The visuals we make and how accurate they are

[Comshaw]

Through your writing, I hear your voices in my head and I often wonder, if I met you in real life, what would be my first impression? Would your physical being match that voice I've constructed in my head? And if the imagined you didn't match the real vision of you, would I have difficulty reconciling the two?

I'm going to try to give you a visual description of me the best I can. I don't expect ya'll to do it in turn. This is just an exercise for me because I'm curious how people construct visions of others without any visual clues. Sooooo, sit back and juxtapose the picture I draw for you with the one of that person you have constructed you thought was me.

Visualize an older guy, hair turning white with a small amount of fading brown still mixed in, sometimes shaggy and sometimes neatly cut. I'm always bald-faced (growing a beard runs me nuts so I have never been able to) 5' 10" in height and 280 lbs. (yes the quintessential fat old man). Most times you will see me in blue jeans and a long-sleeved work shirt (a dark blue jeans color today) with the sleeves rolled up.

Sometimes in cooler weather, it will be in a brown Carhartt jacket when I'm working at the barn, or a brown leather motorcycle jacket, scraped and faded from years of use, when I'm on my bike. No, not a Hardly Dangerous. I ride a Triumph Trophy sport tourer.

My hands are those of a working man, big knuckles, the fingers of one of them crooked from being broken. The skin of my forearms is ruddy and brown with a spider web of small scars on both from the work I've done all my life.

Does it match the one you have in your head? Or are you now going WTF??? How did Billy Bob get out of the hills???


Comshaw

 

[AG31]

Through your writing, I hear your voices in my head and I often wonder, if I met you in real life, what would be my first impression? Would your physical being match that voice I've constructed in my head? And if the imagined you didn't match the real vision of you, would I have difficulty reconciling the two?

I'm going to try to give you a visual description of me the best I can. I don't expect ya'll to do it in turn. This is just an exercise for me because I'm curious how people construct visions of others without any visual clues. Sooooo, sit back and juxtapose the picture I draw for you with the one of that person you have constructed you thought was me.

Visualize an older guy, hair turning white with a small amount of fading brown still mixed in, sometimes shaggy and sometimes neatly cut. I'm always bald-faced (growing a beard runs me nuts so I have never been able to) 5' 10" in height and 280 lbs. (yes the quintessential fat old man). Most times you will see me in blue jeans and a long-sleeved work shirt (a dark blue jeans color today) with the sleeves rolled up.

Sometimes in cooler weather, it will be in a brown Carhartt jacket when I'm working at the barn, or a brown leather motorcycle jacket, scraped and faded from years of use, when I'm on my bike. No, not a Hardly Dangerous. I ride a Triumph Trophy sport tourer.

My hands are those of a working man, big knuckles, the fingers of one of them crooked from being broken. The skin of my forearms is ruddy and brown with a spider web of small scars on both from the work I've done all my life.

Does it match the one you have in your head? Or are you now going WTF??? How did Billy Bob get out of the hills???


Comshaw

Interesting question. I don't visualize (aphantasia), but I think of people as basically physically attractive. And then I step back and acknowledge that some of my favorite people are probably short and dumpy and (if male) balding.

 

[StillStunned]

Sorry, I rarely picture anything beyond the poster's avatar.

 

[MrPixel]

Does it match the one you have in your head?

Strangely... no, and this is serious. I figured you to be in your early 40s, moderately active based on your bike interests, and having better luck than I keeping your weight around the 200# mark. Sartorial? Only the Carhartt jacket seems out of character.

IOW, I wouldn't recognize you in the bar on first meeting.

Great literary exercise, BTW.

 

[alohadave]

I've met people from forums at meets, and they are almost never what I expect unless I've already seen a picture of them.

 

[AG31]

I just now noticed that we were supposed to describe ourselves. I'm 5'4". I'm 81 but not very wrinkly. Because I'm taking Metformin I'm 22 pounds lighter than I was at my heaviest, 30 years ago, but I was never really very heavy. Short, naturally wavy hair. I never thought of myself as attractive in my youth, but I see from photographs of high school graduation through wedding pictures that I was actually quite pretty.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Kinda like @StillStunned I don’t think I really come up with a visualization to match posters. I register personality traits and ways of writing. Maybe I ascribe a broad age range. But not more than that.

 

[Comshaw]

Strangely... no, and this is serious. I figured you to be in your early 40s, moderately active based on your bike interests, and having better luck than I keeping your weight around the 200# mark. Sartorial? Only the Carhartt jacket seems out of character.

IOW, I wouldn't recognize you in the bar on first meeting.

Great literary exercise, BTW.

You'd think an old fat man would be rather inactive as far as physical things. Actually, I'm not. I picked up, transported and stacked in my barn 30 bales (about a ton) of hay one day last week. A few weeks ago I finished my wood cutting for the winter. I cut, split and stacked in my wood shed a couple of cords of firewood. I can't say I did it without running out of breath from time to time, or that I didn't have to stop and rest a time or two, or three, or...yeah. But for an old fat man I'm not all that inactive.

Comshaw

 

[crookedletter]

I look exactly like my avatar.

 

[SmilingLez]

I never pay attention to the physical meat suit.

 

[Comshaw]

I just now noticed that we were supposed to describe ourselves. I'm 5'4". I'm 81 but not very wrinkly. Because I'm taking Metformin I'm 22 pounds lighter than I was at my heaviest, 30 years ago, but I was never really very heavy. Short, naturally wavy hair. I never thought of myself as attractive in my youth, but I see from photographs of high school graduation through wedding pictures that I was actually quite pretty.

This is an interesting thing people do. I never saw myself as attractive in my youth. When I looked in the mirror, the image I saw looking back at me appeared to me one of those that could easily be lost in a crowd. You know the kind that isn't distinctive, one that is commonplace with nothing memorable about it. One that you can see and a bit later you can't remember because my features were so bland and common.

My wife and many of my female friends insisted differently, but I never saw what they saw. It's interesting that our minds won't allow us to see what we do not want to, or can not see.

Comshaw

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Sorry, I rarely picture anything beyond the poster's avatar.

Promise you I'm not a quill pen.

 

[Erozetta]

People are their avatars and usernames to me. Even when I know their real name and have seen what they look like.

I am a fucking cupcake that alternates between chocolate topped with a cherry and strawberry with whipped cream. There's definitely innuendo involved in the baked goods I choose to represent me.

More seriously, I don't really think about or care about what people look like. I care about who they are and how they interact with me.

But if I were to try to give people an image of me through writing a description:

At 42, I have various smile and thought lines on my face. None are especially prominent yet, but they are there, and I have no interest in doing anything to prevent their further development. I like smiling and thinking and those lines were earned. My hair is shoulder length when dry, but about mid-back when wet. It's naturally very curly, and a deep auburn color. In fact, it looks light brown when I'm indoors, but once I'm in sunlight, the red tones become really prominent. I've started to develop a "Rogue" streak—my hair is turning white/silver (as in a shiny silvery white color) at the front. I generally wear my hair up in a claw clip with random curls that refuse to remain contained loose around my face and neck. There's one specific one at the front right that my husband refers to as the "superman" curl. It's annoying as fuck, and I have almost cut it off a time or two only to be tackled by my husband, who prevented me from destroying it.

I'm between 5' 8" and 5' 9" and my weight fluctuates between 140 and 170. It's gone as low as 105 and as high as 230. I have scars covering my arms, stomach and upper thighs, as well as a prominent one going from my right shoulder to my left hip down my back and another prominent one on my right ass cheek (I fell on a wine glass). and one across the right boob from an incident with a hair straightener. I have weirdly random freckles across my body and two birthmarks. A round one about the size of a dime on my inner thigh and one about the same size behind my ear. I can't remember which ear at the moment. My sunlight allergy/sensitivity means I'm as fucking white as white can get. Phlebotomists love me because they can just see my veins without searching.

No tattoos, no piercings, though I do have scarred earlobes from attempts at piercings. I am apparently allergic to most metals, so I don't wear jewelry except a single leather, copper, and enamel necklace, a leather bracelet, and a silver ring (my wedding band, which I only wear when dressing up.)

Most often, I'm in jeans and a horror movie T-shirt with a long-sleeved undershirt, but I also wear tank tops with long-sleeved button-downs at times. I like boots. I have these suede knee-high boots with silver buckles in black, purple, red, and brown that I wear year round. While I own some dresses, they aren't my favorites to wear because I wear them with tights. I rarely wear makeup, but when I do, it's soft glam.

I have greenish-gray eyes and a very small nose (according to my husband). My lips are fairly full, so I never overline them when wearing makeup because it would look wrong on me. When I do wear makeup, it's mostly eye stuff—green or purple shadows smoked out with browns and tans and brown eyeliner and black mascara. For Halloween, I usually do blacks and reds. No fake lashes. Mine tend to streak my glasses as it is.

Oh, and I wear glasses. Purple metal cat-eye frames. I walk on my tiptoes and often bite my lower lip and crinkle my nose, particularly when in thought.

I have a heart-shaped face, and I'm always smiling.

And this is why I avoid writing detailed character descriptions. It's a lot of words about nothing important.

 

[StillStunned]

If anyone really wants to know what I look like: I'm the bloke standing next to the hot redhead.

 

[Comshaw]

Sorry, I rarely picture anything beyond the poster's avatar.

To be honest, mine isn't far from who I am.

I don't really think about or care about what people look like.

I do. Not because I care if someone is attractive or not, but because I've navigated life partially by reading body language as well as tone and inflection of voices. That has served me well. Without it I feel a bit blind. Although most people don't know it or consider it, almost every action has a meaning. A comment is made and someone squints one eye a tiny bit and the corner of their mouth pulls down a fraction of an inch. The person next to them, the corners of their eyes tilt upward a slight bit with no other indication. It all means something. For those who notice it's as important in a conversation as the words used. While I may not be able to do that by just knowing what they look like, I can try to extrapolate from their words what their body language would be.


Comshaw

 

[Erozetta]

To be honest, mine isn't far from who I am.

I do. Not because I care if someone is attractive or not, but because I've navigated life partially by reading body language as well as tone and inflection of voices. That has served me well. Without it I feel a bit blind. Although most people don't know it or consider it, almost every action has a meaning. A comment is made and someone squints one eye a tiny bit and the corner of their mouth pulls down a fraction of an inch. The person next to them, the corners of their eyes tilt upward a slight bit with no other indication. It all means something. For those who notice it's as important in a conversation as the words used. While I may not be able to do that by just knowing what they look like, I can try to extrapolate from their words what their body language would be.


Comshaw

Funnily enough, I basically handed my body language tendencies to you in my description of myself.

Body language, attitude, demeanor, I care about that stuff, but physical descriptions just give you a static photo without knowing anything of the real person. What I look like doesn't affect what body language I use. It might help you envision what it might look like, but it doesn't tell you when I'm likely to make those social cues from my text. You have to interact with me for a bit to start picking up on that, and it still won't be from what I look like, but from how I interact.

Mostly when I type out a response, I'm not doing much of anything with body language. Like, currently I'm in bed so I'm pretty blank, completely exhausted and just moving my thumbs to type on my phone.

 

[Comshaw]

Funnily enough, I basically handed my body language tendencies to you in my description of myself.

Body language, attitude, demeanor, I care about that stuff, but physical descriptions just give you a static photo without knowing anything of the real person. What I look like doesn't affect what body language I use. It might help you envision what it might look like, but it doesn't tell you when I'm likely to make those social cues from my text. You have to interact with me for a bit to start picking up on that, and it still won't be from what I look like, but from how I interact.

Mostly when I type out a response, I'm not doing much of anything with body language. Like, currently I'm in bed so I'm pretty blank, completely exhausted and just moving my thumbs to type on my phone.

While I understand and agree with what you said, I think you missed this part of what I said:

While I may not be able to do that by just knowing what they look like, I can try to extrapolate from their words what their body language would be.

Yes, it's more of a comfort thing for me than anything else. But it helps not feeling so blind.

Comshaw

 

[iwatchus]

I am a fucking cupcake that alternates between chocolate topped with a cherry and strawberry with whipped cream. There's definitely innuendo involved in the baked goods I choose to represent me.

I don't want to promote my story too much, but this makes me think about The Great Cupcake Caper. If you choose to go there, be warned, it is silly beyond the point of begin just ridiculous.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Your description sounds about how I pictured you.

My body language is confusing as fuck. When I'm tired I look like I'm about to cry, when I'm bored I look pissed off, when I'm scared or angry I giggle like a maniac, and when I'm happy I look mildly curious. I blame it on my mild alexithymia.

 

[Erozetta]

While I understand and agree with what you said, I think you missed this part of what I said:

Yes, it's more of a comfort thing for me than anything else. But it helps not feeling so blind.

Comshaw

I didn't miss it. I just didn't agree that it was an effective method of guestimating a person's body language. Getting to know them, yeah, you can use your knowledge of them to figure out their expressions and gestures while reading their words, but just knowing what they look like? It'll give you an idea of what those expressions and gestures would look like on them, but not when they would use them, and when they would use them is where body language becomes useful/important.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think too much about it. Even if everybody in this forum sent me a photo of themselves, it wouldn't tell me much in terms of what I really want to know. I'm interested in people's kinks and writing habits. I save the looks stuff for dating sites.

As for myself, I don't care to say what I look like and I doubt anyone here is much interested, but in my mind I prefer to think of myself the way I was about 11 years ago when I was still running marathons at a good clip and I was a few pounds lighter and my hair could still fairly be described as "brown."

The "come to Jesus" moment for me was a few years ago when, at the urging of a friend, I uploaded a photo of myself into one of those cartoon-portrait generating apps and the image it spit out showed me with a solid swath of gray hair on my head. I said "Holy crap that's not me!" and I never did that shit again.

 

[Comshaw]

I didn't miss it. I just didn't agree that it was an effective method of guestimating a person's body language. Getting to know them, yeah, you can use your knowledge of them to figure out their expressions and gestures while reading their words, but just knowing what they look like? It'll give you an idea of what those expressions and gestures would look like on them, but not when they would use them, and when they would use them is where body language becomes useful/important.

Did I say it was an effective method to guestimate a person's body language? Not that I remember. And you disagree with my assessment? Great! That proves we are not all plucked out of the same mold. Actually, I think it's more that you can't understand how it might help me try to determine what a person's intent or demeanor is when they write a post. BUT, because you can't understand it, doesn't mean it doesn't work for me or that it was only intended to work as a reading tool. A large part of that is because it works as a comfort for me to try. A fact that you glossed over in favor of your adamant rebuttal of its accuracy. So let me reiterate the points I tried to make.

To be honest, mine isn't far from who I am.

I do. Not because I care if someone is attractive or not, but because I've navigated life partially by reading body language as well as tone and inflection of voices. That has served me well. Without it I feel a bit blind. Although most people don't know it or consider it, almost every action has a meaning. A comment is made and someone squints one eye a tiny bit and the corner of their mouth pulls down a fraction of an inch. The person next to them, the corners of their eyes tilt upward a slight bit with no other indication. It all means something. For those who notice it's as important in a conversation as the words used. While I may not be able to do that by just knowing what they look like, I can try to extrapolate from their words what their body language would be.


Comshaw

In the first part of the above quote, I tried to explain what I see in body language. Then I stated the bolded part, which you can clearly see I used the word "try". Had I meant that it worked effectively, I would have chosen other words like "I will".

While I understand and agree with what you said, I think you missed this part of what I said:

Yes, it's more of a comfort thing for me than anything else. But it helps not feeling so blind.

Comshaw

And then I said this. As you can see it's an admission that it doesn't work "effectively" as a body language reading technique, but it also says that it works very well as a comfort tool for me.

You disagree that it's effective as a body language reading tool and you were correct. But you were wrong in your assessment that it isn't effective at all. It is very effective as a comfort to me when I try to use it as I describe. And I stated as much.


Comshaw

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

My view is that everyone here is tall, thin, trim, in terrific health and built for endless sex.

 

[AG31]

I've navigated life partially by reading body language as well as tone and inflection of voices.

OK, here's a bit of body language that I can't say I really understand, but I liked the comment.

I was talking to the receptionist at my place of work and she complained that another employee "never says hello to me when she walks by the desk." I said, "I never say hello to you when I walk by." And she said, "Yes, but you never say hello to anyone," in the sort of voice that assured me she was just fine with what I did. Can you make anything of that?

 

[Bramblethorn]

OK, here's a bit of body language that I can't say I really understand, but I liked the comment.

I was talking to the receptionist at my place of work and she complained that another employee "never says hello to me when she walks by the desk." I said, "I never say hello to you when I walk by." And she said, "Yes, but you never say hello to anyone," in the sort of voice that assured me she was just fine with what I did. Can you make anything of that?

If the other employee is saying hello to other staff, but not to the receptionist, it suggests that they consider the receptionist beneath their notice. This is something that admin personnel often experience and dislike.

If you don't say hello to anybody (and the receptionist has picked up on that), that isn't sending the same message; that's just your general style and not suggesting that the receptionist is less important than other staff.