Why do I see TV fuzz and moving geometric shapes when I close my eyes and press on them?

I know this sounds loony, but this is really what I see when I close my eyes and then apply just a little pressure to them.

At first there is just black space, then the static (much like TV static) will appear.

After that, I start to see moving geometrical shapes in black and white, kinda like peering into a monochrome kaleidoscope.

Once I open my eyes, it's gone.

Try it out and see if the same thing happens to you. Close your eyes, and put a little bit of pressure on them. Don't hurt yourself! And don't do it for an extended amount of time. If your eyeballs start to hurt please by all means take the pressure off of them.

I'm just curious as to what appears to you guys.

And yes, I do realize the comedians of ATS will try to make this out to be a joke, but for those who do it, report what you see down below.

a reply to: Privy_Princess

Damn you I'm blind!

Seriously though, watch what you're doing eyes are extremely sensitive, I see static and usually a disturbance in the opposite side of my eyeball almost like plasma... A lot like a migraine.

I guess a little bit like when you look at a light and the image gets stuck in your vision.

a reply to: Privy_Princess
Merely a black and white image of the last things seen
This did bring up something strange.
If one "sees" in color, why aren't those same "artifacts" in color as well ?

a reply to: Privy_Princess

It's your eyes way of telling you don't frikn do that.

originally posted by: CthruU
a reply to: Privy_Princess


It's your eyes way of telling you don't frikn do that.

"Doc , it hurts when I laugh"
Doc - "Don't laugh"

They are called phosphenes.

Wiki

'nuff said

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: Privy_Princess

Damn you I'm blind!

Seriously though, watch what you're doing eyes are extremely sensitive, I see static and usually a disturbance in the opposite side of my eyeball almost like plasma... A lot like a migraine.

I guess a little bit like when you look at a light and the image gets stuck in your vision.

Yep, I get those little floaties, too.

Sometimes I might stare into a bright light for a few seconds JUST to create one and watch it float around the room.

I promise I'm not weird.

Well, maybe just a little.

a reply to: Privy_Princess

Parasites.

a reply to: Privy_Princess

Be careful with your eye's, what you are seeing is probably an optical illusion caused by the pressure of your hand's on your eye's cutting of blood flow, I have experienced similar in the past myself when rubbing my eyes.

originally posted by: Gothmog

originally posted by: CthruU
a reply to: Privy_Princess


It's your eyes way of telling you don't frikn do that.

"Doc , it hurts when I laugh"
Doc - "Don't laugh"

That’s rite,

Now when your eyes do that when your not frikin doing that then now we have a question.

a reply to: Privy_Princess

I used to do that when I was younger... Almost as good as the squiggly line!

originally posted by: CthruU
a reply to: Privy_Princess

It's your eyes way of telling you don't frikn do that.

LOLOLOL!!...

Exactly!

I use to watch static on my tv and I could see after a bit pyramids and sometimes even faces and other images. In a unrelated thing for some reason I can picture the Mona Lisa clear as day for some reason, only her though.

Ever since I was little, I can always remember having itchy eyes. I suffer from severe allergies (dogs, grass, air, lol) but so I always rubbed my eyes a LOT. I used to do it so long that I would start seeing little purple stars (yes, they’re always purple, little fireworks bursts is what it reminds me of) and even after opening my eyes sometimes they would still be there for a few seconds lingering... until things came back into focus.

Fast forward to last year... I’ve always had astigmatism, myopia, dry eyes, the works... real high maintenance for me to just see.

But this time the optometrist found something troubling.... I am losing my peripheral vision.... and I have a condition he named as “lattice degeneration” which is a bit rare but it basically means there are numerous tiny holes in my eye.... and they will only continue to get worse. Tiny tears if you will, slowly degenerating.... which makes me highly susceptible to a retinal detachment.

This means my retina will detach from my eye and if I do not make it to an emergency laser procedure within 24 hours give or take, I lose my eyesight. The procedure isn’t guaranteed to save the eye either, it’s just my only option.

So, I don’t KNOW that I caused this by rubbing my eyes my whole life, but it probably didn’t help.

Not meaning to scare anyone, just something I wish I had known all those times I liked to lay there and rub my eyes until I could see stars with my eyes open. It wasn’t worth it. I am not sure how long I’ve had the condition, as when I was at the eye doctor last year and discovered this, the gadgets and imagery they were using to photograph my eye ball was new compared to what they had done on me in years prior. They may not have had the tech available to discover this until recently, I guess.

originally posted by: paraphi
They are called phosphenes.

Wiki

'nuff said

It's funny to think, as humans we consider every sensory organ a given. Yet we only have a specific range of perception.. some animals cannot perceive certain colours, and thus, see green as a different colour which alludes to why some animals are brightly coloured.. To us, it's bizarre, but in nature, nature does what it does by evolution. I am reminded of a scene from Battlestar Galactica - The Plan (awesome movie btw). Where Brother Cavil is lamenting being a machine more capable of experience than the corporeal form he resurrects into..

"I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I - I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws; and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I'm a machine, and I can know much more. I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body. And why?! Because my five creators thought that "God" wanted it that way."

Yet here we are, not even considering that our eyes are mechanical things, not actually part of 'us' but simply things that have evolved symbiotically over countless millennia to give us what we at best call 20/20 vision, cells that cooperate with other clusters of cells, for the benefit of the whole entity.

Not thinking that if you poke a peripheral with a screwdriver, it might not work the same leading to the graphics being a bit off.

We're a menagerie of parts, independent of each other, that are interconnected to work as one.. yet we only think of 'us' as this infallible concept.. something that just is..

so weird.. and no one even realises that the stomach has what, 100 million neurons, receptors, neurotransmitters and all the things that do the same things as they do in our brain. Trust your gut, they say.. I have a gut feeling.. science believes that there is merely a one way information transfer via the vagus nerve, meaning our brain tells it what to do. but I feel, in my gut, that it tells us more things, than we have ever realised.

Oblivious, most people are. To the very things that keep the 'us' going.. This organic machine, easily broken, hard to repair, and impossibly created without other organic machines bumping uglies.

Next up, what are those dots that seemingly float in my peripheral vision, that when I try to focus on, zip away as if aware I'm looking.. Some sort of floaters...

a reply to: Privy_Princess

Pressing on your eyes can cause permanent damage to the ducting through an increase in ocular pressure. If you want to have some weirdness, try allowing your eyes to relax and defocus while they are open. It's hard to do as you can't blink, but you can watch your eyes play tricks with your visual perception of reality :-)

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: Gothmog
Because all color only exists in light remember? Iir , every color is just that surface reflecting that wavelength of light, which is then filtered to the colors we see with our eyeballs.

I stare at the sun myself, and there was another thread from years backed that explored this phenomenon.

a reply to: paraphi

You are correct. Phosphenes are the result of pressure on the eyeball, and produce "sparklies" and other visual information.