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Why Some People Can Hear Silent GIF (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a BBC report: Some people claim they can hear a thudding sound when the pylon hits the ground and the picture vibrates. Last weekend, Dr Lisa DeBruine from the Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology at the University of Glasgow posted it on Twitter, asking her followers to describe whether they experienced any auditory sensations while watching it. One person who suffers from ringing ears replied: "I hear a vibrating thudding sound, and it also cuts out my tinnitus during the camera shake." Others offered explanations as to why. While another suggested it may have something to do with correlated neuronal activity: "The brain is 'expecting/predicting' what is coming visually and then fires a version of what it expects across the relevant senses. Also explains why some might 'feel' a physical shake."
...is the pylon blue or gold?
Maybe an MRI or brain scan would provide something more conclusive than people self-reporting.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Shut up Ivan. You're not fooling anyone.
At first I couldn't hear anything because my speakers were turned off. Once they were turned on I could hear the vibrating thudding sound.
Some people have faulty minds, think theirs is a normal condition, and get mad when others point out their folly, at which point they double down on their initial misconception. You can make such people hear or see practically anything.
Darn that Intel SpeedStep.
It's a .mp4, not a .gif: https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/DQFEhZ8WsAAbYCD.mp4
Just because it says "GIF" in the corner, that doesn't change the file format.
I didn't actually hear anything, but in my mind I was producing a thud every time the pylon hit the ground & the image shook. Gestalt Theory, loosely put, says that your mind tries to fill in the gaps of things you experience. It's like when you look at a painting, and your mind tries to imagine what is beyond the frame by filling it out.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Duh
light travels faster than sound. your brain sees something that it knows will make a loud noise and your ears tense up in anticipation. the tensing of these muscles can be perceived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_reflex
I have laundry in the dryer that's spinning in another room. It was timed almost the same to the thuds in the GIF. So yes, I "heard" it.
If you notice the rhythm, it's close to that of one's heartbeat, so they're likely hearing their own.
AC comments get piped to
I hear a thud, but it doesn't stop my ears from ringing.
(The thud has a low frequency. My ears ring at a high frequency.)
Its similar to the gestalt principle. the brain knows what the sound should sound like, so the brain imagines the sound in place of its absence.
In visual arts the gestalt lets us complete images after only seeing a portion of said image... a simple example is a circle drawn with a dashed line that still looks like a completed circle.
In typography, the gestalt principle is demonstrated when you cover the lower half of the letters in a line of text. the brain can complete the shapes of the letters based on known/historical data, rendering the obstructed text complete within the mind.
...is
"ooooh!"
Ahhhhh!"
"Deeper!"
"More!"
"Keep going!"
"Don't stop!"
"Faster!"
"ooooooaaaaaahhhheeeeeeiiiiiiii!"
"Now get off me"
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
...but I do "hear" the thudding in the same sense that I hear my internal monologue. What an odd sensation. XD
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
The visual kind of creeped me out as I wrapped my noodle around what I was watching, but I didn't hear anything.
The real question to answer, when they say GIF in their head to they hear it with a soft G like Giraffe or hard G like Guilt?
Why does this link to some SJW's twitter? 'Their' is NOT singular, no matter what twisted history SJWs try to sell you.
I understand the brain filling in the missing thud sound, but what's with all of the screaming in that video?
That is, I sort of "hear" it. But I'm smart enough to know that it's just my brain "filling in the blanks" for me. My brain wants it to sound like a Pythonesque "thud", but if I concentrate I can also hear it going "boing, boing" or "ah-OOOH-gah, a-OOOH-gah!"
Proverbs 21:19
I sometimes experience a strange pressure wave that seems to go from one ear to the other. I hear a high pitch for maybe a minute. This seems to happen usually around 3pm, though sometimes at other times. Happens at home or in the office, and sometimes while out hiking.
I could be mis-remembering, but I think I have experienced the same thing over multiple time zones (Hawaii and the southeast). Definitely in locations in NC and SC.
Anyone else experience anything like that?
Its similar to the gestalt principle. the brain knows what the sound should sound like,
I'm pretty sure my brain doesn't really know what a high voltage electric pylon jumping rope sounds like. Maybe that's why I didn't hear anything.
For those of you who have seen this phenomenon, did you also hear the whooshing sound of the wire? I would imagine all of those wire moving through the air at those speeds would be quite audible too.
The report of the Tinnitis cutting out is a clue.
Tinnitis - ringing in the ears - sometimes (always?) includes a malfunction of a feedback mechanism where an actuator is shaking the ear's innards. You can pick up the "ringing in the ears" with a microphone stuck into the ear.
Perhaps the brain is sending the expectation of a loud sound either to that actuator, or to the one that tightens up the eardrum (reducing the sensitivity) to protect the ear's mechanism from loud noises. Either would produce an actual physical stimulus to the ear's sensors, and either might be detectable by an in-the-ear-canal microphone.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I was able to hear my own heartbeat for a few seconds after the animation started. Your mind is convinced that there will be a sound, you listen intensely, and your habit of ignoring the sound of your own heartbeat is suspended for a few seconds.
Bruce Perens.
It would help if the summary actually linked to the .gif. Or if the links in the summary point to pages that actually link to the .gif. GIF!
I'm getting a very light sound and some pressure in my ears. That wacky brain of ours. :/
I note that I feel the same "twitch" in the ears as I do just after using a firearm. I understand there is a muscle there; perhaps it is learned reflex to the visual cue.
It's racist to assume that a paid shill is russian. Paid internet shills come from anywhere you can pay someone a dollar an hour.
Fantastic gif. It actually tricked me into thinking my phone was vibrating.
Also makes me think of a YC link to a Firefox dev's blog post the other day where he was blown away that people can imagine things in their mind's eye, whereas he is unable to. I wonder what his experience with this would be like.
https://www.reddit.com/r/noisygifs/
It screams offense.
And my captcha was "slurring"...
Am I the only one that hears the pylons tell you to kill the dog, in the voice of your dead grandmother?
Synesthesia
You didn't hear the long drawn-out guitar string twang each time the wires swung around?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I grew up near a military base which included artillery and air cavalry training every day. I noticed later in life that I did not actually hear helicopters anymore unless I saw one or noticed someone else looking up.
*"Cogito Ergo Liberalis"*
Not here, just a deep banging when it hit the ground. Didn't actually "hear" it, but it was definitely a sensation. Also the shaking camera made me feel like my screen had moved.
try watching this with your mouth wide open (say aah, but don't say aah.) and see if you hear it then.
Your jaw muscles are probably contracting in a way that affects your blood pressure causing you to be able to "hear" the image, but in reality it was just a subconscious muscle reaction to visual stimulus preparing your body for impact/force.
If you dig into the source of the page you will discover it is actually an mp4 file.
https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/DQFEhZ8WsAAbYCD.mp4
Microsoft Zo claims she can hear silent GIFs sometimes.
not only works with sound, but with lots of other things... like pain almost every man experience something when watching a movie where some dude gets kicked in the groin. They use this cliché in any slapstick movie... pfff...tight squeeze of the upper front leg muscles (just to make your region of impact smaller). i could type here think of biting the sourest lemon you ever bitten in. And you mouth will water... no need for a movie.
I get the thump, woosh noise in my head too.
It comes from the same place that reading words sounds them out-loud in my head.
Probably just the brain filling in the gaps.
... I was to busy laughing. ROTFL.
Serisously, this is prank, isn't it?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Step 1) Download and install a free fequency meter, like the ones from this website: http://www.winsite.com/frequen...
Step 2) Turn it on.
Step 3) Play video
Step 4) Tell people that if the frequency meter can't detect it, then their speaker can't be making any noise. It is entirely psychological.
Step 5) When they insist, mute your computer secretly and play the video again. Then show that the computer was on MUTE.
This is not something hard to do, nor hard to understand. It's barely interesting. You want to show me something, then show the McGurk effect ( where a fa is heard when ba is said) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Wow. This is my first lead to figuring out something that "bothered" me since I was a kid -- long ago I learned to produce a sort of "rumbling" sound inside my head, by intentionally tensing some muscles. It is really hard to explain as I can't even identify those muscles myself, but I first noticed it when I was doing some silly things with my eyes, like trying to "shake the picture really fast".
I could not search for something I could not describe and I eventually forgot about it. Until I saw this GIF. At first I did not really hear anything, but I definitely felt something like a sound. And then it hit me -- it was a very short burst of the same "rumbling" sound I knew so well.
I took to Google again and found a perfect explanation within like 30 seconds.
So, as far as I can tell, the sound people are hearing is definitely not a "filler" produced by the brain. It's the sound of the tensor timpani muscle contracting in anticipation of a loud sound (that never comes).
Have gnu, will travel.
Apple users are likely to bring their iPhone into the MRI and complain to Apple when it is destroyed.
no, but it does explain the role of suggestion.
Most people are suggestible to some degree, but a small percentage of the population are *extremely* suggestible. These are the folks that you see on stage hypnosis where the hypnotist tells the subject that he's a dog, and he really thinks he's a dog and goes around barking at people and sniffing the ground.
I'm betting the people who really think they're hearing GIFs are highly suggestible people who are being "hypnotized" by the GIF author, so to speak.
Unless you count the buzzing ICs make while animating them?
It's hard to explain. It's almost a "thud" feeling and almost a sound but not quite "there", and I cannot explain what "there" is. It's kind of as if part of my mind is running a simulation on the side of what it would be like to actually be there, and in that simulation there is the sound and sensation of a thud, but the rest of the my brain is merely observing the simulation rather than fully buying into it.
I suspect this is primal in that if for example you saw an actual bear growling at you and showing its teeth, your head runs a quick simulation of the bear biting & crunching into your skull, and the simulation has just enough realness to trigger a fight-or-flight response/instinct.
Brains are largely a prediction engine, and to react properly to predictions, they have to trigger senses and patterns of senses close to the real thing. Otherwise, our experience won't be applied right to devise a proper reaction.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't even get why anyone would hear/feel anything when looking at that
I have tinnitus. I donâ(TM)t hear anything while watching this except for my tinnitus. The only thing on earth more annoying than my tinnitus are the two groups of people who talk most about it online: those who donâ(TM)t believe it and those who think they know what causes it.
Really wish both would shutup.
I first saw the gif without my earbuds in. My brain supplied an imaginary sound, and I knew it was imaginary.
Things got interesting when I put the earbuds in. I searched my hearing, and realized that I did occasionally, 'apparently actually' hear something.
I'm a musician, and I believe I have a decent facility for analyzing sound with my mind. I gathered info on the character of the sound, including when I cupped my hands over my ears and earbuds. Then, I removed the earbuds again, and cupped my ears. This allowed me to characterize the background (internal) sounds, so I could rule them out of my listening.
By this time, I was doing all listening with my eyes CLOSED. I replaced the earbuds, and sure enough there are sounds that are not there in just the background. (I truly believe this could be measured, but I can't really double check it). Here is what I believe must be happening - I believe that there are occasional sounds being produced by my audio system. I cannot tell if they relate in some way to the looping of the gif (particularly with all the gifs actually running on the twitter page), but I tend to think that they are random. I also think my brain is trying to link those actual sounds to the visual scene in the gif - it clearly doesn't fit, but my brain clearly wants to consider the possibility.
In summary, I think that there are actual sounds coming from my system. My brain is trying to perceive those in accordance with the visual stimulus. It objectively does not work - but it still leaves the impression that there IS sound, and that it IS associated with what I am seeing.
I think this may be the closest I will get to understanding synesthesia.
I'm pretty sure it's acoustic reflex - muscle contractions within your inner ear that dampens your hearing response, caused by anticipation of loud noises, generally your own voice.
I distinctly experience it as some anticipatory pressure, followed by a tightening, then a release, which creates the "sound". (Yeah, I know that also sounds like the geekiest possible description of orgasm.)
I feel a little bit of pressure in my eyes as well when the pylon lands, which I'm assuming is also related. It could also explain the tinnitus effects.
My guess is that the only people hearing the gif making a sound are people trying to populate their social media profile with clickable, shareable, viral content.
Researchers at Mercedes Benz have recently started implementing a safety feature that plays a loud short burst of static through speakers in case the car's computers detect an incoming crash. This loud sound prepares our brain and ears so it expects a loud sound coming from a crash. Our body response is a contraction of certain muscles in our ear that protect the fine, sensitive parts inside. This could be more of the same, our brain reacting to a visually stimulating event that is connected to an expected loud crash.
Nothing new as rubber hand experiment was there for ages.
Basically psychologist puts you into dark room with a rubber hand above table and you put real hand behind table. Then he brushes rubber hand and you feel that it tickles
I cannot hear it, but I blink my eyes when the camera shakes -or at least have the same feeling as when blinking an eye. That is the same reaction as I would have to a sudden sound, and therein lies the connection imho.
It's also pathetic to call anyone who disagrees with you a shill, this is worse than the /gamergate/ board on 8chan, where any dissent or negativity was met with "FUCK OFF PAID SHILL CHECK MY DUBS!!", no wonder the movement burned ou- OH SHIT I SAID THE M-WORD! I'M OBVIOUSLY A PAID SHILL!
On some LCD screens when it is quite I can hear the pixels flipping.
My old Amstrad CPC 1512 which was an XT with no fans would make noise when it was calculating stuff. I can sometimes hear beeps from a WiFi router.
We are in a sea of low sounds. That a gif in a quite room may be heard by the electronic device, that the person may not have experienced in such quite environment.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I wouldn't call it "hearing" a thud, any more than I hear my internal monologue. There was more of a perception of a thud sound, but it was distinct from if there was an actual thud sound. Interestingly if I didn't concentrate on the image, and kept it in my peripheral vision, the timbre of the "thud" would change, for instance it was more of a "twang" if I looked below the image so that it was in my upper peripheral vision.
With a bit of effort I could make the "thud" go away too, while looking directly at the image.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.
No thudding sound, no interruption of my tinnitus. And yes, my speakers are turned on.
The animation FTA is actually an embedded mp4 (here) with an SVG planted in the bottom left corner of the viewport mapping out the words GIF.
-If a GIF ran in a forest and no one was around does it make a sound?