When eye contact is eye contact, and what you have to do; CW: long post (over 2,500 characters), Fediverse meta, content warning meta, hashtag meta, eye contact mentioned
Eye contact is not even limited to looking directly into the camera at all.
Eye contact is whenever there is at least one eye anywhere in the image. No matter where it is. No matter how small the eye and how big the image is.
Ask autistic people, and they'll likely confirm. And they'll also likely confirm that it triggers them.
In fact, eye contact is even when you, as a neurotypical person, cannot even see the eye because it's less then a pixel.
Imagine an image of 20 megapixels. Now imagine there's a person somewhere in the image, only four pixels high and about one pixel wide. This means the head is half a pixel high and a third of a pixel wide.
Even if the person is looking directly at the camera, this still means that each individual eye is 1/15 of a pixel wide and maybe 1/30 of a pixel high. That's 1/450 or a bit over 0.2% of a pixel. That's about 1/9,000,000,000 or a bit over 0.000,000,01% of the whole image. If the person is looking directly at the camera.
Nonetheless, this may trigger some autistic people even if the person is not even looking into the general direction of the camera.
It doesn't even have to be a person. It may just as well be an animal or a fantasy creature or a robot or a sculpture or a stylised face or even only a single stylised eye.
I've actually had all this confirmed by @Yohan Yukiya Sese Cuneta 사요한🦣 who knows enough actually diagnosed autistic people to know.
So it doesn't matter how big or infinitely small the eye is. It doesn't matter where it's looking. If there's at least one eye in your image, it counts as eye contact.
If you, as the user who posts the image, know for certain that there is at least one eye in the image, you're obliged to
have the image automatically blanked or blurred
make sure that Mastodon will blank the image, too
add the content warning "CW: eye contact" to your post
add the hashtags #EyeContact and #CWEyeContact to your post, especially the former which some people out there may have filtered
You're only excused not to do so if you yourself honestly don't know that there is at least one eye in the image.
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When eye contact is eye contact, and what you have to do; CW: long post (over 2,500 characters), Fediverse meta, content warning meta, hashtag meta, eye contact mentioned
@jupiter_rowland Can I clarify what you mean because you're suggesting something that might have good reasoning but at the same time can ruin the whole point of the eye-contact (like art which include TRIGGERING people).
So I'd like to 'argue' for eye-contact as that's usually why someone posts it or includes it...
@jupiter_rowland Perhaps first start with what happens to #autistic people that is so bad to consider doing otherwise... that helps, I don't think you mention really why more than "it triggers them" which is not really enough to understand as EVERYTHING triggers us, Trump, picture of a garden, #caturday pics, etc...
So let me know that and see I'm not triggering any hate around this subject - it's interesting. Thanks
In addition, it isn't just "yes" or "no". Different people experience eye contact differently, and different people may feel uncomfortable about it in different ways.
I've read somewhere (I don't know where, and I don't have a link) that some neurodivergent people, upon seeing a picture with eye contact, feel like the person on that picture is looking through their eyes, right into their brain, their mind, their very soul. In this case, it feels intrusive to them. Even though it's "only" a picture.
But it isn't necessarily that and only that. Here's a quote-post from someone on Mastodon who actually is autistic, and who explains what images with eye contact feel like to them individually.
RE: https://mastodon.moule.world/@MOULE/112839238866393700
Also, there is this comment on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/18x1rdm/comment/kg75s54/.
I'm not diagnosed, but have always hated eye contact to the point where people on the cover of magazines would disturb me, specially those in the pile of magazines you'll find in the toilets, I would always turn them over to hide the faces. Now I wouldn't need a CW for that online, but depending on the context it does make me feel uneasy. I've been staying at my sister's over the holidays, she has pictures of family and friends on her fridge, I would sit with my back turned to it and feel like I was being stared at.
Unfortunately, there are no peer-reviewed scientific papers or reports about this. All there is about neurodivergence and eye contact is about how neurodivergent people don't make and maintain eye contact in conversations. And these tend to immediately and only go into the direction of "they don't do that because they can't recognise faces". Neuroscientists seem to only have understood this phenomenon that far (probably also because literally every last neuroscientist is as bog-standard neurotypical as they ever come, so there are none who can analyse their own experiences).
This may also be because this entire phenomenon is so very obscure. It's only an issue in a few select online spaces. It probably originated on pre-Yahoo! Tumblr which was chock-full of neurodivergent young people up and down and and back and forth across the whole spectrum. I guess one reason why they used Tumblr was that it had a dedicated content warning field, much like the one on Mastodon, only that it was invented from scratch for this purpose and not, like on Mastodon, a re-purposed text field that originally had a wholly different use (true story).
But this whole phenomenon only existed on Tumblr and nowhere else on the Web, much less in real life.
When Yahoo! took over Tumblr, they changed the rules in such way that entire communities were driven away, including many neurodivergent users. They often found a new home on Twitter. But Twitter doesn't have a dedicated content warning field, so the entire concept of CW-ing topics that may trigger people or make them feel unbearably uncomfortable lay dormant there.
It only came back when many of those who had been chased away from Tumblr to Twitter when Yahoo! took over Tumblr were chased away from Twitter to Mastodon when Elon Musk toook over Twitter. And Mastodon does have a CW field. So this entire concept was revived.
Unlike Tumblr, however, the greater Fediverse is not a place where enclosed and totally secluded bubbles can exist, at least not at the same degree as on Tumblr. Especially not if Mastodon is involved. So you have young neurodivergent people whom a whole lot of things may turn into quivering nervous wrecks for reasons that even their shrinks would fail to understand if they had any. They demand just about everything be CW'd. And they inevitably encounter much more mentally stable, bog-standard neurotypical people who are like, "Can't relate, don't understand, not gonna comply."
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@jupiter_rowland It feels like what you're doing is important, even if I can't / don't know how to call it, it makes sense there are more sensitive out there.
Your saying it is helping and working my side as I can already see it's worthy and working. even though I might not know remedy other than #CW.
How is it you came to doing this explaining / education awareness - what would you like to see beyond maybe CW eye-contact fields on platforms, #Mastodon / #Fediverse etc?
Partially, I'm waiting for someone to challenge what I've said and e.g. say that eye contact only counts as such when a) the eyes are actually clearly visible as eyes, and b) they look directly at the camera. Or even only when it's a full facial portrait (= it isn't eye contact when some random stranger somewhere in the background of the image happens to look at the camera).
Still, if it were for me, Mastodon wouldn't even have its CW field. Mastodon and its community would rely on the poster forcing the exact same CWs upon everyone, regardless of whether or not they need these CWs.
If it were for me, Mastodon would have had the "Hide with warning" filter setting which it introduced in October, 2022 from its very beginning in early 2016 on. And it would be set in stone in Mastodon's community and Mastodon's culture that this setting generates CWs.
Basically, this is what Friendica (created in 2010, connected to Mastodon for as long as Mastodon has existed) and Hubzilla (created in 2015, connected to Mastodon for as long as Mastodon has existed; I'm on Hubzilla, by the way) have been doing it for much longer than Mastodon has even been around.
The idea is like this: If you want certain content hidden behind a button, set up a filter with a keyword that hides any content with that keyword behind a button, automatically, and most importantly, only for you individually. (Friendica, Hubzilla: Add that keyword to the "NSFW" filter list. It does the same.)
If you want to post something sensitive or potentially triggering, you add that keyword to your post, either as part of the actual post text or as a hashtag at the end of the post.
Everyone who has that keyword automatically filtered the usual way won't see your post at all. Everyone who has that keyword automatically filtered as described above will get your post, but hidden behind a button. Everyone who doesn't have that keyword filtered will get your post in plain sight, conveniently unhidden.
The advantage is that only those who need something hidden behind a CW will have it hidden behind a CW. Those who don't won't.
Alas, while the technology is there (on Friendica since 2010, on Hubzilla since 2015, on Mastodon since 2022), at least on Mastodon nobody will ever use it. It came too late to become part of Mastodon's culture.
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Right, this sort of thing should be part of how the reader crafts their experience personally, not up to the poster trying to engage with the vastly different individuals who might or might not ever be exposed to it.
It actually sounds like a great application for AI. Maybe it can't order the shirt I want from an online shop, but it can recognize eyes for me if I don't want them in my feed!
But the operation of the poster and the operation of the reader are independent. Only the poster knows exactly what he wants to express, and only the individual reader knows exactly what he wants to read.
If the poster wants to label a CW, then by all means, that's part of his expression! If the reader doesn't want to see something, then by all means, he should be empowered to filter it out to suit his wants.
So for example, a challenge about what does and doesn't count as eye contact? No, I wouldn't challenge that but rather leave it up to the individual reader. What counts as eye contact to one might not to another, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
It's great, actually, showing the power each person has to customize their own experience.
