Any recording of myself I've heard I've been like "do I really sounds like that‽" Yet I've been complimented on my timber many times. Try not to think too hard about it.
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
85 points (94.7% liked)
Showerthoughts
39181 readers
893 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Because it comes out mirrored when recorded and replayed on stereo audio
If you record your dog talking to (barking at) you and play it back, the dog will think it's another dog barking at them, and they will bark back. Tested with a Jack Russell terrier. They're high strung by nature, but I imagine it'll work with any breed prone to barking into a camera (not all of them will). Of course, the dog has no concept of self. It's always another dog.
We do have a sense of self, and it's often not how others see us. Consider that what you think of as you is only how you see yourself. It's partly what you see in the mirror, but it's also mixed with your ideals, who you want to be, and your shame, reflections of past mistakes. If you have a partner/lover, they see you differently. They tend to amplify your virtues and minimise your flaws. Same if you have a friend, but they still see a different side of you. Parents are stranger still; we tend to see our child for a few stand-out events in their lives. Not just parents, but anyone who's raised a child from one age to another; as they develop, we latch onto one moment. I have two cousins I helped raise, and I always see the oldest one at 4-5 because that's when we were closest. The younger one, I see at either 8 or 15 because those were her best years. They're in their early to mid 30s now. Obviously I see them as women (and as mothers) but in my mind, they're the children I helped raise. Ergo, I don't use profanity around them. If I partook in vices like smoking and drinking, I would not do those things in their presence. (Plus, I was always the reliable adult when all the other adults were getting shitfaced, not that it was ever abusive AFAIK, but I was the sane voice in the room, so I wouldn't want to jeopardise that.)
For a far simpler explanation, none of us actually sound how we think we sound. The camera does not lie, but we lie to ourselves.
It’s unfamiliar, that’s all.
Normally, you don’t hear what your voice really sounds like. You hear a distorted version because your mouth and your ears are connected to the same body. When you get used to the distorted version, you begin to consider it normal. When you hear the real one for the first time, it sounds unfamiliar.
Exactly, everyone feels like they sound weird. Except me, I do just sound weird.
I wonder if your brain then starts to align how you hear your own voice and how you hear it when it's recorded. If it starts to sound more the same for you.
Would also be really weird if you for a long period only heard recordings of you speaking, and when you start speak again, you get equally, or probably more, freaked out by your own voice, as when your hear it recorded.
Yeah, the reverse would be super freaky. However, arranging circumstances like that would be very hard. Like, how do you prevent yourself from hearing your own speech for an extended period of time? Either way, that would be quite an experience once you switch back to normal and you can hear yourself normally again.
I think it would be an unusual occurrence, but not really "hard". Imagine a YouTuber who edits their own videos. If they live alone and spend an extended period of time editing their backlog, they might not talk at all and only hear recordings.
But that would have to go on for an extended period of time to work. You don’t forget your own voice in a week.
People who make videos and podcasts may wear headphones, but often they leave one ear open for reference. If you cover both ears, you end up talking so loudly that you can hear yourself, which isn’t really helping with the audio quality.
In order to fully isolate yourself from your own voice, you would have to always wear ANC headphones while talking. I guess that could be doable when making videos and podcasts. Another option is to isolate yourself from the world so you don’t even need to talk to anyone.
I'm talking about editing a backlog, like if you record hours upon hours of content, then spend weeks editing them. Think of those hour-long video essays with animations and stuff. If you live alone and stocked up on groceries, you could easily go quite a while without actually having to leave the house.
Again, a pretty specific scenario, but not exactly hard. Not even that farfetched for some niche video essay creator.
Ok, I can imagine that sort of thing has already happened. Pople do make absurdly long videos, so you could be looking at a month long editing taks. However, most people probably don’t isolate themselves from the rest of the world to that extent, but it is possible. Let’s say you have an autistic youtuber who can easily get lost in editing. They just focus on editing 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, talk to nobody, put the phone on flight mode etc. Yeah, I can imagine that. Besides, nowadays you also have self checkout machines at supermarkets, so you can also skip the eye contact thing entirely when restocking the pantry.
Under extreme circumstances like that, you should gradually forget what your own voice sounds like. Would it take, weeks, months or years? Who knows.
I feel like usually when I hear about some experiment that changes our perception, the time to adapt is typically about 2 weeks, but that number is almost entirely vibes-based.
That's it. I've watched my own videos dozens of times by now and it's not weird anymore. But I distinctly remember that feeling OP's talking about frim the first few video's I had to watch.
How long did it take to get used to hearing your real voice?
Im not sure. A while, maybe up to half a year, doing one or two videos per week. But I tried not to rewatch every video, because it was so awkward. Sometimes I have to though and at some point, in that first half year, it stopped being awkward.
Would we still find it weird if we didn't know that is our own voice that is being played? Like if somebody plays a recording of me from last week where I said something general that everybody could have said?
I did try this, and I can still tell. I sent someone a voice message, then told them to re-send it to me at a random time. Could still tell it was me.
I did, however, get around it while voice training? I'd spent a week speaking in a different voice to my usual, then when I recorded something in my usual voice it didn't give the effect you usually get when listening to your own voice. I did get it when listening to a recording done with the trained voice, though.
Probably not. My guess is that you would consider that voice just as unfamiliar as the voice of some Rando you’ve never met before.
Must be weird for podcasters who edit their own videos.
I work in 911 dispatch, so I frequently have to go back and relisten to calls I've taken to see if I heard something correctly
It was very weird at first hearing my own voice played back at me so much, but it's something you get used to after a while
But even after 7 years on the job, if I think about it my voice on the recording never sounds quite right to me.
Its uncanny for most people to look at themselves in photos or video because we are so used to seeing our mirror reflections instead.
Same can be reasoned with acoustics. The sounds we speak are made inside your throat and mouth, practically already resonating within the skull. It’s bound to sound different than what a microphone some feet away will pick up.
Feels like an imposter compared to how you know yourself.
I used to find myself kind of floating above the meeting or whatever I was in. Just observing, while also still participating. I wonder if that's similar. I don't think I've ever filmed myself talking to someone.
It's different than that for me. Try using your phone video recorder when reading a page out of a book and see if you can get used to your voice by the end. In my experience, out-of-body experiences are much more natural and don't trigger the same uncanny valley-type feeling