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Comment by blocked_again | Hacker News Reader

Visual Snow is a condition which very few people are aware of (including the doctors). I still remember the day I started experiencing the snow. It was a sudden trigger. I couldn't stop noticing it for an year mainly because I was scared whether I am going to be blind. I went to atleast 4 or 5 doctors and no one found any problem with my eyes and I often got ridiculed by friends for making up something which I apparently don't have according to the doctors. I came to know about visual snow after an year from Internet and I realised that many other people have this and they also had a similar experience as mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f34R3GC5I5k https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow

If you are a billionaire you can support the fundraiser for finding a cure to Visual Snow which has only reached 1/5th of it's goal even after 40 months :(

https://www.gofundme.com/visual-snow

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Two thoughts, in order:

1) This isn't normal? I get this plus an auditory analogue (imagine an impossibly high pitched sound like crickets chirping) which I've always figured was just what my 'noise floor' sounded like.

2) Why would you see this as something to cure? (Edit: Assuming it's something you only see at very low light levels - if you get it all the time even in bright light then that would be pretty bad.) It's just what you get when your visual system's auto-gain tries to amplify darkness. I'm not sure what else you'd expect.

I see it all the time! A couple of years before I could look at the sky in morning or evening and enjoy the clouds. Going to beach and watching sunset was my favourites. Now it's a pain to do the both. I can see star like particles flickering in the sky and floaters. It's also uncomfortable to look at the monitor if the brightness is high. Because of all these visual snow patients also suffer from depression. My vision used to be like watching a movie in Full HD TV before. Now it's like watching a movie in an old crappy tv which is having a bad signal reception.

That's odd, in that I've probably noticed visual snow-like artifacts ever since I was a child, but it never bothered me even a tiny bit.

Couple of personal observations:

- Most of the time I only notice snow or artifacts if I'm consciously looking for them or don't have anything else conscious occupying the brain (e.g. staring at a wall out of boredom, or closing my eyes and still paying attention to visual input)

- Once you start looking for visual artifacts, you'll see them everywhere. Right now if I stare at my ceiling in dim lighting, I see little multicolored 'heat wave' patterns roiling about as my visual sensory system works overdrive to extract more signal that there actually is. I also notice a slight 'ringing' halo around bright objects. But as soon as I try to do anything at all, my brain apparently decides that other things are more important and actively filters all this stuff out

Don't discount the possibility that you're putting yourself in a vicious cycle here:

perception of something wrong -> heightened subconscious threat processing (your brain starts looking for a problem in your visual perception) -> more conscious awareness of visual artifacts -> perception of something wrong

The way to break that cycle is to just worry about more important matters, and it'll either go away by itself or you'll stop caring.

> "an auditory analogue (imagine an impossibly high pitched sound like crickets chirping)"

This is tinnitus, something I've suffered from since childhood and it has gotten worse recently after attending a concert and standing too close to the speakers. It does indeed feel like a "noise floor"; in a silent room it becomes overbearing.

Just don’t pay attention to it. Visual snow is like floaters; both are perfectly normal. Some people notice them and then become obsessed; others barely ever notice them.

If you have not experienced it first hand then believe me it's no obsession. It changes your life completely.

Please refer to my comment here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15681108

it's not a disease, it's a normal aspect of vision

Could you elaborate on this?

everyone sees visual noise, especially in low-light

When you have Visual Snow you see it all the time.

yes, all the time, but more in low-light, that's normal - vision is noisy

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