What would you do if...

[MutantAndProud]

Literally everyone you knew suddenly began communicating in a different way? Like the words you spoke were having almost no effect or randomized effect?

Like being in the communication’s major’s equivalent of a twilight zone where you could only ever get reliable but barely useful basics out of an AI chatbot since the rest of humanity just went blank

[PJMcK]

1. Sounds like Fox News (n/t)

[fierywoman]

2. Sounds like the way Scientologists use the English language. Or MAGAts.

[MutantAndProud]

5. You know

That is a possibility. I really haven’t figured it out either despite trying casually on the Scientology front because of some people I knew into it (I think?)…

The MAGA stuff is fairly obvious but most of that’s clearly pulling strings that I just don’t care about.

[fierywoman]

6. I once had a friend who started the Scientology program (it was in LA and I think she

wanted to rub shoulders with some stars.) As she learned, she told me what the words they use mean. I kept laughing and saying, *no* it doesn't!

[MutantAndProud]

9. Ha.

Just to mess around or?

[fierywoman]

10. According to her, it was what they really did.

[MutantAndProud]

11. Ha you never know exactly why

Someone gets so attached to perceptions (without analysis). I used to intellectually nudge people off the track just to see what would happen. It’s had interesting results, can be very illuminating sometimes.

[Shermann]

3. That was the premise of the "Hush" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Ghouls named "The Gentlemen" come to town and steal everyone's voices.

Worth watching, very unnerving. And comedic at times.

[MutantAndProud]

4. Haven't seen Buffy in years

I vaguely remember that part but not the rest, time to rewatch!

[cyclonefence]

7. That's kind of my life

My husband is deafer than he thinks he is and won't wear his hearing aids. I have a very low voice and I confess I do mumble (my throat was paralyzed by polio when I was a kid). It's a little like living alone sometimes; sometimes it's pretty funny when he thinks I said one thing and then I do something he was not expecting.

OTOH It can lead to pretty nasty fights, all based on some stupid (literal) misunderstanding.

But this stuff really does happen when you get old and deaf--I'm a little deaf, too.

It's surprising to me that hearing is such a vital sense, sometimes more important than sight, even.

[MutantAndProud]

8. Actually that has been happening to me more than a little

I do have hearing differences between the two…

Always had it to a degree from a young age, maybe genetic. My dad had polio and post-polio syndrome, not sure if it’s something inherited or not like certain traits are.

Never considered a hearing aid until recently.

[Think. Again.]

12. You might be interested ...

...in exploring how some people with autism describe their experiences communicating with people who don't have autism.

[MutantAndProud]

13. I'm aware of those

And that aspect of the social circle I’m in. Luckily I’m not intellectually disabled but culturally there are criminal deficiencies in how people like that are handled. Time for a shift.

[Think. Again.]

14. I agree...

...I wonder about our society's habit of assuming that just because something is considered "normal", it must be the more correct way of being, and that any other way of being must be an inadequacy of some kind.

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society" -Jiddu Krishnamurti

[MutantAndProud]

15. Ah it's been a while since I heard that quote

Very apt for our current state of affairs

[Think. Again.]

16. My sanity depends on that quote.