if instead we mashed its skin into pulp and then pressed its skin in a hydraulic press and let it dry in the sun afters?
I couldn’t come up with a pun or something witty about what aphantastics would say to that, other that I didn’t know there was a name for people with aphantasia, and it’s kinda cool. Do people with hyperphantasia are called hyperphantastics?
