Metaphor families
Per-family analysis of the metaphor vocabulary r/Aphantasia uses to describe inner experience. The 12 families below come from a regex pre-pass over the substrate (pipeline/src/aphantasia_pipeline/analysis/metaphors.py) that produced primary-source-deduped match counts and unique-author counts for each candidate family. An agent then read a 30-chunk stratified sample per family and classified each match as genuine metaphor, literal mention, or edge / ambiguous — for the externalisation family a fourth bucket was added ("practical externalisation" — describes a strategy rather than a metaphor).
The unique-authors-after-correction column below is the most defensible "how many people use this metaphor" estimate. Counts under 1% of the 46,087 author base are minority framings; counts over 5% are community-available; nothing here approaches majority status.
Headline table
| Family | Primary matches | Unique authors | % of 46k authors | Genuine-metaphor share (sampled) | Estimated authors using genuinely | File |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voice / radio / audio / sound | 49,444 | 14,862 | 32.3% | ~70% | ~10,000 | voice_radio_audio.md |
| camera / photo / picture / movie / video | 43,127 | 15,896 | 34.5% | ~80% | ~12,500 | camera_photo_movie.md |
| black / blank / darkness / void | 13,804 | 7,871 | 17.1% | ~65% | ~5,000 | black_blank_void.md |
| mind's eye | 10,278 | 5,162 | 11.2% | ~90% | ~4,600 | mind_eye.md |
| external tools / notes / lists | 9,826 | 4,658 | 10.1% | ~27% metaphor + ~27% practical externalisation | ~2,500 | external_tools_notes_lists.md |
| map / spatial / GPS / route / landmark | 9,214 | 3,923 | 8.5% | ~55% | ~2,200 | map_spatial_gps.md |
| fog / haze / fuzzy / blurry / vague | 6,079 | 3,698 | 8.0% | ~85% | ~3,100 | fog_haze_fuzzy.md |
| computer / software / rendering / graphics | 4,347 | 2,468 | 5.4% | ~46% | ~1,100 | computer_software_render.md |
| screen / display / monitor / LCD | 4,271 | 2,487 | 5.4% | ~46% | ~1,100 | screen_display_monitor_lcd.md |
| AI / ChatGPT / LLM / image generator | 1,935 | 1,045 | 2.3% | ~10% metaphor (most are literal prosthetic use, ~2× over tech discussion) | ~100 | ai_tools.md |
| database / library / filing cabinet / archive | 923 | 640 | 1.4% | ~40% | ~250 | database_library_filing.md |
| terminal / GUI / command line / CLI | 164 | 133 | 0.29% | ~73% | ~100 | terminal_gui_cli.md |
Headline findings
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No metaphor family approaches majority status. Even the highest-frequency families (camera/photo, voice/audio) reach ~32–35% of unique authors, and that's before subtracting literal mentions. After false-positive correction, the largest community-available metaphor is "voice/audio" at roughly 21% of authors.
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The narrowly technical "terminal/CLI" framing has 0.29% community uptake. With high precision (~73% of matches are genuine), but only 133 unique authors total. The user's working "terminal frame" model is articulate but represents a tiny minority register, concentrated among self-identified developers.
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The broader "computer / monitor / cable cut" hardware-deficit framing is more available (5.4% of authors raw, ~2.4% genuine) but still a clear minority. The community's typical self-description is not technical-metaphor mediated.
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"Mind's eye" is the field's load-bearing folk-technical term (11% of authors, ~90% genuine). Users actively extend it — describing it as a piece of equipment that can be unplugged, broken, or located somewhere — and increasingly subject it to meta-skeptical argument.
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"Voice"-family vocabulary is the load-bearing replacement vocabulary for inner cognition. Auditory imagery is treated as an orthogonal sense that often persists when visual imagery does not — supporting the brief's anauralia / multisensory finding from
digests/cooccurring.md. -
The fog/haze/fuzzy family is the home of hypophantasia — degraded imagery that flickers and fades, with a distinct emotional register (frustration) that pure-absence reports lack. ~85% genuine signal makes this the cleanest small-volume family in the inventory.
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Map/spatial vocabulary is the most-organized non-visual cognition vocabulary in the corpus. Users reliably distinguish "visualization" from "spatial sense" in stable internal terminology — sometimes citing place/grid cell neuroscience explicitly. This is a candidate subtype.
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AI tools appear ~2× more often as practical prosthetic for missing imagery than as tech discussion. "Use DALL-E to render book characters," "ChatGPT helps me visualise" — this is direct evidence for the brief's §6 question about whether users connect AI tools to aphantasia. The cognitive-metaphor signal is thin (~10%); the prosthetic-use signal is strong.
Methodology notes
- Matches are primary-source counts (one row per primary post or comment containing a regex hit). Thread-aware chunks include parent titles and context comments — that level of counting was discarded to avoid double-counting.
- Unique-author counts dedupe by
author_keyfrompipeline/data/authors.parquet. Authors with[deleted]/[removed]author fields are excluded. - Genuine-metaphor share is from a 30-chunk hand-classified sample per family. Extrapolation to the full match set is rough; the table reports point estimates, not confidence intervals.
- No comparative claims. This corpus has no matched control of typical-imager discussion. Frequencies here document within-r/Aphantasia language, not distinctiveness.
- The base author count of 46,087 itself excludes one-time anonymous posters and is dominated by a top 1% (~30.8% of authored rows). All percentages here are over the wide author base, so they slightly under-represent the most-active subset.
What this answers and doesn't
- Answers the brief's §8 (highest priority): which metaphor families recur in r/Aphantasia, at roughly what volume, with what false-positive risk.
- Constrains the working terminal-frame model: the model has surface-language uptake at 0.29% of authors, an articulate but tiny minority.
- Does NOT answer how stable a given user's metaphor preference is over time, or how metaphor families covary with subtype (those are next-pass items #6 author-clustering and #7 temporal-vocabulary).
See also
reddit/data/metaphor_counts.csv— the underlying frequency table.reddit/data/metaphor_year_counts.csv— year-by-year curves (input for §7 temporal-vocabulary).reddit/lcd_phenomenology.md— the four-label phenomenology classifier; the screen/monitor metaphor is the surface-language form of the access-blocked subtype it documents.reddit/outliers.md— accounts that resist the dominant framings, including the technical/machine framing.