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What was your "I can't believe I have to explain this to an adult" moment? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/ask@lemm.ee
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[–] 8 points 2 years ago (8 children)

I think more what I’ve had to explain is the opposite. Aphantasia exists, so there are people out there (like me and assumingly you) who CANNOT picture stuff in their head.

But yeah I also had to learn people could actually do this as an adult. Boy did that make me not caring to read books make way more sense.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I think that liking/not liking books doesn't have a lot to do with aphantasia. I love books and reading, but some authors are just terrible because they put too much visualization porn between interesting story elements (looking at you Tolkien).

    For me to like a book, the story has to flow; Terry Pratchett is my favorite author, his stories flow in a really nice way and he tackles a lot of social issues in a great way.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I mostly meant just personally, not that anyone with aphantasia would not like reading. Just not my thing, and once I realized everyone else could actually picture things, kinda clicked why I never got into books as these great doorways to the imagination.

    If I read, it would probably be Terry Pratchett, the couple made for TV movies are some of my favourites. Fantastic writer.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It is really different for everyone, much like the distribution in more "neurotypical" people. For me it is all about story, a good story will get me, but just describing how something looks doesn't add to the story for me.

    e.g. enough character detail for me would be something like, "just then, Jim walked in, extremely tall and whippet like, he had a sallow sickly complexion" much more than that, and it becomes redundant for me.

    I was a member of r/aphantaisa for a long time, a lot of discussions there were started because someone was trying to blame their (perceived) shortcoming in some area on aphantasia. Without fail, some other aphant would come along and say...na that is how I make my living, it isn't because of your neurodiversity. The classic one is visual art (I'm terrible at that), but a whole heap of artists are aphants. But reading came up fairly regularly also.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don't know, I'm pretty sure I've got aphantasia, but I love reading. I just tend to skip over character descriptions and have no clue what any of them are supposed to look like. On the plus side, I'm pretty much never disappointed with casting of an adaptation meaning the characters don't look as I'd imagined them, since it's just not something I do.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    i'm utterly unable to imagine new visuals, but i can sorta half-imagine things i've already seen (though they have to be kinda distinct so to stick in the memory), so when i'm reading books all the characters end up looking like actors i've seen that feel like they fit the role. Very strange when i think about it.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago*

    What's funny for me is I definitely think I've got a bit of aphantasia, I can somewhat see images but it's low detail, details are wrong, have a horrible memory for faces, etc.

    However I loved reading, I did usually tend to skip over descriptions of scenes that might go on too long because I get the gist and everything else just doesn't get added in lmao.

    Doing LSD and other hallucinagines (misspelled?) was extremely interesting due to the effect on aphantasia, it absolutely allowed me to "see" in that way as I never had before, I am not sure how much it actually "stuck with me" or not though if you get my meaning.

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