A mini-epiphany

[astridv]

Huh. The other day I was in the fandom_secrets comment thread on faceblindness and sharing my experiences from the exciting world of prosopagnosia. I was thinking back to the time I didn't realize two girls I was talking to were not only related to each other, but in fact identical twins. I wonder now if my partial faceblindness may not be the reason why "Clint Barton is William Brandt" and similar tropes don't work for me. Because I rely only partly on faces to recognize people, and more on things like hairdo, voice and body language. And Renner changes his body language from character to character so maybe that's what throws me off.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I don't think I'm that bad with faces (though embarrassingly I've noticed that I'm worse with non-white faces, in line with probably subconscious racism or something :/), but I still sometimes get confused with US tv series, because so many of the cast are young, white, thin and generically pretty that I often don't recognize actors across series, because they all look vaguely similar, and sometimes I even mix up minor characters within the same show.

(Names though are much worse for me -- I was once in a drawing group with just a handful of people and six months in I could remember all kinds of stuff they shared about themselves, yet because names had only been said once or twice and with no narrative context, I couldn't remember what they were called, and by that point when I knew them quite well, was too embarrassed to ask. It's so nice online that the names always show. In RL introductions in groups I've resorted to mentioning up front that I'm bad with names and may need to ask names several times at the beginning, just to avoid that kind of social mortification later on.)

[yhlee]

I spent half my childhood in South Korea and, embarrassingly, I'm really good at telling apart Asian faces, but Caucasian faces frequently give me trouble. I rather notably failed to be able to tell Buffy and Willow apart in a cast photo of...I think it was S5. (At that point I had seen S2 or S3.) I have an especially hard time with blonds. All this TV-watching is helping, slowly.

[amaresu]

Faceblindness is a thing? I did not know that. I just know I have trouble recognizing people outside of the situations that I know them in. One time I ran into a co worker at Target and couldn't figure out who the crazy lady talking to me was. In college I became really good at talking about reading/homework assignments without having any idea which class I shared with the person talking to me.

This is amazing. Thank you for sharing.

[amaresu]

In highschool I was once friends with a girl for about 6 weeks before I figured out what her name was. We sat next to each other in class, ate lunch together, and even hung out a few times after school. I just never managed to catch her name.

[tinny]

You learn to distinguish people in your early childhood. So if you didn't meet any black people when you were very little, you will not be able to distinguish them very well later. I have no resources to prove this, but I did read it somewhere. And I know this to be true for me - I can only distinguish white people and have more trouble with black and asian faces.

[astridv]

Yeah, generally. It's simply a matter of exposure and training.

I suppose it has to do with the faceblindness that I don't find it any easier to distinguish white folks. Though one should think the variations in hair color would help but they're about equally difficult.

[astridv]

Ah yes, that moment when it becomes just too awkward to admit you don't know who the hell you're talking to.

That's why I eventually made it a habit to ask right away.

[astridv]

For the first episodes of The Vampire Diaries, I couldn't tell apart Caroline and some other girl (I think she died early on) because they both fit the pattern of young, blond, and Hollywood pretty. Same for the guys... I honestly couldn't tall apart Damon and Elena's brother, what's his name.

Now they look totally different to me, but it took a while to learn their faces.

[yhlee]

I am known to silently beg the nice TV people to throw me some nice, distinct hairstyles to help me out. (But of course they change their hair! Aie!) I like anime where they have all different hair colors because it becomes even easier to tell. (Usually.)

I could tell Damon and the brother (Stefan) apart only because they did facial expressions totally differently. At the beginning it was a little rough, although now, yeah, I can tell the faces apart.