wobblegong

Thinkin' about animals....

  • 🐟/🐠/they/them

deviantArt: jWobblegong

*tiny furry cheeps*


  • "Habits are the only thing that keep me alive and vaguely on the same continent as functional" vs "I have never managed to form a habit on purpose in my entire life"
  • "Podcasts/audiobooks are the best invention since wheels and have massively improved my meals/commutes/chores/insert activity here where the main activity holds way less than 100% of my attention" vs "Podcasts/audiobooks are a torture machine that I enjoy slightly less than being waterboarded mid dentist visit"
  • "Cancelling plans is a higher high than drugs or sex" vs "I spent 60 times as long as this scheduled hangout will take realigning my entire concept of existence to make room for it, at immense internal cost, and if we cancel it's going to take me 4 months to recover"

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in reply to @wobblegong's post:

You are the most not alone. I've had some incredible interactions when I do something as simple as ask "oh cool, do they have transcripts?" and get a whole paragraph of confused "what do you mean TRANSCRIPTS the whole POINT of the MEDIUM is the AUDIO" back-and-forth. (Pour one out for my heard-of-hearing/deaf allies, why are people like this....)

Definitely agree on the audiobook thing! Just goes to show even people with the same general diagnosis can have vastly different experiences. My dad (ADHD) enjoys audiobooks a lot and prefers them to print books, but I (also ADHD) really get nothing out of audiobooks because I struggle to pay attention and then keep having to go back because I don't remember what happened, so I avoid them. and I love reading print books!

Despite having what on paper look like the same diagnoses, one of my best friends is the "Podcast and youtube video and a mobile game while playing a MMORPG" genre of stimulation. Meanwhile if I try to play a game while hanging out on voice chat with my friends who are playing a different game, I get 30-120 minutes of being able to do that before my brain is so shredded I can barely think in a straight line.

The only rule is that there is a right answer to what our brains want. What that answer is? All over the map, baby! :eggbug-devious:

The irony is that I really like putting chill speedruns (and similar, like deep dungeon) on in the background, but podcasts tend to invoke one or more of the following emotions:

  • Agonizing frustration because I'm trying to make sense of the interesting things happening in the podcast but while I'm mulling over the thing and putting the pieces together and poking into some interesting tangents they've ALREADY MOVED ON please slow tf down augh
  • Zone out, tune out, realize that I missed everything, get upset because I can't figure out where exactly I tuned out or what exactly I missed
  • I Focus on Listening to the podcast and then I get eepy and fall asleep on my desk because it turns out that despite (or perhaps due to) being able to hear a housefly hit the floor from the other side of the room, making sense of audio input is an ongoing and exhausting exercise

For speedruns, at least, nothing really goes on beyond some swearing at the game, answering questions that I probably know the answer to, and rehashing the same run over and over again. It's just white noise, and I'm comfortable half-listening to it because there isn't any information to Absorb there.

(incidentally, this is one of the reasons I struggle to watch non-speedrun streams - there's always something New happening and I feel like I gotta give it my full attention!)

I feel somewhat in the middle regarding podcasts. I never want to listen to a podcast of something I want to know, but they're incredibly good as background noise and I didn't realize that until I went on a rabbit hole trying to find out where a clip came from. Now I'm hooked to podcasts about the US law system and I'm neither an US citizen or a lawyer.