Not in a crazy way. I mean, when you read an individual post, do you read it to yourself in that poster’s voice as you imagine it?
I didn’t used to, and I don’t do it with everybody, but long-time posters with a lot of posts that I read and I’ve gotten to know, as much as anybody can know any other anonymous internet person, usually have a separate and distinct voice, complete with accents and verbal flourishes, if appropriate.
I have a single narrator voice in my head that reads all the posts the same. I don’t normally bother reading who is posting unless that particular post jumps out at me.
The weird thing about my “narrator voice” is, it’s a masculine voice but the reading style is exactly like my mother’s. I speculate this must be the result of some sort of pre-programing I had when my mom used to read to me as a child. She also read subtitles in movies to me because she knew I couldn’t read them fast enough before they went off screen.
The only time the voice changes is when I know (or at least think I know the poster is an Aussie or a Brit. Then the narrator voice changes to that accent.
Is the question “do posts/posters have voices” or “do the posts read themselves ‘aloud’ in your head as you read them?” Various posters have voices for me, but speaker’s “tone” doesn’t change-- it’s more of a sense of who’s saying it rather than the actual voice changing, so I guess I’m sort of like Shakes in that sense (although accents don’t change for me).
But posts don’t read themselves to me, because as I assume most people do, I read a ton faster than anyone can talk (except the Micro Machines man, perhaps). So if the post were to read in my head, it’d be way behind my eyes. The “voice” posters have spits out a few words, and then jumps to whatever part I happen to be reading.
I don’t hear the printed word as such but I learned during research for a bio engineering course paper that when we read, the visual signals go to the visual cortex and to an area on the side of the brain where audio signals go. Printed words there are processed as audio signals and feed into our brain in that fashion. If that area is damaged you can see the words but no longer read.
So it would appear that there is a basis for what you experience.
At the time (1971) it occurred to me that since we only speak at around 160 or so words per minute and many of us read much faster, that it might be possible to speed up a recording and process it so that the voice frequencies remained the same, then we might be able to absorb speech much faster than normal.
My professor wanted me take this on as a class project, but with more research I found that some folks at Cornell had already worked it out.
There were such machines available later (in the late 70s maybe?) but as I recall doubling the speed was about the maximum for good comprehension.
I do. And I seem to read the nuances of the posts, too. I’m not 100% accurate with it, but surprisingly I seem to be 70%-80%. I always thought it was something everyone could do, just that many haven’t developed it.
And then, someone pointed out, if you’re born deaf, what language do you THINK in?
Normally no, but the other day I watched The Big Bang Theory and afterwards when I sat down to read the Dope, the voice in my head switched to Raj’s accent, which made the posts sound pretty funny.
The same thing happens to me with Aussie accents. I watch some Autralian shows, and then the voice in head takes on an Aussie accent for awhile.
This. I don’t remember, really, when I stopped doing it. About the only “voices” I hear are the crocs in Pearls Before Swine. Even then, I only hear the adult males, not the smart kid, or the female croc. The adult males have very deep guttural voices, and they grunt a lot, too.
That’s interesting about reading going through the audio processing portion of the brain.
FWIW, my stepfather was legally blind, and got audio books through some program. They were on LPs, and designed to be played at 8 RPM on a special record player. It would also play 16 and 33 RPM. He routinely played them at double speed at least. I don’t know if he ever played them at quadruple speed.
For the OP, all the posts here are in the same voice.
At work, though, I’ve been getting emails on a project, and was reading them in the voice of an older larger man for some reason. Balding, smokes a cigar. Eventually I realized this person was the woman we’ve been speaking with on teleconferences, but the voice stayed the same. I’ve just come back from an on-site visit at her place for a few days. I’m interested myself whether the email voice will be her voice or stay the guy’s voice when I get back to work Monday. I’ll let you know.
It depends on whether I’m reading for entertainment or for information. For the former, I want to be able to imagine people talking. For the latter, I just let it come into my head. It does sorta feels like a voice, but I can’t really “hear” it.