Visual snow

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Gimp Mask
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Visual snow

Post by Gimp Mask »

I don't know if this shit interests any of you but I'll just continue treating this place as the cesspool of my mind anyway

So last year I was browsing Wikipedia, opening interesting articles that led me to other articles and so on, and I came across this one called "visual snow". It was pretty cool to randomly stumble upon an article on a phenomenon that's been bothering me for some 20 years; I always knew what tinnitus was (I have that too), but had never heard of this visual snow for some reason. Sounded like some performative trans rapper really. Anyway the main symptom is this translucent layer of TV static through which you look at the world. Here's a pretty decent depiction of how the world looks like through my eyes (although it varies daily):
http://visionsimulations.com/visual-sno ... nsize=1.30

A lot of other interesting stuff seems to happen between my eye and the brain as well, all of which are pretty common in the context of visual snow: constant and long-lasting afterimages, floaters, spontaneous flashes of light, light sensitivity, ghosting (sort of like double vision, makes reading a bit hard sometimes), all kinds of weird shit. When I was younger I just thought it was probably a sign of impending doom, a genetic time bomb or a brain tumor or some shit and I'll die soon so why worry. Then just forgot about the whole thing for the most part. And maybe that's how it should have been. But now there's a whole subreddit of people bitching about how their sensory perception is ruining their lives because it's a bit fucked or whatever, they don't seem much better off. It's like going to a tinnitus website that's telling you: "listen buddy your ears are ringing but there's nothing you can do about it, listen to the ringing, you're a fucking mess man, but let me tell you, you're not alone so let's watch some ear hole fucking porn together on chaturbate. We can video chat and talk about ears ringing, hey crank up the microphone so that the sound your rhythmic lubed-up high-velocity jerk-off overpowers my 16,000 hertz brain mosquito, help me forget my worries for a moment. Also let me see your face" Or at least that's what I suspect they do, I am still learning the internet.

So do you guys see this shit too or what
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Hyacinth
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Post by Hyacinth »

Cool didn't know about this, so you've had this on and off for a while, why not get your eyes checked? :eyebrow:

Does the phenomenon happen in both your eyes? cover one up and check each when it happens, curious.
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Post by Gimp Mask »

Hyacinth wrote:Cool didn't know about this, so you've had this on and off for a while, why not get your eyes checked? :eyebrow:
No I've had it on and on for 20+ years, at least that's when I first noticed it and it never went away after that. But after a while you tend to forget it exists, like with tinnitus. I've had my eyes checked (a bit of astigmatism in my left eye, other than that good enough) but the issue is with the brain, not the eye, so it is my head that I should get checked. Haven't really gotten any info from doctors as they don't know shit about this it seems. Could be overly excited neurons in the visual cortex but what is the meaning of something like that anyway. Someone took some blood tests long ago but turns out that I am dangerously healthy, about to burst with elan vital. That's why I eat mainly processed foods and don't exercise much these days.
Does the phenomenon happen in both your eyes? cover one up and check each when it happens, curious.
Happens in both eyes, happens with eyes closed, happens everywhere all the time. It's more noticeable in the dark though and certain medicines and such can make it worse for a while
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Post by Megatron »

Hello forum user 'gimp mask' I can confirm I have the same issue with snowglobe eyes as well as other sensitivities like after images and what I call 'zooming' but is probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_ ... d_syndrome

anyway it feels like I am a tiny person stood at the back of my head looking out and everything is like a really big landscape, also peoples head start shrinking

for a long time I thought I had schizophrenia or some sort of brain wrong as I would see funky shapes and things that werent there, like when you are on drugs, except I wasnt even on drugs when I was a teenager

I have had all sorts of tests and other things poked into me but it turns out I am a picture of health, a sort of 'super man' if you will. Anyway the shapes are called 'form constants' I think. I know I'm not crazy or silly so that rules out a lot of mental health problems that cause illusions and such so I have narrowed it down to either:

Epilepsy where I dont have physical full body seizures but sometimes I get little muscle spasms - https://www.epilepsybehavior.com/articl ... 6/fulltext

or

Psychotic depression lol https://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/ ... depression

otherwise I dont know I guess we all see the world kinda differently, maybe what I call yellow you see as red and maybe the more you notice these little brain bubbles the more you recognise the pattern, like the william gibson book 'pattern tracer'

either way you can live a full and healthy life, its just your eyes are gupped somehow. Maybe looking at DAC too much on a CRT makes you crazy I dunno
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Post by Gimp Mask »

I don't know if you've heard about this video but watching it will let you see the world in all of its 720p HD Ready glory for some 20 seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=800f9UNiF4Y

Very interesting that you should see the same cerebro-visual cyber-reality through a scanner darkly or what the fuck ever. Luckily I don't experience the disproportionality or the zooming in normal life but I know what you mean. A lot of the time I feel like I'm just observing myself though, in buddhism that's desirable but here in the real world that's called dissociaton I guess so I don't really know what to make of it.

One more pretty neat but probably unrelated sleight-of-eye is that I can stare at, say, a persian rug until its patterns turn into overlapping floating layers, giving it depth and movement. When I'm in the bathroom I often stare at this linen towel until its texture breaks free from its surface. Just a fun little party trick if you're not invited to any parties and have to stay at home.

You've not ever seemed psychotic to me, and trust me I'm a doctor, I should know. That's what the doctors do anyway, look shit up on Google. Dr Dre invented Wikipedia, that's why he runs Johns Hopkins. Electrocardiography, by Dre, maybe you've heard of it? B) You mentioned epilepsy, and reading up on the symptoms of visual snow, migraine comes up a lot too, which makes me think aura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_(symptom) are somehow involved. Have you cleansed your aura lately? You could light up some sage, or maybe even chrome, like the William Gibson story "burning chrome". It might help. "Pattern tracer" sounds more like apophenia which I think is a symptom of schitzophrenia so maybe you were right the first time around.
Last edited by Gimp Mask on Sat Apr 17, 2021 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Gimp Mask »

Image
This is our brain: a venn diagram of the maslow hierarchy superimposed with the myers & briggs indicator -- an online voight-kampff test so you can make an educated guess on whether or not you should consult a real doctor such as myself. Just kidding; not only does everything that can be considered a personality trait or something similar exist on a non-granular spectrum, every thought in itself can exist anywhere on any of the spectra. Just as there are more micro-organisms than human cells in our body, we contain multitudes of the mind, too. Well that's how I think of it at least. I don't know what this has to do with anything, maybe something you said about diagnosis combined with differences in perception
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Post by Hyacinth »

Hey man I also experience AIWS now and then!

WERE ALL NUTS!
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Post by Gimp Mask »

Image
Hope this helps......
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