Synesthesia. I can see music. It’s fun.
Also, being resistant to pain killers. Not so fun (takes ages to get drunk, and I woke up 3 times during a surgery)
Oh I got that to a lesser degree. At night, I interpret sudden bangs (door slamming) as flashes of intense white light.
I realised that the lights were not real (phantom lightning, or bright outdoor lighrs winking on and off) once I started sleeping with a blindfold
I don’t think so – the noises I hear are real, they’re just accompanied by flashes of light if my brain can’t place the source of the sound in realtime
I can’t really speak for you of course, but I can add that I thought it was the same for me. Until it turned out I was the only one who was hearing these noises.
Hah! Oh jesus, this will be a fun rabbithole for me to think about over the next few years.
Appreciate the warning, strangerHere’s a redditor that describes it quite well:
Me. I have this. Happens several times a night. Sounds like a door slamming or a gunshot. The weirdest part is you also get the feeling that there was an impact, like that feeling when someone stomps near you. So it’s not just auditory it’s almost physical. It’s a very strange thing and hard to describe because you’re always 3/4 of the way asleep when it happens. I’ve had it my whole life and always found it curious but have never questioned it out loud. I thought everyone had this until I saw “exploding head syndrome” on the internet. Asked my parents and siblings, no, none of them have this and what the fuck am I talking about? I’m in my goddamned 40s and thought this was normal.
Goddamit I said stop, I’ve already got a ton of other neuroses to worry about!
I get SO many weird looks when I tell people I don’t like bleu cheese because it tastes like ants
Same, I’ve been scoffed at, mocked, people have thought I’m making it up and am just creeped out by the “mold” in the stuff.
And like, bruh… I fucking LOVE cheese, almost every cheese short of the stuff with the live maggots, nor all forms of bleu cheese. Because the smell and taste reminds me of waking up in a tent in the woods when my family was homeless and there were ants crawling all over us. I get the same association with truffles and most mushrooms too, so I cannot eat truffle-anything.
holy shit I’m gonna start eating ants
I have extremely sensitive hearing. I can tell when there’s an animal scarer nearby.
This brings me to Microsoft Teams. You might have seen people mention that their dogs know when someone joins the call before they do. That’s because they introduced “ultrasonic howling” to detect if they’re in the same room as you, and mutes their mic.
It hurts like fucking hell with headphones on.
I’m partially deaf but I can hear those really high whines anyway. I can pretty much only hear high notes.
I can’t imagine how infuriating that must be. How do you live with it?
I can hear CRT screens. They emit a high pitch noise that nobody else in my family can hear, I assume most people actually can hear it but never noticed it. My family used to think I was crazy or had tinnitus (jury’s still out on both) until they tested me by making me close my eyes and tell them if the TV was on while turning it off and on at random, with sound off. It was a weird test from my perspective, since I could hear it fine anyway. So far I haven’t noticed a decay due to age, but if it had little use when CRTs were widespread, it’s now completely useless.
You probably should get yourself checked for Autism Spectrum Disorder and so does anyone else who experiences anything similar
Some people with ASD have a sensitivity to things neurotypical people don’t notice
Autism is a Spectrum Disorder so not all autistic people have the same symptoms and you can’t self diagnose yourself, you need to see someone specialised for that
Try that with cheap mobile phone charges. They have an annoying coil whine.
I too have significantly more sensitive hearing than seemingly just most people, and can hear and often get annoyed by high pitched but low decibel sounds, very often caused by electronics, off balance high speed fans, etc.
Got gaslit about it by my family as well.
You may wanna look into an autism diagnosis, autists often have this kind of thing going on.
You’d think it would be called super hearing, but instead its often everyone without heigtened senses calling you delusional.
Same thing happened to me when I described seeing the entoptic blue field phenomenon to my family, but not knowing the fancy name for it because I was 11. Family got very concerned I was hallucinating, the reality is I am just more attentive to reality than they are.
My brother and I always enjoyed going out to the woods together when we were young because you couldn’t hear everything humming out there. I still enjoy it for the same reason.
My hearing isn’t even that great because I’ve spent years around loud noises (industrial and concerts) without hearing protection. But I can still “feel” cheap chargers, bad screens, and florescent lights.
A whole lot of poorly configured or cheaply made electroninc appliances or chargers … yeah I can often literally hear when you’ve plugged something in wrong, it makes a high pitched whine, because it is overamping.
Also, if you’re near high tension power lines?
You have to be pretty darn close to be in danger from actual electromagnetic effects.
But… that hum? The buzz?
Turns out that that is actually what causes a lot of long term health problems in people sensitive to it.
Literally the sound, not the EM field, makes you agitated, stressed, on edge, and if that is just your baseline for 20 years, that constant stress accumulates and basically ages you faster, and can cause mental health problems.
I used to be able to tell what refresh rate they were set to because everything below a certain point flickered. I’d ask people why their screens were flickering and they couldn’t see it.
When I lived in Canada for a year and then moved back to Europe I saw CRT TVs flicker for the first week I was back home. Even on so called 100Hz CRT TVs I saw flickering. Got used to 60Hz CRT screens so 50Hz CRTs were very noticeably
Yeah, if my memory is correct the flickers stopped completely for me at around 80hz. I’m talking about monitors here rather than TVs.
You might want to get yourself checked for Autistic Spectrum Disorder because I notice CFL tube (fluorescent tube light) flicker if I pay attention to them when no one else does
Some people with ASD are more sensitive to things other people don’t notice
Mate, there are so many things that suggest I am on the spectrum now that I have given up keeping track of them all. I’m not sure that at my time of life there’s anything that can be done for me even if I did get a diagnosis.
Now that is a superpower. I’ve always thought the ability to see fast was such an interesting skill.
Think about it: you could go to the Olympics in a skillful sport like fencing or boxing, and defeat every opponent without much formal training simply because you can see them telegraph their moves. No anticipation or planning required, you just watch them come to you.
Do you do any competitive sport?
I used to be able to do this as well until I got into my 30s and my vision naturally degraded.
Was quite good at FPS games, paintballing… the first time I went to a rifle range for an introductory shooting class, the instructor suggested i look into a shooting scholarship due to my exceptional fine motor control and visual acuity… I had very fast reaction times in martial arts (Karate), but being naturally timid and having a skinny twink build kind of cancelled that out.
The reality is most people think you are delusional, and if your family/friends are authoritarian, they’ll try to get you mentally evaluated as seeing hallucinations.
Its less Superman and more Xmen being persecuted for being different.
Though just because you can see such fine movements doesn’t mean you can react fast enough to stop it. You’d just see your loss coming from a mile away.
“awww shiiiiitttt I’m about to be punched in the face”
…
…
…
“Ouch!”
True, but with some training you’d learn to anticipate as well. Pairing that with your Uchiha eyes, and you’d be unstoppable
think I was crazy or had tinnitus
When you have tinnitus, then you will know it. And then you probably can’t hear that CRT screen anymore.
About “crazy” I don’t know ;)
Nope, I usually hear both! 🙃
I can smell reposts and pictures I have already seen a mile away.
I have super sensitive hearing, so while I can hear the faintest of noises, it also means loud noises are overwhelming and painful.
That sounds like a curse. how do you navigate public space?
I avoid most of them! But as Lagoon indicates, earplugs are a must, especially for events and venues!
Musician’s earplugs
Picking stuff up with my toes. I use the two big ones like chopsticks or just scrunch something up with all of them together. My toes can spread out as wide as my fingers, so it’s easy to manipulate things with them. Also, I am very well balanced on one leg, probably because of doing this for so long.
This power is more and more useful as I get older and find it more of a chore to bend over, with my beer belly getting in the way (I’m almost 50, it’s a sign of success!). If it’s below my waist I’m going to pick it up with my foot 50% basically.
I live in a warm climate and hardly ever wear closed shoes luckily, I know some places it wouldn’t be practical…
This was almost the complete comment, answered all the questions it raised as I read along except one thing.
How wide can you spread your toes? I just checked and my fingers (without thumb) is ~18cm.
I’ve hit some killer long-range underwear-into-the-basket shots with my toes that honestly should’ve been on Sportscenter.
Same here! Why isn’t this a weird Olypmic?
…Why don’t we have weird Olympics?
