May be the wrong thread for this, but isn’t it really common for people to not even know that have aphantasia?

I’m imagining the whole community from The Giver, where people didn’t know that they

and they didn’t even realize.

I didn’t realize I had it until well into adulthood and I’ve always enjoyed reading. Even the extensive description still has meaning I just don’t see it.

I remember this poster in a library with a well, and the surface is an empty field of grass, and that part of the poster said “movies”. The bottom of the well was like a hideout, with all sorts of whimsical detail, which said “books”.

Needless to say, I did not get it.

“I can’t read books that are realistic fiction. I can’t do anything that’s got like crazy world building because I can’t perceive it and I have a hard time.” -my sister

I don’t have it personally, but we both have tism and so here’s a talk we had while driving.

me: *takes wrong turn*

sister: “when I need to know my left and rights and cant do the hand thing, I remember ‘never eat soggy waffles’ because I can remember East is Right and Left is West.”

me: “wh… what?? why? why can’t you just do the right and left in your head?”

sister: “girl how”

me: “I just imagine it?”

sister: “MUST BE NICE, HUH?!”

if someone wants I can ask her in more detail later, she’s busy with something rn

Quoting my partner that has it: “Comic books are cool for that. I love books. I tend to gloss over heavy descriptions of place settings, I don’t spend a lot of time trying to picture it so I prefer books with dialogue. Watching a show before reading the books does help though. (Like we did with The Expanse.)”

They also mentioned that Red Rising action scenes are ridiculously descriptive and they typically skim those sections to find out who hits whom.

Yknow somehow I had a great time reading. Written word is the most reliable way to stabilize visuals in my mind, which is why I’ve taken to writing as a creative outlet as well.

Its been so long since I’ve genuinely read anything but I think thats the closest I ever got to actually visualizing something. Described well enough and my mind can really conjure up an image for once.

Its why I tend to like slow and detailed scenes. I can spend a lot of time writing a scene that only lasts eight minutes

Not total aphantasia, but mostly. I’d describe it as almost cartoonish, but more in the sense of the non-visual concept I associate with the image being described as being heavily exaggerated, more than any visual intensity. I get maybe brief glimpses of visualization before it dissolves into concept.

I know what the scene described looks like, and I know the associated elements well enough to be familiar with their properties and possible relevance to the story. As far as descriptions serve the telling of the story, I don’t really think I’m missing out on much.

For visual media I tend to prefer animation and comic books, though I think that’s unrelated to aphantasia, I’m probably a tad autistic. I appreciate every frame being intentional, and always get caught in a loop of uncertainty with live action; was that expression intentional or is the actor just hammy?

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Didn’t have it for most of my life, but briefly had it, along with some memory issues. It made understanding what I was reading nigh on impossible. Any lengthy descriptions fell through my memory near instantly, as I had no practice in maintaining a purely conceptual memory of a piece of writing. On reflection, I’m terribly impressed with those who manage to deal with the absence of an audiovisual imagination to compress information.

Completely. Books are only good to me if the author has a nice writing style. Those character descriptions or scene description paragraphs? I just skip them. They don’t do anything for me.

On the other hand, I LOVE movies.

Details in books and written media as a list, not a series of images. Loved reading as a kid, dropped off when I spent more time doing other things, like cpmouter gaming.

The upside is that witthout a mental picture of characters any close enough visual take on the character will work for me. I also have ADHD so small details are likely forgotten and only the prominent ones that the character is defined by are going to be weird if mkssed.

For example when I heard Idris Elba was going to be cast as Roland in The Dark Tower it was a big positive because he seemed like someone that would be able to oull off the personality of the character and I was only concerned about whether they would do a good job with the missing fingers or drop it entirely as missing fingers was a big part of Roland’s character for me. Yeah I know there was something involving race in the books, but that plotline was something that didn’t seem to be necessary to carry over into a movie.

Of course the movie ended up being a pile of trash, but is a good example of how I focus more on how the character acts than how they look.

Same with a lot of science, swords, and other objects where I really don’t have a mental image so a lot of sets work as long as they have the things or the general feel.

A great deal, I’d imagine. I can conceptualize.

I have Total Aphantasia, and zero sense memory at all. I do have an “inner monologue” of sorts. I can’t “hear” it in my head, but I understand all the same. I don’t know how to explain with words and I don’t know how I work either, really. My outer and inner voice are the same thing to me and I have full control over it., often transitioning back and forth when I’m alone. As in, no racing thoughts. One of the ideas behind meditation where you try to silence your mind? I don’t have to try. It’s not something that takes effort for me. I bring this up because this is how I’m reading books, with that silent inner voice. One of my friends is like me with Total Aphantasia, but he has no inner monologue either. Which is bonkers to me. I don’t get it, neither does he! Haha. Many different kinds of human minds out there, it’s not so simple.

Hard to miss what I’ve never experienced, I still enjoy thinking about these fictional worlds even if I can’t conjure up a representation of what is written in my mind.

I read every genre. It’s actually specific writing styles I lean towards. If the author is really detailed with describing environment constantly, I appreciate that. I can’t really “fill in the blanks” so to speak. I also really like it heavy on the internal monologue side of things with main characters. I think that’s why I liked Ender’s Game so much when I was a kid.

I do prefer any visual media. I save all my book and research reading for when I’m at work these days, which is a lot of time actually. One of them hurry up and wait jobs. Books are far better when it comes to potentially constant interruptions.