Ask Lemmy

My ball was blue. It's one of those dog toy soft bouncy ones. Table is rectangular, wood, with a light colored stain that's well polished. A man casually slaps the ball and I hear the sound that type of ball makes as it bounces without much force. It bounced once off the table, then off the wall onto the floor where it did the dribble bounce off the tile in the kitchen until coming to rest on the carpet in the living room. None of what I see is related to my house.

If I really wanted to, I can vanish into this world I've built for the ball. I can get lost, staring out a window or something while not actually seeing anything because I'm in my head. I have hyperphantasia. It's seen more often than aphantasia, but it's not exactly common. It's very useful for creative endeavors, but has a lot of pitfalls; usually involving spacing out at inopportune times.

red/blue stripes

none

they didn't

small pool ball

generic Simpsonesque brown, but it stopped existing towards the corners.

Huh. So I imagined the ball on the table immediately as a colorless glass sphere on a white table. Before I even read the prompt to push the ball in my imagination I had already placed my index finger on the ball and was rolling it around it place like a fidgit so I just tapped the ball to push it with my index finger so the person who pushed the ball was me (non-binary) for reasons that I was already interacting with the ball anyway. I imagined this in the first person so I didn't really see myself in full. The ball itself was baseball sized and rolled a short distance, stopped and wobbled after being pushed.

I didn't think about what the table was made of but the ball itself was glass that was smooth and cold to the touch. The table was square, waist height and dining room table sized. The room these objects were in was featureless and visualization was instant upon reading.

The blue ball won’t roll because it was on a table of clean laundry

All these details were present from only reading the title:

A very large and heavy marble that you'd need to pick up with both hands to hold. A man was already there keeping a hand on the marble, to prevent it from rolling on the wooden table. The table is simple, square and has 4 legs. I know what the marble would sound like if it were to roll, bumping over the little imperfections. This is happening indoors, but there's some natural light coming through. The table is relatively close to the edge of a room but you can still approach the table from all sides. The room is mostly undefined besides that. The man is not too detailed, I have a vague awareness of what he is like, but more like a gestalt of him.

After reading the prompt: The man rolled the ball with a soft push. It produced the expected sound and then he stopped it again before it fell. I felt anxiety when the ball rolled, and was relieved when it was stopped. I want to put it on soft cloth so that we can stop worrying about it rolling off the table. There's soft cloth nearby, and it's purple felt.

I have hyperfantasia.

I imagined a red dodgeball on a small brown table. The person was just a thick stick figure and when the ball fell it bounced.

The color and shape I didn't actively choose, they cam be different, but I guess my brain has defaults.

The ball falling and bouncing, however, I had to actively think about, the same way I have to think about texture. I don't have to think about where the ball would stop, or how much it would bounce tho.

1. The ball I imagined was made of polished metal and reflected its environment.

2. A man.

3. I did not imagine a face. But he was wearing a dark blue business suit with a red striped tie. A watch was on the wrist of the hand that pushed the ball.

4. About the size of a large orange.

5. It was a smaller rectangular table made of a dark, varnished wood.

I'm an artist. I often tend to visualise what I want to draw quite well.

• Ball rolls about two feet and stops just before it rolls off the table.
• White ball, polished surface, shiny
• Male
• Tall person, slender build, light brown hair, clean shaven, white button-up collared shirt, blue jeans.
• Ball was a bit bigger than a billiard ball, but smaller than a baseball. Smooth, and heavy. Like a white cricket ball but with no seams.
• It was one of those large common fold-up trestle tables but with a white table cloth on it.
• I knew all those without having to think about it, or choose afterwards.

To me the imagery seemed like a cheesy "how to push a ball" educational video with a paid actor to demonstrate how to push the ball in the correct manner.

1. White/colourless ball. And honestly, more of a circle viewed from a perfect side on angle.
2. I didn't visualise a person only the effect of their push on the ball. And like another poster corrected the slide to a roll.
3. See above.
4. Ball was of uncertain size. It was viewed side on, and no other objects to give a sense of scale. Maybe tennis ball sized, but I think that's retroactive.
5. Table was rectangular and wooden. But no legs. Unsure of the thickness.

Included the timely-ness of the details in my answers above.

The scene was like an example reel from a video game, greenscale-ish translucent humanoid mannequin standing in a pseudo void, with a nondescript rectangular table of a similar greenscale-ish semi translucent material, and only the ball is "finished" as it is the camera focus. It is approximately between baseball and softball size, smooth, but I did not pay attention to the color. There is an "interaction/activation" sound effect as the mannequin kinda leans over and lightly pushed the ball to cause it to roll. It rolls to a stop on the table top, and this action loops.

The center of focus pulled back as I read the questions, more becoming aware of them than choosing them, and the scene changed with a camera pull out as part of the "ball is pushed" tutorial clip.

I have realized how much growing up as a gamer as influenced my perspective.

• The ball was a futsal ball, so white with green markings
• I didn't see the person who pushed the ball, just their hand, I was concentrating on the ball
• The table was at about the height of a typical dining room table, it was plain wood about 1cm thick with a dark top and had fairly thin black metal legs

I already knew the answers, for the most part. The questions didn't cause me to add more detail, but they did cause me to reflect on the details I had chosen. So, for example, I never looked at the person who pushed the ball. Because of that, I couldn't fill in any details about their looks or gender. But I did clearly see the hand giving the ball a push, and I think the hand belonged to someone white. Having said that, I did have to stop and think about the answer for the table. The table was part of what I imagined seeing, but it wasn't the focus of my attention. I realized I could think about what I had imagined and the details came to me. But, it's possible that I didn't actually dream them up until I was asked the question.

Also, nobody asked, but the ball fell down and hit a white surface (something like white tiles) and bounced the way a futsal ball bounces, which is to say mostly a soft "thud".

• gray ball, about the size of a typical dodge-ball.

• Featureless, sexless "humanoid"; like a "suggestion of a person" or a "fuzzy shadow".

• Round table. Nondescript. Most similar to one of those tall, small round tables you find in pubs. But again, featureless.

• Nothing happens when the human pushes it. The human can't push it because the human has no physical form.

So I cheated a little, because I'm at a table right now, so I didn't visualise the table just the ball on the table. It was about tennis size, but no texture, kind of light blue shading into lilac. The person pushing it was really just a hand.

So sounds like the only work I did was imagining the ball. I wouldn't say I knew in advance, and I wouldn't say I chose what it looked like. It just appeared and it was light blue.

Edit: the ball started rolling when pushed, but not long enough for me to know whether it fell off the table or not. But the rolling was just a concept. I can visualise things, but I can't visualise motion. Which I only discovered recently.

• White

• Not in shot, just a hand

• The arm was the same complexion as my own

• Tennis ball sized but made of that stuff billard balls are made of, smooth and shiny

• Classic oblong wooden table, looks like that cheap ikea pine with a clear grain

• The ball rolls along the table with again, the same sound you get with a billard or similar rigid ball rolling along a solid surface, upon falling off the table it hits the floor (pale orange ceramic tiles) and bounces a few times in that satisfying way that produces an ever increasing frequency until it stops.

• I already knew and did not have to chose after being asked the questions.

Under aphantasia, Wikipedia has a long list of famous people who have or had it.

How can these guys have aphantasia?

• Mark Lawrence, fantasy author[56]

• Yoon Ha Lee, science fiction author

What happens to the ball? It rolls slowly off the table, and bounces a few times away from the table before coming to a stop.

What color was the ball? Blue

What gender was the person that pushed the ball? Male

What did they look like? Tall, average build, short brown hair with facial hair, maybe mid-30s, gray shirt, brown pants

What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? A bit smaller than a basketball, like a ball for kids or a handball.

What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Round, wood, but like the cheap laminate kind with plastic edging. Metal legs. Like a cheap table you'd see in a school or office.

I feel like I imagined a lot more detail than others. The questions were really easy for me to answer, and like a lot of unnecessary details came to mind. The guy pushed the ball because he was asked to, and he didn't know why he was there. Probably the schizophrenia.

• yellow
• male
• round face, beard, brown hair, mid 20s (I think probably some internet-famous person whose name I don't remember)
• small plastic ball filled with air
• a simple square table with a natural wood top and legs

That was my first thought. But then (before reading the questions) I also imagined other similar scenarios like with a soccer ball and my desk at work, lol.

My experience with this experiment was kind of like when they play memory flashbacks in movies, I could see the ball being pushed and falling, but with jump cuts and the timing was off. Detail-wise I'd say it was kinda like what you got from AI image generation when Dall-E first came out two-ish years ago.

I don't think I have the most visual imagination out there but if aphantasia is one end of the scale I'm pretty far to the other side.

The ball was black, made from rubber, tennis ball size. Only a hand was imagined. No particular colour or gender. The table was made from Elm.

Color: greenish-blue

Person: male (I identify as male, the person kind of represents me, I guess)

Looks: Cannot see entirely, because "the camera" is very near. Blue pants.

Size of ball: Fits in one hand. The ball is made of a light material and will probably bounce on the floor.

Table: Very generic table. Beige, light brown.

I think, all of that I knew before reading the questions, I was able to answer the questions without really thinking about it.

Ping pong ball on a circular wooden table. It took me a second to decide the shape. I can see the boards but I only focused on the tabletop and the ball so the environment wasn't defined. The person pushing the ball wasn't well-defined either. No shadows on the ball. If I go back and re-visualize it with more effort I can imagine the details (environment and person), but by default I don't. I steal the environment from my memories by default but can imagine something else if I try. Shadows and light are very hard to get right even when trying, unless I'm only imagining one object or purposely thinking of something specific (ie light reflecting through a glass).

The ball was a blue pool ball, on a wooden table that I can't describe because I suck at describing things (but I do have a visual of it). I didn't even imagine the person beyond the hand coming up to push it off.

The ball color might have been decided on the moment I read the question, I'm not sure whether it was part of my image before that. Person is still nondescript even after trying to "zoom out". I just can't seem to come up with it.

Small tennis sized ball whitish color on a whitish classic rectangular kitchen table. But the table is zoomed in quite much at the start so you only see the overside of it.

No specific gender, very neutral. Like a videogame character with few colors, white mostly. Now the scene is zoomed back to let you see the person walk up to the table.

Did not know. But when i read the others answers mine turned into a 1990 MTV music video where objects are immutable but displayed in lots of different ways, colors, textures, ... I also exploded it when the pwrson touched the ball for fun.

I have worked a lot in video games and scientific visualisation, so the test looks like something I'd make in a 3D engine I guess, least information possible to show the important things, the ball etc.

I can imagine and see about anything, colour, texture, forms, people, movements, but the more details the more zoomed in it gets. I can imagine you as lofi-girl looking at your phone, but expeession like "what the crap did I just read" imagining you reading this for example.

HTH

I pictured a smooth red rubber ball about the size of a baseball on my kitchen table. The "person" was more of an invisible force, not explicitly male but definitely not female. That might be male bias, or subtly thinking of myself doing it (combined with playing too many physics engine video games where your disembodied self pushes things around).

All of this was pretty vague though, like I didn't really imagine the details of the room or the exact path of the ball other than knowing it would roll off and bounce on the floor.

• What color was the ball? Grey.
• What gender was the person that pushed the ball? No idea, was there even a person? Couldn't really get it to move more than just rolling along.
• What did they look like? Se above, I've no idea as I couldn't really image a person.
• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? Like a palintar in lord of the rings (commonly known as a "seeing stone" I believe?).
• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Couldn't image a table, it just kinda layed in the emptyness.

TDLR, can't really image stuff and really can't image people, who especially not faces.

The ball is black, the table is black, the human is black. They're all just blobs I tell myself exist so I feel normal.

Grey, female, cartoonish with that weird bob round kind of look that comes with bushy brown hair that's slightly longer than shoulder length, slightly larger than a ping pong ball, wooden square/rectangle, no.

• black
• male
• nothing, it was just a hand pushing the ball
• a ping pong ball
• round, wood coloured, but thin like a metal coffee table.

I did have to think about how to put it into words, but the picture was fully formed before revealing the questions.

Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it)

I ignored this portion of the instruction because it was unnecessary to answer the question of what might happen to the ball if it were pushed by someone. I didn't visualize anything until moving on to the spoiler questions. Even then, my brain mostly went "nah, we'd just be making up something to fill in details irrelevant to the question, don't waste the energy".