It’s light refracting through otherwise invisible bacteria on your eyeball.
I have a permanent eye floater. When I get really bored I find suitable things in my field of vision to look back and forth between and play pong with.
Congratulations! You are getting older. They are called eye floaters and most people have them in some compacity. I notice them mostly when looking at the blue sky on a sunny day.
You can also see the individual white blood cells flowing through the vessels your eyes this way. It’s actually really neat. It’s called the Blue Field Entoptic Phenomenon.
They are my little worm friends
They’re always with me :3
Pretty sure I fucked up my eyes from psychedelics even though I didn’t trip more than 5 or so times in my life. I took some golden teachers and I noticed that my glasses felt like they were in the way of my eyes. I took them off and I could legit see. I need glasses to see anything that is 2 feet away from me, all I see are huge masses of colors and blobs without them on since I was about 9. Ever since that trip I see weird shit randomly, especially when I’m nervous, it just swirls and flashes. Eye doctor says nothing is wrong, I’m just seeing floaters. Shits weird.
Nope but I see these when I’m getting a optical/ocular migraine.
I don’t get ocular migraines so I have never seen something like this. I can see subtle multicolour flashes if I close my eyes and do things like looking around quickly or apply pressure to my eyes. This image reminds me of the flashes I see, but 1000x more intense. Would you describe it like that?
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Yikes, you’re actually seeing that?
It doesn’t do what I see justice. They are often beautiful. When they first occur it causes a blind spot. The zigzags are a rainbow of shimmering color. They go away after a hour or so and I feel lousy if I don’t have a headache. If I do get the headache with it I have to find a dark room and try to sleep.
I don’t know what it was like when my sister was young, but I also got occular migraines as a kid, and it’d be like a static spot in my vision where things just disappear behind it. Once that static appeared, I only had 10-20 mins or so before an awful headache would set off, and I ended up needing meds for it. They went away after 13 though.
Well, yes and no. It’s kind of an area you can’t see, but it’s there. Also, it starts as a small dot and them starts expanding/moving. It’s also flashing, kind of like static noise on an old TV. Luckily those things usually last like 15 minutes or so. Still, not a fun experience.
Yeah and it has the best name, Scintillating Scotoma. The first time I experienced one it was terrifying.
I occasionally get them and mine feel more black & white than color, the the jagged shape and the arc around the center of your vision is spot on.
And remember the jagged arc is always in your peripheral vision. You can’t look directly at it and study the details because it moves when your eyes do.
This is what I have. I’ve had them my whole life.
My ocular migraines always come with a pretty strong headache. Last week I had my first one without the headache. Very difficult to try to concentrate when you cannot see.
Also when I get both types of migraines, I can’t remember names or do any sort of math.
I typically get a song or something stuck in my head and cannot let it go while I have the headache, it sucks.
Glad I’m not the only one! I had one a bit ago that was weird. If my right eye could see my right hand but my left eye couldn’t, it felt disconnected from me. Like it was someone else’s hand. Once my vision came back I still couldn’t read for about 2 hours without sounding out each word. Migraines can be wildly scary sometimes.
YO that’s a gnarly aura!
First time I had one of these I was so stressed out. I thought I was about to have a stroke.
I got few permanent ones.
When I was a kid I played geologist and crushed rocks with a large iron hammer. Few of the metal splinters that ended in eyeballs left a mark that is still visible today when I look at the sky.
Not actually floaters, I know.
I got one or two from looking at the sun for no reason when I was a kid
god I was dumb
You can still be dumb if you wanted to!
What was your high score? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTEGOI9Leys
Slightly different but similar and related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_field_entoptic_phenomenon
EDIT: If you’re on a mobile device, or in strong lighting conditions, view the image fullscreen or futz with your brightness/gamma.
Part of the whole point of this is that it is a subtle effect, only visible in certain lighting conditions.
Or maybe you need to clean your screen, lol.
You sure you don’t have high blood pressure?
I mean, now maybe, lol, but I noticed this as a middle schooler, and I was in pretty good shape back then… and I still have the exact same experience to this day, in the right lighting conditions, if I can just sit or stand still and look at a mostly cloudless sky.
I didn’t realise these were white blood cells. Thanks for the read.
I most commonly see these these when I have a migraine, really bad sneezes, or I flick my eyes or move my head quickly. I’ve heard it’s fine unless you see a bug chunk at the same time as that could be a sign the retina has broken or come loose?
The dots are white blood cells moving in the capillaries in front of the retina of the eye.
From the wiki page.
So, yeah, it makes sense that very similar or even just the same effect can be intensified by all those things you mention, they all alter the motion of blood in your eyes.
As to a big chunk moving?
I am not an eye expert, but I would intuitively think that yes, a big splotch moving could be the retina itself moving… but it could also potentially be something like a clot in one of those capillaries breaking loose… which is probably still bad, but maybe not necessarily as bad?
Always wondered what this was called. I get this often in winter, less during summer. It really puzzled me the first few times it happened, I just figured I was getting diabetes. I have a black tail that follows them so it’s even more noticeable then in the picture.
Basically, lighting conditions have to be just right to … basically, allow you to actually see your own white blood cells, in your own eyes, against the … background/everything you are seeing.
So my guess would be that in the summer, where you are, the … ambient light of the sky is too bright, it overwhelms this effect, but in the winter, maybe its mote generally humid, or the light is coming through more atmosphere , at more oblique angles, and is thus less intense.
Though if you are also seeing a… black tail, like… they’re followed by a black smear or a motion blur or something… that could be something else?
Visual snow is different, it’s constant and looks more like tv static or film grain, fun stuff, not.
I believe this is another related, simililar, yet technically different phenomenon, with different causal mechanisms, but yes, lets keep adding to the list, lol.
Also, brb, you’ll never believe this, apparently my pizza delivery guy’s name is ‘Hiro Protagonist’, he’s almost here, and I gotta ask him what is up with that name.
dude he has your pizza. he’s a fucking hero don’t you forget it
I have a lot of these because I’ve had numerous eye surgeries and they’re ultimately just gunk in the vitreous fluid of the eye. I wish there was a way that they could drain, filter, and replace your vitreous fluid when it gets like mine. Like an eyeball oil change. There’s not though, as far as I know.
A tip: if you suddenly see a ton more of these get it checked out asap, especially if you are very near sighted
There actually is. I have looked into it before because I have a lot of floaters, but have never had surgery. The risk and downtime with the surgery is pretty high, so it’s usually not recommended.
Everytime I see this warning, I become hyper aware of every single one and it freaks me out.
If it makes you feel any better you’ll know when it happens, they increase by a lot. If they increase noticeably you should get it checked out but if it increases so substantially that you’re like man what the hell is going on then you need emergency care, basically, but also you can’t really miss it?
I know someone who got a vitrectomy for his eye floaters, and I’ve been considering doing the same when I can afford it
This is not inside your eye, it’s outside out there. Please, do not ignore it and write to your FBI agent immediately
I had some since childhood and as a child trying to explain these to people lead nowhere, and I just thought I had something nobody else had. Then, years later, the internet came, and some random post like this came, and I went holy shit! It was amazing to finally know what it was and that they really aren’t a big deal.
Real life needs better writing
The Germans call them “flying mosquitos”
In Australia we call them eye snags
i got a floater in my eye
Beats “miodesopsia” from my language
Eyeworms. Villagers get them from touching raw meat then rubbing their eyes. It’s only a matter of time before the worms burrow into your brain. Then you shit yourself and die in a most embarassing way.
At least I won’t have to deal with the mess.
That sounds right. No wonder I’ve been repeatedly shitting myself everywhere I go…
Having an astigmatism that changes really frequently means I notice these more obviously within months of changing my prescription. Fuck these things!
Huh … I never noticed that I stopped noticing my floaters after getting glasses. When you have something like that for decades, you stop actively seeing those things.
For some reason this comment is what made me finally realise that I haven’t seen floaters since I stopped needing glasses
wait does it mean my prescription needs changing? i dont know if i read that right
Near-sightedness makes you more likely to notice them, but I don’t think it’s a serious sign of anything unless you’re seeing them so much that it’s a problem. They’re always there in healthy eyes, your brain just tunes them out most of the time. I would assume that changes in the way your eye focusses - either because of a change in the actual eye like the person above describes or because of a change in the prescription of glasses changing the light that enters your eye - just makes it more likely for your brain to not tune them out because they suddenly look a bit different to what your brain got used to
This! Thanks a lot for the explanation. My optician spouse explained it like this to me too
It’s bacteria eating your optical nerves
hope theyre having fun :D
