Messages

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The Lounge / Re: 15 Years on the forum

« on: May 10, 2019, 03:30:44 PM »

I'm currently teaching my girlfriend's son to ride without training wheels so I dusted off my MOD Vigilante and tried to get him over thinking scooters are cool.

15 minutes in and I took a primo tenderizer to the shin. 3 days later and there's still an eight inch gap. I've never stopped hating the pain of a bad shinner.

2

The Lounge / Re: Aphantasia

« on: December 22, 2017, 12:12:09 PM »

Daniel, I had you in mind when I decided to post here. Just seemed like something you'd be able to relate to.

Sounds made up. I can't begin to wrap my head around not being able to create mental images. How else would you remember things? Wild.

I don't disagree at all. That said, to me it sounds made up that you can close your eyes and create some crazy visuals. It's like you can turn on a good trip.

I can remember things the same way that you do.  I do have piss-poor memory though and now I feel like these things could easily be related. For what it's worth, there are some things I'm pretty grateful not to be able to see again. My early 20's were pretty gross.

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The Lounge / Re: Screen Printing

« on: December 21, 2017, 02:30:50 PM »

I used to bang my college girlfriend at her screen printing studio

Yeah, me too.

4

The Lounge / Aphantasia

« on: December 21, 2017, 02:29:10 PM »

Hey babies,

It's ya boy SmallBlueBike, SBB, ChristopherT, bobthebuilder17, and whatever else I've gone by here. Glad to see you're all well, I guess.

Recently I heard of a condition called aphantasia. A simple way of explaining it is to say that you have a "blind mind's eye". This means that people with aphantasia are not capable of forming mental images.

As soon as I heard about this, my mind exploded. Growing up, I always assumed that I was misunderstanding when people would suggest that they can conjure up mental images. I always figured that it was meant figuratively. Well, with the discovery of aphantasia came the realization that I was wrong in that thought process and in reality, I'm just a shell of a man with no ability to recall images.

What's more is that aphantasia (which is a recently named condition with research on it being limited) also appears to impact other senses. It has never crossed my mind that when people say they have a song stuck in their head that they are actually hearing the song. This is something that dawned on me yesterday. I do not hear internal sounds in that way. Likewise, I'm not able to conjure up smells. I can tell you that I like a smell because I might remember enjoying it in the past but if you asked me what a certain candle smells like, I wouldn't be able to actually recall the scent and comment on it.

It's been pretty wild realizing that I've been lacking this ability and seeing the practical uses for it. I've talked to people who say they use mental imagery to assist in math problems, spelling words, remembering the faces of loved, etc. Hell, last night at trivia there was a question asking you to name 3 out of 5 boys on some movie poster. It completes explains why I can't draw. Well, at least why I can't draw from memory. I'll own my artistic inability otherwise.

I only bring this here because 1) I can't stop obsessing about it -- it's fucking wild. 2) There is some suspicion that it could be caused by head injuries. Being that this community has a higher percentage of people who have bashed their faces into the ground multiple times, I'm curious to see if anyone else here may also be aphantasiac.

To be clear, this is totally some millennial "waaah, i'm different" bullshit. I've always lacked the ability to connect my senses to fantasy in that way so nothing has changed since learning about this. But it is really interesting and makes me want to grab some mushrooms and have my own good time.

Here's a really good article that sums up aphantasia, at least as I experience it, really well. https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/ The FAQ is pretty handy.