2026-01-24 07:08 UTC
Replies (29)
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@foolishowl@social.coop 2026-01-24 07:20
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to That would make it hard to explain all us nerds with our speculative fiction and role-playing games.
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@doggle@mastodon.online 2026-01-24 10:44
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I'd say my imagination is different, although I've not considered how and don't know precisely what I'd be comparing it with. So I'd like a definition before answering. In the past, as with many things I'd probably have accepted the allistic judgement. No more!
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@stveje@mstdn.social 2026-01-24 11:39
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to One of the things I was told over and over again as a child was how much imagination I had. Like my imagination was completely overflowing all bounds. That's what people kept telling me. And yet I was diagnosed with autism 🤷
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@Lunalucardrose20@corteximplant.com 2026-01-24 12:36
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I've never heard this before, personally. I'm the exact opposite. I'm even a maladaptive daydreamer. I also taught myself to read before going to kindergarten, and spent most of my time immersed in made up fantasy worlds. Also started writing fiction then.
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@tshirtman@mas.to 2026-01-24 12:58
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to i'm not diagnosed, but a brother of mine is, and being "in his imagination" has been a very visible enough thing since he was a kid, and the same very active storytelling (to himself) of back then is still very much a thing into his 30s. so that sounds quite wrong to me.
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@MerlyBlack@mastodon.art 2026-01-24 13:09
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I do lack imagination. I can't "invent" things at work, and I work as an artist. I need strong guidelines from the customer who wants me to paint something from them...
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@sar@social.elderlogs.net 2026-01-24 13:38
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to Complete lack of imagination here. I even find it hard to visualise something in my mind. It's a pain in the butt 😂
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@LordCaramac@discordian.social 2026-01-24 14:24
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I absolutely do not lack imagination, but I tend to miss sarcasm unless it is presented with a very theatrically sarcastic voice.
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@VanessaK@mastodon.scot 2026-01-24 14:54
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to These new criteria for autism constantly exclude my son, who was diagnosed before the expansion of the diagnostic criteria and yet he has level 2/3 assistance requirements. I just say he has Classic Autism.
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@401matthall@mastodon.xyz 2026-01-24 15:25
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I've been praised for my "out-of-the-box" thinking forever times which I've always attributed to my imagination. I'm fairly confident I'm running both autism and ADHD in tandem, though.
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@alexia@shrimp.starlightnet.work 2026-01-24 15:31
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to wait wait, where is that a criteria? I read parts of the DSM-5 and ICD-10 to catch up on these common requirements a few years back but I don't recall such a recommendation/criteria being in there? Either way I would say it's pretty much the exact opposite here, I will let my mind wander and imagine things a lot which leads to me coming up with cool stuff
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@everythingalsocan@techhub.social 2026-01-24 15:56
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I can think of a few situations that certainly give the impression that I lack imagination. For me, the biggest hurdle is that information doesn't live in a vacuum, it needs to be connected, fit into a structure. So if people give me incomplete or contradictory information, I'm stuck, I can't work with that. "Just make something up to fill the gaps" doesn't work for me. People get really frustrated when I insist on clarification on details that seem unimportant to them. Once I've got all the information I need I can run away with that, so, yeah, the opposite of lack of imagination.
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@ringagentumbra@mastoart.social 2026-01-24 16:26
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to Current diagnostic criteria is written by neurotypical "doctors" who will never understand us because they usually refuse to include us. I take very little stock in what the DSM (or most research) has to say about neurodivergence. So much of it is demonstrably wrong. The impression I get from others is: compared to most people, my imagination is a complicated symphony of interlocking parts where it seems that most peoples imagination is stuck at twinkle twinkle little star.
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@gekitsu@toot.cat 2026-01-24 16:33
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to i’m not surprised that criterium’s phrasing came from such a narrow-minded externalist judgement. i don’t know, i frequently do reasoning about the possible structures of objects entirely in my mind – surely that is imagination of some sort. and i draw plenty of things i have no way of ever seeing irl, which i have a hard time calling anything other than imagination. and i can try hypothesising how i would feel, were i placed in a situation i have just been told about, surely that has a strong imaginative component. at work, people praise my ability to nail data structure problems first try, even if i never have had to solve that specific problem before – because i imagine what will be done to it, and to what end, and therefore what it ought to look like to both make that possible and be a satisfying representation of whatever it models. at the same time, my ability to imagine an uncountable (and overwhelming) multitude of subjective causes for a person’s observed behaviour frequently hamstrings me in social situations because i have no fucking idea which of them could possibly be the closest to what they’re actually being motivated by.
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@kestral@masto.hackers.town 2026-01-24 17:20
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to As an autistic author I've always resented this generalisation. Just because our imaginations differ, doesn't mean we lack them!!
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@lukyan@lukyan.eu 2026-01-24 17:27
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I imagine a lot of things and have a lot of fun with this. (Fragments of fiction I'm not writing, hypothetical scenarios, the feeling of touching the fur of different animals, fragments of music I'm not always able to name, pictures I've seen that match specific keywords.) As a child I did imagine at least the verbal things among this. But surely some authorities like school teachers could've considered me unimaginative as I did not find meaning in the scenarios they spoke about, or I focused on different details than what they wanted. (For that I see the scene in Erik the Viking where the monk did not perceive Valhalla: with a very tangible benefit for the Vikings.)
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@dinobelbo@mastodon.online 2026-01-24 17:53
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to Doing anything creative is really hard for me, as if any creativity I have is sealed behind a thick concrete wall. Can't tell if it's a genuine lack of creativity, or because I have an overdeveloped sense of shame.
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@LJ@zirk.us 2026-01-24 19:21
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I'm autistic & have aphantasia. I'm also a writer of science fiction & fantasy novels. So, yeah, i have a strong imagination.
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@jordgubben@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-01-24 19:29
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to Isn't this a variant of the old prejudice that #aspies lack emotions? I haven't actual heard that one in a while now, which I take as society making some small progress. Now I think both these prejudice mainly stem from god old #kyriarchy, but despite that I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to however spreads both of these as I think there's at least one more thing to consider. ...
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@NinjaWerewolf@tech.lgbt 2026-01-25 06:04
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I lack the ability to imagine how neurotypical people think. Other than that, nope, my imagination is so good I could sit still for days on end making up stories and worlds and never get bored.
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@dosboy0xff@infosec.exchange 2026-01-25 08:52
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to Limited imagination could also stem from trauma, which unfortunately happens to be frequently comorbid.
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@MamaLake@beige.party 2026-01-25 09:13
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to growing up in a society that didn't understand me, I had to be very creative to attempt to understand them. Hours of playing witch outside in nature, attempting to enroll peers in this play, playing house but getting bored with role play that didn't really makes sense in my brain. Painting and video to try to share what I'm seeing, what I'm feeling. Audhd made me distinctly different from others in a way that only made sense from a creative mindset for me.
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@Lucaas@jorts.horse 2026-01-26 03:54
I am autistic, and thought I lacked imagination for a number of reasons. First, I have aphantasia, no visual imagery. Second, I don't play like others, I never have in all my 48 years. Parallel play is sometimes fun, but like in a give me some of my own LEGOs kind of way. I have only figured out how to use my imagination in limited ways within the last month. It's a skill I didn't understand I had before then. And I have just barely tapped into it. @KatyElphinstone@mas.to @Testoceratops@disabled.social
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@Retreival9096@hachyderm.io 2026-01-26 03:54
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to ... I'm very imaginative, but in (apparently) unusual ways. 1) I can see rooms etc in my dreams, but I don't imagine (or remember) them that way while awake. 2) Things that are obvious to me are not obvious to others ... and the other way around. 3) I come up with "outside the box" solutions to problems -- but don't come up with normal solutions often.
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@Cetraria@neurodifferent.me 2026-01-30 05:55
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to in both senses of the word, yes. I have no mind's eye, and I dislike reading fiction or having imaginative play. I would spend my days setting up displays with my toys, there was never any sort of role playing. Arguments could be made over whether I'm creative or not. My job probably counts as creative to a certain extent. It's not something that's important to me, to be considered creative. It's more like word games, and autistics do love our word play! Make-believe really just isn't jam. My ex used to start all sorts of arguments over hypothetical 💩 because I wouldn't play what-if games with him. I don't enjoy them and really don't see the point. It's like the "would you still love me if I was a worm" joke. No please.
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@Armachitikian@rivals.space 2026-01-31 09:08
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I probably have aphantasia (If I close my eyes and try to think about an apple I won't see anything) but I wouldn't say I lack imagination, I often run D&D games and I know how to use things from fantasy books I've read without just copy-and-pasting them into the game, it feels like I'm making something new out of what I consume, I also have tons of ideas for a fantasy book series I'd like to write but I'm too disorganised to just put my mind to it, sit down and write (ideas can be pretty amorphous when in my head, they become more concrete once I write them down) when I played pretend with other kids there always were sci-fi and fantasy elements to it, my parent's relationship was shit so I didn't get the appeal of playing mommy and daddy
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@meltedcheese@c.im 2026-01-31 18:56
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to My whole career (NASA, high tech labs) has been been about ideas, imagining the future and making it come true. I can’t believe they paid me for it. I have 47 inventions (so far). I never thought about it as imagination, except maybe that first spark which I would call “inspiration.”
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@Mela@zusammenkunft.net 2026-02-02 00:40
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to nope
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@leonavis@mountains.social 2026-02-10 14:00
@KatyElphinstone@mas.to I definitely lack imagination and ideas. I am pretty good at doing stuff and finding ways to do stuff, you know, like coding or finding circuits that satisfy a need. But ask me to just do something in that regard and you'll probably find me somewhat paralyzed. I'm pretty creative at finding solutions and combining existing solutions into better solutions and fine-tuning and what-not, but I'm very bad at actually inventing something or at all having ideas about what could be useful or helpful to people. But that's one side. I do not lack imagination in the sense of imagining a story or something. When I read a book, the characters are actually quite vivid in front of my inner eye. Yet when I tried writing myself, the stories were always quite short. The characters usually react to outer inputs and solve the problem, they do not just start doing stuff. When left alone they just go to sleep and do boring, mundane stuff that nobody wants to read about... So while I can be very creative about fulfilling roles that are brought to me, I'm not one to invent or create such roles or ideas to begin with. I actually like doing the "boring" part of the work. I am able to play guitar, I learned it as a kid. And while I can play classical guitar somewhat well, I lack rhythm or the actual feeling for the music. I had a pupil, cute little dude, and I taught him some basic riffs for "Rude" by Magic. He just started playing along with the music and it just worked with him flowing along. I could never play like that... I found that quite interesting and I think it illustrates my point here.