this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Something explained to me...
I was 41 when I realised that people actually see things in their minds eye. It is not just a metaphor.
Blew my mind, like it is some kind of superpower, you can just imagine stuff, and you see an image of it....
My partner is such a good cook, partly because she can combine flavours in her mind, to check if they will taste good together, that is just fucken cheating.
When people "get a song stuck in their head" they can literally hear it.... How the fuck do you get anything done, you crazy bastards.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah I mean, it’s funny I don’t care to read, but I will sit and read entire setting books for TTRPGs. Much more into how things work or about interesting stuff than reading stories.