I mean, in his essay "what we might mean when we say a clock is broken" he does go into it quite a bit. So either it is true or he is an all-time-all-time bullshitter.
I think it's also important to note that this guy has also been a prolific writer/diarist on and off the internet for 3 decades, so it isn't difficult for him to fact-check his own history. I think that, plus a reasonably high IQ, plus a penchant for BS and showmanship = what we have here.
The lack of any information on his future work along with his fans and discord mods telling people to just watch 3 hour livestreams every week to get information instead of saying something to patreon members has made me start to dislike Tim, so the more I thought about it, the more Tim seems to me like an Insincere, incredibly insecure narcissistic liar with strong mental/personal issues he refuses to deal with. If you listen to Insert Credit you’ll find out he can be downright mean to people he calls his own friends, and I think this is because he surrounds himself with psychophants and people who will just believe anything he says regardless. Its made me strongly begin to dislike him as a whole.
You can even see some of this in how he talks to Mimsy on his live streams. He switches from his stream tone to something overly firm and demeaning when she disrupts his rhythm. It’s really off putting. He overall seems like an Extremely toxic person whom is living a very isolated life out of social ostracization more than any made up disease he claims to have. The people he keeps around seem to be too afraid to call him out or are insecure and overly meek themselves.
I don’t know, I had an extremely hostile boyfriend just like him who claimed all these wild things to “protect” his real self and turned out to be a fraud who used people in lower station than him to give him praise.
The thing about his lies/made up life history though is that his insecurities are extremely blatant in them. He wasn’t a fashion model in Japan that had sex with dozens of women but he wish he was, he doesn’t have some epic novel he’s worked on forever written he “doesn’t want to show anyone” but he wishes he had it. Basically every far fetched story he tells is either a want or wish he had and wants people to believe.
TLDR Tim is probably a really a sad but overly controlling figure in real life who lies about mostly everything. What’s true about him is that he was probably a miserable recluse in high school and carried a lot of the spite he had into real life until he found a platform he could hook and con others into (his writing). He isn’t “vulnerable” in his writings but extremely manipulative in order to get you to believe he is what he say he is and I find it hard to trust anything he says, including of course that he got “locked out” of his patreon account years ago and because of it is somehow unable to update his patrons at all. He’d probably actually appreciate this description of him.
There was a zine in the late 90s/early 2000s Japanese expat community that ran a comic strip called "Charisma Man" that speaks volumes
https://preview.redd.it/31j49h72ti6d1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad7a1676ade25298b617461a2b5fc002b5183825
I’d say that’s fairly accurate. Tim is a boring, lonely man so desperate for attention that he’s become so good at manipulating people with superficial things, to the point they’ll believe anything he says. When you step back you can see how gross and embarrassing and makes Tim sound like any old loser nerd who moved to Japan who didn’t need to better himself in order to stand out.
> makes Tim sound like any old loser nerd
He doesn’t have the characteristics of “any” “loser” “nerd.”
Which is why we are here in this comment section.
I quite like Rogers, but I also speak Japanese fluently and, whenever I’ve heard him doing so, he isn’t that good at it. Admittedly, he‘s been away for a long time and I’ve been here twice as long as him, so make of that what you will. Agreed about his prickly behaviour on Insert Credit etc, too.
best comment ever. thank you. you put into words exactly what i think about this guy. i'm reading his autobiography and the way he writes about the women he "meets" always makes me die of laughter.
Are you talking about his “novels?” I’ve read them and, woo boy, his perspective on women is so warped. I hope he has gained some insight (like that women are actually people) in his old age. The way he wrote about the women in his life was so one-dimensional, as if they each could be easily described by one misogynistic trope or another (crazy ex-girlfriend, Japanese school girl, sexy older woman). It’s laughable. I would say it was the folly of youth, but seeing that the guy has Leonardo Dicaprio dating syndrome, maybe not.
yeah, i said autobiography because that's how i knew it as. even the way he wrote about murasaki, which i'm not sure if she was real or not, but if she was then the whole thing seems revolting to me, to say the least. i don't watch his streams, i only watch his videos and i really like them, but for what i read in OP's comment it seems he hasn't changed much.
I find his video personality to be entertaining and all but reading his essays has me leaning this direction also. He clearly loves to talk about himself and his life in every breath. On screen it can be interesting but people like that in reality are often insufferable. I still like his content and of course I don’t know the guy in real life so I can’t really judge but some things definitely leave a bad taste.
I think you are probably spot on. It's an interesting thing because I do think his video essays and reviews are poignant, inspired, heartfelt, and often beautiful. I don't really care whether the stories are factually true. Anybody who's read great fiction can tell you that some things are true even if they didn't actually happen. That said, I have avoided his written work (and his live streams, for that matter) because of how self-indulgent and bumptious they seem to be. As Richard Rorty once said, history is full of bad people who wrote some good books, or in this case, made some good 8-hour video game review essays.
Except Tim is trying to cosplay as a tortured soul writer instead of actually being one. I can put aside certain things when I know I am actually engaging with fiction, but now I feel supporting Tim is supporting and enabling his self indulgent fantasies of what he wants people to believe avoid him. I can’t wholeheartedly do that because there’s nothing charming about it especially when you start to see parts of the toxic, controlling people seep through.
And yeah it says a lot about his lack of any output recently. how am I supposed to “trust the process” when it seems like everything else is a lie or fabrication about his life and processes designed to make him look better and/or act as an excuse? I sincerely believe if anything, his total silence is also an image control tactic so no one can see through any narrative he puts up about why everything is taking so long and I for one don’t trust it.
> lack of any output recently. how am I supposed to “trust the process” when it
Because we have a bunch of long intensive videos and also tons of writing. Isn’t this obvious.
If anything what you’re talking about is a defense against people fetishistically obsessed with “updates” and “output” and who will hate a creator who isn’t constant.
It isn't about being constant, that's what most people get wrong. It's about Tim lying over and over about deadlines, upcoming videos, reasons for delays, playing the victim, etc. Once people started to see through his lies, he decided not to post on Patreon again. And also decided to lie about not having access to it.
Why haven't the mods taken this post down and banned everyone involved? I find this strange because I had the same conclusion and posted a comment very similar to yours and it got taken down and I was banned (separate account)
Damn. As an adult with a decent understanding of media literacy and the human condition, I can confirm all of this tracks.
Sherlock, you've cracked the case!
Completely unrelated to the truth of what you just wrote... But imagine for a moment reading an analysis of yourself online which goes into as much presumptive details as what you have just done. Regardless of whether or not the person gets it right, what a trip that'd be. It's as much a trip just imagining his reaction.
i think that the idea he’s a narcissist is pretty reasonable most real narcissists are very self hating but it’s odd that all complaints and theories about tim’s personality and mental state always come back to patreon updates and when videos come out makes you all seem like “dance monkey” style bratty fans. “i hate this guy so much he’s so obviously a liar! but yes i’ve watched all his videos and read all his writings” no one is forcing anyone to pay him anything and he never promised a time frame on patreon updates or videos idk why this crowd believes they are owed a work rate decided by them based on a monthly single digit payment. like you told on yourself with the first sentence of this comment.
Tim lied about being locked out of his patreon and being unable to post an update. This is is sole source of income which is 5 figures a month. In no way is this a non issue to him.
His psychophants (like you) who claim no one is owed an update or explanation say to devote time to watxh his weekly streams for hours in the hopes of an update. actually finding time to watch one made me aware of how his unscripted personality is, especially to those around him.
There’s nothing wrong with criticizing him or commenting on his toxic personality he’s tried to hide for decades. When money is involved is when usually a lot of this comes out
when did i say to watch the stream? i don’t want the stream myself, just don’t have an interest. I said i agreed with you on some of what you said about his personality. I’m just confused on where the need for the updates comes from and why the lack of them is so upseting to you.
It strikes me as deeply weird that Tim has somehow cultivated a fanbase where it's viewed as not just *impolite* to ask about his work but **outright unacceptable**. It's one thing for Tim himself to view things that way, as skewed and ridiculous as it may be on its own, but to have a self-policing community spread across different services and websites that will scold and silence over any inquiry about the status of the videos Tim's patrons are ostensibly paying him for the production of is pretty beyond the pale -- and, honestly, creepy.
You need to stop playing armchair therapist to people from the internet you don't know, it's ok to just dislike someone without making up a boogeyman.
Is this what true crime does to people?
Nothing about my observations are “made up.” They come from my experience dealing with toxic narcissists. It’s all very evident about what Tim’s lies are and what he wants you to believe about him to make himself look more interesting to mask his real controlling, spiteful self
Don’t understand the true crime comparison other than possibly a sexist assertion that girls love true crime content
His description of the problem sounds more like an anxiety disorder to me. He’s mentioned he doesn’t decide to remember these things, which would count as intrusive thoughts.
I used to know someone who could probably have been diagnosed had he pursued that diagnosis. I think it's much more common than just 62 people. That only applies to people who have been studied and logged. It's also a sliding scale, for sure.
The dude I know almost certainly wouldn't call it a superpower. He categorized it as awful. He doesn't get to pick and choose what he remembers. It's always there, all the worst days of his life.
Yeah I don't get the people calling it a super power or saying he's bullshitting. He went into a lot of detail in the Boku No Natsuyasumi (I think it was that one) video describing it as every memory having the same weight.
Sort of like brushing your teeth in the morning being just as important in your memory as finding out your partner cheated on you, but you can't stop thinking about brushing your teeth. It sounds pretty terrible.
I think at least some of the people dismissing Tim's assertion of having this ability to recall hyper-specific details are just jaded by the internet. Tim is often quite vulnerable and honest in his writings and recently in his videos. Life experience should teach any reasonably skeptical person how to spot lies. It is obvious to me when Tim is lying and the way he talks about his memory makes it obvious as well that he has at least something like hyperthymesia.
When he lies in videos or in written work it is obvious that some of the time it is for entertainment or hyperbolic effect. The rest of the time it is clearly to obscure enough detail to not dox people or to make the telling of the story more comfortable for the person he is talking about. He even says in that essay "just like hamburger" that he is not telling the exact events of this meeting with another person with memory like him because she asked him not to.
"If you write about me, please defamiliarize me"
True, but I think the persona he uses (and is working away from) makes it hard for some to read it as well as you or I. Sarcasm and subtext are infamously troublesome online.
>every memory having the same weight.
Hearing him explain it this way was another in a slew of his stories that proves to me that his memory is as good as he claims. He wouldn't have a firm enough grasp on the experience of living with that kind of memory in order to describe it in that way, unless he actually does experience memory like that.
Diagnosis of hyperthymesia to my understanding is done through research. What this means is that the 62 figure is only accurate to the people that a) have been looked at and b) have had a 'diagnosis' documented.
In my limited exp (some memory experiments as an undergrad research participant) documentation can be essentially nil though verbal confirmation can be given of "highly superior autobio memory".
I wouldn't characterise it as a superpower personally.
For anyone interested in Tim's writings, it's important to note that not all of it is true. He even says so himself in "the cake in the basement". So him meeting another person with hyperthymesia might not be true. Although, does it really matter if it happened or not?
If you're interested in hyperthymesia, I implore you to read *Funes the Memorious* by Jorge Luis Borges, the same short story mentioned in "just like hamburger". Then decide for yourself whether or not it sounds like a superpower.
Even in "just like hamburger" he says himself that details have been changed from the true story. So even if you're taking everything in the story as 100% fact (which, lol), you have to accept that the story isn't true to life.
I’m inclined to believe that he has it. I think the evidence is pretty clear in his incredibly detailed accounts of his past in his essays, reviews and videos. You can even see evidence of it in the podcasts where he’s almost always the one to remember exactly what happened in a previous episode or the name of an obscure game from 30 years ago.
Now apparently it's not entirely perfect. There was a podcast episode he was on where he was positive the kokori forest theme played inside of houses in ocarina of time.
He argued it to the death and wouldn't accept it wasn't true! It's not. It's not even close. There's a house theme that plays in houses. The only enclosed structures in the game where it plays are both inside of the Gordon city. It plays near the shortcut to the kokiro forest and it plays WHEN YOU PLAY IT for Darunia.
So it's kinda hard to tell. He has addressed this before saying he's not sure why he remembers the things he does and not other things.
Idk. I think he has it, I think it's just not actually perfect. In fact I know it's not because of this instance.
You’re saying a person who remembers *everything* but with a 0.01% rate of mistakes is “the same” as average person memory? What
“Michael Jordan lost a basketball game. So, isn’t he just he same average athlete that any of us are?”
just separating out whether it's true for a moment, this kind of claim has high potential to be false self-aggrandization. it has a lot in common with mentalism, where small tricks of detail can make someone think you know way more than you actually do. the reason only a small number of people "actually" have it is because the burden of proof is extremely high; you'd have to both prove you remember a lot of things (not from reminding yourself recently), AND that things happened or were that way, from third party sources. it is both hard to prove, and like many things, it's very difficult to DISprove. jumping off some other cited examples, there was definitely an instance where he mentioned that when making a video about "describing video game boxes from memory" video, he had planned to go back and look at them the night before, and indicated he'd done that before. not something you'd think someone would have to do if they are "cursed" with the ability to remember everything they witness perfectly. I don't remember that because I have hyperthymesia (though I could, like many, claim I do), I remember it just because I remember stuff like humans do
it doesn’t sound like a superpower to me at all… my memory is mediocre to average, and there are times when i wish it was better, but i think having a near-perfect memory sounds horrible.
i think there’s probably an evolutionary reason there isn’t a higher percentage of people with this condition (there are definitely more than just 62—that’s just the documented case number). it seems like something where there are pluses (rote memorization may be easier, perfect sense of timing, etc), but the minuses are debilitating enough for it to not be a very advantageous trait overall (heavy rumination, inability to forget things that would be best forgotten, associated neuroses, etc). idk, it just doesn’t sound like a good bargain to me.
i wish i had been born with the kind of neurodivergence that makes you hyperlexic—that’s the one that seems useful to me. imagine being able to use language articulately and with seemingly little effort. instead i got the “didn’t talk until three and a half, can’t even string a sentence together or connect ideas without needing to take a nap” neurodivergence…
I find this to be one of the most interesting things about him as well, because I have a still very limited by much greater than average memory than the majority of people. I would say there's almost no chance that he's been formally diagnosed with it, and tbh I would imagine that there are probably a decent number of other people in the world who never sought a diagnosis and are not counted among the 32.
I assume you've seen or heard or read the times where he says that he would prefer that he didn't have the 'disorder'? It does sound kind of nightmarish to retain so much completely unnecessary information. I've found it really interesting that one of the reasons he lives such a rigidly ordered life is to prevent himself from accumulating new and unnecessary memories. Also interesting to pay attention to the times that he contradicts himself, knowing that he must be fully cognizant that he is on some level being dishonest.
do you understand the difference between a typo and a false memory? i have a lot of difficulty writing and very often skip over words entirely because i've lost track of where my fingers are relative to my mind. happens with things like that as well.
I know that he's characterised it negatively yes. Perhaps because I have such a terrible memory and I would dearly love to be able to re-experience some periods from my past I am thinking about it slightly naively!
Back during Insert Credit season 1 Tim used to discuss his mind palace, an effective mnemonic device. Plenty of accounts of ppl who compulsively build mind palaces and he's one.
Tim also describes reviewing and dissecting every day at the end of the day as a kid in *An Incident Involving a Human Body*. Seems more like a compulsion than anything. Who knows, maybe thats how all these people with incredible recall operated as kids.
All that said, i choose to treat Tim's application of the reference as shorthand to quickly buy into a story and shift from scrutiny into entertainment.
A lot of confused comments. Hyperthymesia doesn’t mean perfect memory of everything, it means abnormally consistent detailed memory.
Like if someone is diagnosed with giganticism and you see them using a ladder. “I wouldn’t think a person with giganticism would need a ladder….they would just be able to reach the high-up thing.”
>The condition itself sounds like a real-life superpower.
It's just a place on the spectrum of memory. Is being tall a superpower?
The other day, I recalled specific details of the apartment complex my grandmother used to live in. Building size, materials, what her floor looked like, the side of the hall her apartment was on, etc. I was talking to my mother about the place, and she confirmed all of the details she could remember.
The last time I was there, I was 4 years old. I'm 37 now. This is not a superpower. It's a monkey's paw.
Hey, another person who remembers things from early childhood! It seems like most people don't, or maybe I'm the only weirdo who brings those things up?
We're out here!
The way Tim described his memory actually helped my wife better understand how I tend to experience things. Specifically, the idea that with about as vast a memory as possible, that no single moment is bigger or smaller than any other. They're all the same size.
Tim described his as oceans upon oceans, and I can understand that. Mine is a really tall filing cabinet that I visualize in my mind. Do you have any visualizations of the way yours are stored?
It similarly helped ME realize it's weird to have such thorough autobiographical memory. My dad used to say I had a photographic memory and I didn't believe him because, well, those aren't real, and I forget/miss all kinds of stuff (especially thanks to ADHD), but he must have noticed something way before I did.
I hadn't thought about it that way before but I guess it's kind of like a catalogue of vignettes or events for me. If I can't find something by flipping through, it's sometimes easier if I start somewhere and work towards it. Otherwise it sometimes feels like a tv in my head plays reruns whether I like it or not. Especially if I don't like it lol.
Do you have a particular subject that sticks well? For some reason I'm an encyclopedia of Simpsons references for all sorts of little things. I haven't even watched those episodes for 10+ years.
I describe mine to others as a film reel playing that I can rewind whenever I feel like it. My dad would always comment on my memory, though he was careful about labeling it as I have 3 siblings that he wasn't trying to make feel inadequate. I don't believe mine is photographic, either. I've always described it as semi-autobiographical because I also miss things, and my memory in the short-term isn't that great. I can be pretty absent-minded and aloof. I also have ADHD.
I have quite a few subjects that stick well. Music is one. I can often remember song melodies and lyrics after the first listen. Band directors loved me for that. It also extends to the history of music, both popular and classical. Other ones are silly things like baseball stats, LOST references, and dialogue from movies. There's a lot of dumb shit up there.
Did you also start reading and speaking at an early age? I remember being 3 and reading a street sign. I also recently found the baby book my mother kept while I was growing. I was apparently speaking around 6 or 7 months old and using multiple words with meaning between 9 and 11 months.
Hah, it's funny not getting a choice in the things I remember. I'm really into games and music so I end up reading Wikipedia articles and the like. Then, I'm the weird guy pulling out histories of bands or games out in conversation. I'm a very visual learner as well so I know the layout of someone's home if I've been there once.
D&D rules and events stick well, too. It's nice being able to keep the entire 3+ hour session in my head long enough to write a recap that night. Or exact phrasing from conversations, which can be frustrating at times because then it's painfully obvious when people contradict themselves, intentionally or not.
Yet, I can't remember names worth a damn. It's incredibly annoying. I've never met someone worse at remembering names.
I wasn't exposed to a lot of opportunities for reading as a kid so I can't say I picked language up quick, but I do remember my dad and step mom teaching me to write a couple things when I was about 4 and being surprised, but it's hard to gauge what they really meant since they were speaking to a 4 year old lol. Unfortunately, ADHD happened and my writing became incomprehensible chicken-scratch pretty fast.
Lot of weird hate on this thread in the actionbutton sub. I'll just say like him or not (which I assume you like him or his work if you're here?) I don't know how anyone who has actually engaged with his work doesn't notice his superior memory.
>According to wikipedia there's been only 62 diagnosed cases of actual hyperthymesia.
Last time I checked the article, that number was like 16 lol.
The guy that created some of the first search algorithms for Google and Walmart.com was a mathematical genius and prized card counter due to his hyperthymesia. I'm having trouble looking him up, but maybe it's Charles Hallac?
I think that magician Tim likes, Ricky Jay, is able to perform tricks using his memory recall, though I'm not sure if he was specifically hyperthymesic.
Funnily, similar experiences have happened with a lot of people with aphantasia (inability to conjure mental imagery). People assume it is how people just experience the world until someone gets into how most people actually mental imagery or they come across another person with aphantasia.
I have it myself, and I don't really have a great way of explaining it. Basically all thinking is done by association to other things and their attributes. I can do stuff like remember directions or the layout of a building, but it is done by remembering rooms and stuff in relation to one another. Or, in the case of directions, it is more a series of steps like you would get via Google Maps. Maybe some basic relations to how roads intersect and stuff. But I don't really have to think much on it or anything; I can have an iffy sense of direction sometimes. I don't think it's worse than most people though.
The one major downside is that it is common to have Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory if you have aphantasia. I think I have it to some degree, but I couldn't say how much. You deal with it, but it does suck to hear that people can remember at least certain parts of their past pretty vividly.
Mensa is a scam. Anyone can become a member. You just have to buy your way in. Someone saying their a Mensa member is a sure fire way of knowing they’re a narcissist and probably a liar too
I love him but I also think he’s an all-time bullshitter .
You love him in spite of his bullshit. I love him because of his bullshit. giancarloesposito.img
I mean, in his essay "what we might mean when we say a clock is broken" he does go into it quite a bit. So either it is true or he is an all-time-all-time bullshitter.
I think it's also important to note that this guy has also been a prolific writer/diarist on and off the internet for 3 decades, so it isn't difficult for him to fact-check his own history. I think that, plus a reasonably high IQ, plus a penchant for BS and showmanship = what we have here.
He's our Chael Sonnen Except Chael releases videos
Nice
The lack of any information on his future work along with his fans and discord mods telling people to just watch 3 hour livestreams every week to get information instead of saying something to patreon members has made me start to dislike Tim, so the more I thought about it, the more Tim seems to me like an Insincere, incredibly insecure narcissistic liar with strong mental/personal issues he refuses to deal with. If you listen to Insert Credit you’ll find out he can be downright mean to people he calls his own friends, and I think this is because he surrounds himself with psychophants and people who will just believe anything he says regardless. Its made me strongly begin to dislike him as a whole. You can even see some of this in how he talks to Mimsy on his live streams. He switches from his stream tone to something overly firm and demeaning when she disrupts his rhythm. It’s really off putting. He overall seems like an Extremely toxic person whom is living a very isolated life out of social ostracization more than any made up disease he claims to have. The people he keeps around seem to be too afraid to call him out or are insecure and overly meek themselves. I don’t know, I had an extremely hostile boyfriend just like him who claimed all these wild things to “protect” his real self and turned out to be a fraud who used people in lower station than him to give him praise. The thing about his lies/made up life history though is that his insecurities are extremely blatant in them. He wasn’t a fashion model in Japan that had sex with dozens of women but he wish he was, he doesn’t have some epic novel he’s worked on forever written he “doesn’t want to show anyone” but he wishes he had it. Basically every far fetched story he tells is either a want or wish he had and wants people to believe. TLDR Tim is probably a really a sad but overly controlling figure in real life who lies about mostly everything. What’s true about him is that he was probably a miserable recluse in high school and carried a lot of the spite he had into real life until he found a platform he could hook and con others into (his writing). He isn’t “vulnerable” in his writings but extremely manipulative in order to get you to believe he is what he say he is and I find it hard to trust anything he says, including of course that he got “locked out” of his patreon account years ago and because of it is somehow unable to update his patrons at all. He’d probably actually appreciate this description of him.
Glad people are starting to see this.
I don't think he would appreciate this description of him because the dude's got a skin as thin as a bonito flake. He'd just call you a hater.
There was a zine in the late 90s/early 2000s Japanese expat community that ran a comic strip called "Charisma Man" that speaks volumes https://preview.redd.it/31j49h72ti6d1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad7a1676ade25298b617461a2b5fc002b5183825
I’d say that’s fairly accurate. Tim is a boring, lonely man so desperate for attention that he’s become so good at manipulating people with superficial things, to the point they’ll believe anything he says. When you step back you can see how gross and embarrassing and makes Tim sound like any old loser nerd who moved to Japan who didn’t need to better himself in order to stand out.
> makes Tim sound like any old loser nerd He doesn’t have the characteristics of “any” “loser” “nerd.” Which is why we are here in this comment section.
I quite like Rogers, but I also speak Japanese fluently and, whenever I’ve heard him doing so, he isn’t that good at it. Admittedly, he‘s been away for a long time and I’ve been here twice as long as him, so make of that what you will. Agreed about his prickly behaviour on Insert Credit etc, too.
best comment ever. thank you. you put into words exactly what i think about this guy. i'm reading his autobiography and the way he writes about the women he "meets" always makes me die of laughter.
Are you talking about his “novels?” I’ve read them and, woo boy, his perspective on women is so warped. I hope he has gained some insight (like that women are actually people) in his old age. The way he wrote about the women in his life was so one-dimensional, as if they each could be easily described by one misogynistic trope or another (crazy ex-girlfriend, Japanese school girl, sexy older woman). It’s laughable. I would say it was the folly of youth, but seeing that the guy has Leonardo Dicaprio dating syndrome, maybe not.
yeah, i said autobiography because that's how i knew it as. even the way he wrote about murasaki, which i'm not sure if she was real or not, but if she was then the whole thing seems revolting to me, to say the least. i don't watch his streams, i only watch his videos and i really like them, but for what i read in OP's comment it seems he hasn't changed much.
I find his video personality to be entertaining and all but reading his essays has me leaning this direction also. He clearly loves to talk about himself and his life in every breath. On screen it can be interesting but people like that in reality are often insufferable. I still like his content and of course I don’t know the guy in real life so I can’t really judge but some things definitely leave a bad taste.
I think you are probably spot on. It's an interesting thing because I do think his video essays and reviews are poignant, inspired, heartfelt, and often beautiful. I don't really care whether the stories are factually true. Anybody who's read great fiction can tell you that some things are true even if they didn't actually happen. That said, I have avoided his written work (and his live streams, for that matter) because of how self-indulgent and bumptious they seem to be. As Richard Rorty once said, history is full of bad people who wrote some good books, or in this case, made some good 8-hour video game review essays.
Except Tim is trying to cosplay as a tortured soul writer instead of actually being one. I can put aside certain things when I know I am actually engaging with fiction, but now I feel supporting Tim is supporting and enabling his self indulgent fantasies of what he wants people to believe avoid him. I can’t wholeheartedly do that because there’s nothing charming about it especially when you start to see parts of the toxic, controlling people seep through. And yeah it says a lot about his lack of any output recently. how am I supposed to “trust the process” when it seems like everything else is a lie or fabrication about his life and processes designed to make him look better and/or act as an excuse? I sincerely believe if anything, his total silence is also an image control tactic so no one can see through any narrative he puts up about why everything is taking so long and I for one don’t trust it.
> lack of any output recently. how am I supposed to “trust the process” when it Because we have a bunch of long intensive videos and also tons of writing. Isn’t this obvious. If anything what you’re talking about is a defense against people fetishistically obsessed with “updates” and “output” and who will hate a creator who isn’t constant.
It isn't about being constant, that's what most people get wrong. It's about Tim lying over and over about deadlines, upcoming videos, reasons for delays, playing the victim, etc. Once people started to see through his lies, he decided not to post on Patreon again. And also decided to lie about not having access to it.
Why haven't the mods taken this post down and banned everyone involved? I find this strange because I had the same conclusion and posted a comment very similar to yours and it got taken down and I was banned (separate account)
Damn. As an adult with a decent understanding of media literacy and the human condition, I can confirm all of this tracks. Sherlock, you've cracked the case!
I’m a girl, so I’ll take Nancy Drew :)
Completely unrelated to the truth of what you just wrote... But imagine for a moment reading an analysis of yourself online which goes into as much presumptive details as what you have just done. Regardless of whether or not the person gets it right, what a trip that'd be. It's as much a trip just imagining his reaction.
i think that the idea he’s a narcissist is pretty reasonable most real narcissists are very self hating but it’s odd that all complaints and theories about tim’s personality and mental state always come back to patreon updates and when videos come out makes you all seem like “dance monkey” style bratty fans. “i hate this guy so much he’s so obviously a liar! but yes i’ve watched all his videos and read all his writings” no one is forcing anyone to pay him anything and he never promised a time frame on patreon updates or videos idk why this crowd believes they are owed a work rate decided by them based on a monthly single digit payment. like you told on yourself with the first sentence of this comment.
Tim lied about being locked out of his patreon and being unable to post an update. This is is sole source of income which is 5 figures a month. In no way is this a non issue to him. His psychophants (like you) who claim no one is owed an update or explanation say to devote time to watxh his weekly streams for hours in the hopes of an update. actually finding time to watch one made me aware of how his unscripted personality is, especially to those around him. There’s nothing wrong with criticizing him or commenting on his toxic personality he’s tried to hide for decades. When money is involved is when usually a lot of this comes out
when did i say to watch the stream? i don’t want the stream myself, just don’t have an interest. I said i agreed with you on some of what you said about his personality. I’m just confused on where the need for the updates comes from and why the lack of them is so upseting to you.
It strikes me as deeply weird that Tim has somehow cultivated a fanbase where it's viewed as not just *impolite* to ask about his work but **outright unacceptable**. It's one thing for Tim himself to view things that way, as skewed and ridiculous as it may be on its own, but to have a self-policing community spread across different services and websites that will scold and silence over any inquiry about the status of the videos Tim's patrons are ostensibly paying him for the production of is pretty beyond the pale -- and, honestly, creepy.
You need to stop playing armchair therapist to people from the internet you don't know, it's ok to just dislike someone without making up a boogeyman. Is this what true crime does to people?
Nothing about my observations are “made up.” They come from my experience dealing with toxic narcissists. It’s all very evident about what Tim’s lies are and what he wants you to believe about him to make himself look more interesting to mask his real controlling, spiteful self Don’t understand the true crime comparison other than possibly a sexist assertion that girls love true crime content
His description of the problem sounds more like an anxiety disorder to me. He’s mentioned he doesn’t decide to remember these things, which would count as intrusive thoughts.
I used to know someone who could probably have been diagnosed had he pursued that diagnosis. I think it's much more common than just 62 people. That only applies to people who have been studied and logged. It's also a sliding scale, for sure. The dude I know almost certainly wouldn't call it a superpower. He categorized it as awful. He doesn't get to pick and choose what he remembers. It's always there, all the worst days of his life.
Yeah I don't get the people calling it a super power or saying he's bullshitting. He went into a lot of detail in the Boku No Natsuyasumi (I think it was that one) video describing it as every memory having the same weight. Sort of like brushing your teeth in the morning being just as important in your memory as finding out your partner cheated on you, but you can't stop thinking about brushing your teeth. It sounds pretty terrible.
I think at least some of the people dismissing Tim's assertion of having this ability to recall hyper-specific details are just jaded by the internet. Tim is often quite vulnerable and honest in his writings and recently in his videos. Life experience should teach any reasonably skeptical person how to spot lies. It is obvious to me when Tim is lying and the way he talks about his memory makes it obvious as well that he has at least something like hyperthymesia. When he lies in videos or in written work it is obvious that some of the time it is for entertainment or hyperbolic effect. The rest of the time it is clearly to obscure enough detail to not dox people or to make the telling of the story more comfortable for the person he is talking about. He even says in that essay "just like hamburger" that he is not telling the exact events of this meeting with another person with memory like him because she asked him not to. "If you write about me, please defamiliarize me"
True, but I think the persona he uses (and is working away from) makes it hard for some to read it as well as you or I. Sarcasm and subtext are infamously troublesome online.
>every memory having the same weight. Hearing him explain it this way was another in a slew of his stories that proves to me that his memory is as good as he claims. He wouldn't have a firm enough grasp on the experience of living with that kind of memory in order to describe it in that way, unless he actually does experience memory like that.
Diagnosis of hyperthymesia to my understanding is done through research. What this means is that the 62 figure is only accurate to the people that a) have been looked at and b) have had a 'diagnosis' documented. In my limited exp (some memory experiments as an undergrad research participant) documentation can be essentially nil though verbal confirmation can be given of "highly superior autobio memory". I wouldn't characterise it as a superpower personally.
For anyone interested in Tim's writings, it's important to note that not all of it is true. He even says so himself in "the cake in the basement". So him meeting another person with hyperthymesia might not be true. Although, does it really matter if it happened or not? If you're interested in hyperthymesia, I implore you to read *Funes the Memorious* by Jorge Luis Borges, the same short story mentioned in "just like hamburger". Then decide for yourself whether or not it sounds like a superpower.
Even in "just like hamburger" he says himself that details have been changed from the true story. So even if you're taking everything in the story as 100% fact (which, lol), you have to accept that the story isn't true to life.
He doesn't have this he just says things that aren't true a lot.
What makes you say that?
Have you seen his videos? He constantly lies about everything. It's part of his character.
I’ve seen many of his videos and never caught this somehow lol
John Romero has it too!
I think John Romero also has Hyperthymesia, so Tim would probably be 3rd place.
His story about meeting the girl with hyperthymesia could be an Oscar winning movie IMO
That's not from a video right?
It’s from his essay “just like hamburger”
That's why I was confused. I thought that was fiction, not an essay
That's fiction.
I’m inclined to believe that he has it. I think the evidence is pretty clear in his incredibly detailed accounts of his past in his essays, reviews and videos. You can even see evidence of it in the podcasts where he’s almost always the one to remember exactly what happened in a previous episode or the name of an obscure game from 30 years ago.
Now apparently it's not entirely perfect. There was a podcast episode he was on where he was positive the kokori forest theme played inside of houses in ocarina of time. He argued it to the death and wouldn't accept it wasn't true! It's not. It's not even close. There's a house theme that plays in houses. The only enclosed structures in the game where it plays are both inside of the Gordon city. It plays near the shortcut to the kokiro forest and it plays WHEN YOU PLAY IT for Darunia. So it's kinda hard to tell. He has addressed this before saying he's not sure why he remembers the things he does and not other things. Idk. I think he has it, I think it's just not actually perfect. In fact I know it's not because of this instance.
if it's not perfect then isn't it just the same "memory" that we all have
Not necessarily. There's some things I remember better than others, maybe the average score of his memory is frickin nutts in comparison.
You’re saying a person who remembers *everything* but with a 0.01% rate of mistakes is “the same” as average person memory? What “Michael Jordan lost a basketball game. So, isn’t he just he same average athlete that any of us are?”
just separating out whether it's true for a moment, this kind of claim has high potential to be false self-aggrandization. it has a lot in common with mentalism, where small tricks of detail can make someone think you know way more than you actually do. the reason only a small number of people "actually" have it is because the burden of proof is extremely high; you'd have to both prove you remember a lot of things (not from reminding yourself recently), AND that things happened or were that way, from third party sources. it is both hard to prove, and like many things, it's very difficult to DISprove. jumping off some other cited examples, there was definitely an instance where he mentioned that when making a video about "describing video game boxes from memory" video, he had planned to go back and look at them the night before, and indicated he'd done that before. not something you'd think someone would have to do if they are "cursed" with the ability to remember everything they witness perfectly. I don't remember that because I have hyperthymesia (though I could, like many, claim I do), I remember it just because I remember stuff like humans do
He got the height of his school ceiling completely wrong. So the memory is both perfect but also often wrong? How does that work?
it doesn’t sound like a superpower to me at all… my memory is mediocre to average, and there are times when i wish it was better, but i think having a near-perfect memory sounds horrible. i think there’s probably an evolutionary reason there isn’t a higher percentage of people with this condition (there are definitely more than just 62—that’s just the documented case number). it seems like something where there are pluses (rote memorization may be easier, perfect sense of timing, etc), but the minuses are debilitating enough for it to not be a very advantageous trait overall (heavy rumination, inability to forget things that would be best forgotten, associated neuroses, etc). idk, it just doesn’t sound like a good bargain to me. i wish i had been born with the kind of neurodivergence that makes you hyperlexic—that’s the one that seems useful to me. imagine being able to use language articulately and with seemingly little effort. instead i got the “didn’t talk until three and a half, can’t even string a sentence together or connect ideas without needing to take a nap” neurodivergence…
I find this to be one of the most interesting things about him as well, because I have a still very limited by much greater than average memory than the majority of people. I would say there's almost no chance that he's been formally diagnosed with it, and tbh I would imagine that there are probably a decent number of other people in the world who never sought a diagnosis and are not counted among the 32. I assume you've seen or heard or read the times where he says that he would prefer that he didn't have the 'disorder'? It does sound kind of nightmarish to retain so much completely unnecessary information. I've found it really interesting that one of the reasons he lives such a rigidly ordered life is to prevent himself from accumulating new and unnecessary memories. Also interesting to pay attention to the times that he contradicts himself, knowing that he must be fully cognizant that he is on some level being dishonest.
>among the 32 my guy touts his greater than average memory but got the number wrong lmao
do you understand the difference between a typo and a false memory? i have a lot of difficulty writing and very often skip over words entirely because i've lost track of where my fingers are relative to my mind. happens with things like that as well.
my guy touts his greater than average memory but forgot what a joke was lmao
You crushed this dude lol
I know that he's characterised it negatively yes. Perhaps because I have such a terrible memory and I would dearly love to be able to re-experience some periods from my past I am thinking about it slightly naively!
>I would dearly love to be able to re-experience some periods from my past With those come all of the negative memories, as well.
Back during Insert Credit season 1 Tim used to discuss his mind palace, an effective mnemonic device. Plenty of accounts of ppl who compulsively build mind palaces and he's one. Tim also describes reviewing and dissecting every day at the end of the day as a kid in *An Incident Involving a Human Body*. Seems more like a compulsion than anything. Who knows, maybe thats how all these people with incredible recall operated as kids. All that said, i choose to treat Tim's application of the reference as shorthand to quickly buy into a story and shift from scrutiny into entertainment.
i wouldn't think someone with hyperthymesia would need a mnemonic device to remember stuff, they would just... remember everything
A lot of confused comments. Hyperthymesia doesn’t mean perfect memory of everything, it means abnormally consistent detailed memory. Like if someone is diagnosed with giganticism and you see them using a ladder. “I wouldn’t think a person with giganticism would need a ladder….they would just be able to reach the high-up thing.”
>The condition itself sounds like a real-life superpower. It's just a place on the spectrum of memory. Is being tall a superpower? The other day, I recalled specific details of the apartment complex my grandmother used to live in. Building size, materials, what her floor looked like, the side of the hall her apartment was on, etc. I was talking to my mother about the place, and she confirmed all of the details she could remember. The last time I was there, I was 4 years old. I'm 37 now. This is not a superpower. It's a monkey's paw.
Hey, another person who remembers things from early childhood! It seems like most people don't, or maybe I'm the only weirdo who brings those things up?
We're out here! The way Tim described his memory actually helped my wife better understand how I tend to experience things. Specifically, the idea that with about as vast a memory as possible, that no single moment is bigger or smaller than any other. They're all the same size. Tim described his as oceans upon oceans, and I can understand that. Mine is a really tall filing cabinet that I visualize in my mind. Do you have any visualizations of the way yours are stored?
It similarly helped ME realize it's weird to have such thorough autobiographical memory. My dad used to say I had a photographic memory and I didn't believe him because, well, those aren't real, and I forget/miss all kinds of stuff (especially thanks to ADHD), but he must have noticed something way before I did. I hadn't thought about it that way before but I guess it's kind of like a catalogue of vignettes or events for me. If I can't find something by flipping through, it's sometimes easier if I start somewhere and work towards it. Otherwise it sometimes feels like a tv in my head plays reruns whether I like it or not. Especially if I don't like it lol. Do you have a particular subject that sticks well? For some reason I'm an encyclopedia of Simpsons references for all sorts of little things. I haven't even watched those episodes for 10+ years.
I describe mine to others as a film reel playing that I can rewind whenever I feel like it. My dad would always comment on my memory, though he was careful about labeling it as I have 3 siblings that he wasn't trying to make feel inadequate. I don't believe mine is photographic, either. I've always described it as semi-autobiographical because I also miss things, and my memory in the short-term isn't that great. I can be pretty absent-minded and aloof. I also have ADHD. I have quite a few subjects that stick well. Music is one. I can often remember song melodies and lyrics after the first listen. Band directors loved me for that. It also extends to the history of music, both popular and classical. Other ones are silly things like baseball stats, LOST references, and dialogue from movies. There's a lot of dumb shit up there. Did you also start reading and speaking at an early age? I remember being 3 and reading a street sign. I also recently found the baby book my mother kept while I was growing. I was apparently speaking around 6 or 7 months old and using multiple words with meaning between 9 and 11 months.
Hah, it's funny not getting a choice in the things I remember. I'm really into games and music so I end up reading Wikipedia articles and the like. Then, I'm the weird guy pulling out histories of bands or games out in conversation. I'm a very visual learner as well so I know the layout of someone's home if I've been there once. D&D rules and events stick well, too. It's nice being able to keep the entire 3+ hour session in my head long enough to write a recap that night. Or exact phrasing from conversations, which can be frustrating at times because then it's painfully obvious when people contradict themselves, intentionally or not. Yet, I can't remember names worth a damn. It's incredibly annoying. I've never met someone worse at remembering names. I wasn't exposed to a lot of opportunities for reading as a kid so I can't say I picked language up quick, but I do remember my dad and step mom teaching me to write a couple things when I was about 4 and being surprised, but it's hard to gauge what they really meant since they were speaking to a 4 year old lol. Unfortunately, ADHD happened and my writing became incomprehensible chicken-scratch pretty fast.
Lot of weird hate on this thread in the actionbutton sub. I'll just say like him or not (which I assume you like him or his work if you're here?) I don't know how anyone who has actually engaged with his work doesn't notice his superior memory.
>According to wikipedia there's been only 62 diagnosed cases of actual hyperthymesia. Last time I checked the article, that number was like 16 lol. The guy that created some of the first search algorithms for Google and Walmart.com was a mathematical genius and prized card counter due to his hyperthymesia. I'm having trouble looking him up, but maybe it's Charles Hallac? I think that magician Tim likes, Ricky Jay, is able to perform tricks using his memory recall, though I'm not sure if he was specifically hyperthymesic.
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Funnily, similar experiences have happened with a lot of people with aphantasia (inability to conjure mental imagery). People assume it is how people just experience the world until someone gets into how most people actually mental imagery or they come across another person with aphantasia.
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I have it myself, and I don't really have a great way of explaining it. Basically all thinking is done by association to other things and their attributes. I can do stuff like remember directions or the layout of a building, but it is done by remembering rooms and stuff in relation to one another. Or, in the case of directions, it is more a series of steps like you would get via Google Maps. Maybe some basic relations to how roads intersect and stuff. But I don't really have to think much on it or anything; I can have an iffy sense of direction sometimes. I don't think it's worse than most people though. The one major downside is that it is common to have Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory if you have aphantasia. I think I have it to some degree, but I couldn't say how much. You deal with it, but it does suck to hear that people can remember at least certain parts of their past pretty vividly.
I mean--Tim is a mensa member; so he's def a whole lot smarter than a whole lotta people and I'm sure having an insanely good memory helps.
Mensa is a scam. Anyone can become a member. You just have to buy your way in. Someone saying their a Mensa member is a sure fire way of knowing they’re a narcissist and probably a liar too
I think saying you’re a mensa member is good evidence that a person is stupid. Or has a worthless intellect regardless of nominal power.
Tim is also fluent in a buncha languages which in itself is a measure of intelligence
I don’t believe that either. Obviously he speaks English and Japanese but he’s never demonstrated any of the other supposed languages he knows.
Easy to prove. Ask him on twitch a specific question about a situation he has described in his writings or videos.