Something i've noticed

[Southern]

Since meeting Deaf people in the past few month i have noticed some things about myself that i never noticed before. One major thing has to do with hearing and people i meet. When i meet people from the sound of their voice i automatically assume certain things about them. Not what they said or how they say it but the voice itself. There was some one that i met that i did not like and i knew that i could not explain why to my Deaf friends. Their voice, not what they said instantly told me this person had mental issues. Turns out i was right. Then i thought i can't tell my friends who are deaf that because in thinking about it it sounds so superficial, (sp). This person has done nothing, (at that point) to give you any indication there is something wrong and you instantly don't like them? What's wrong with you???
We do that though. I can tell if you are sick even if they tell me you are well from the sound of your voice. Or that you are depressed even if you say you are happy. I never noticed i do that till now and when talking to my hearing friends about it they said they do the same. It is subcontious but the impression we get from peoples voice says a lot about them. I have a voice similar to Barry White very low. And women think it's sexy. Why? why do we judge people soley on the sound of their voice and not their words or actions even if it is true. A person is sick, happy, crazy, sexy, or stupid all on their voice and not their words. Is it wrong that we hearing do this? Should we make those decisions more on what a person has done or is this something that is hard wired and is there for a reason?

 

[SpiceHD]

well even though i cant hear... often i can tell what kind of personality that person by just chatting with them. once i met this guy from college and i got hair standing straight out on my neck and i immediately knew that guy is dangerous somehow. 2 days later i heard that very same guy raped a woman.
also when i worked... i had to walk a mile everyday to that work and often someone would pull over and ask if i need a ride or not. more often than not i immediately knew not safe to ride with that person but once or twice i did get in cuz that person gives positive vibes. and always i was right. (kids... dont ever get in a car with a stranger!)

i have met several homeless people and more often i knew they were okay just got bad luck but i dont know how. so i guess most deaf people are like that too in their own way. (each one is different ofc so i really cant speak for them)

i alway find it fasinating that u can tell by the tones of their voices.

 

[Southern]

Well it isn't as much the tone of the voice i am talking about here although that is important. I would call it more texture. Any hearing people who are reading this are probaby thinking what?? LOL If you took a couch. Lets take away the fact that it is a couch, those are the words spoken. Okay now lets take away the color of the couch, that is the tone of voice. All you are left with is the texture of the couch. You know from touching something if it is velvet or silk or water or metal. That is how i look at it. The texture of the persons voice also tells me alot about them. But when i think about it it sounds superficial. I guess it goes along with the vibes thing like you said.

 

[Theseus]

Hi Southern, sometimes you can tell a person's vibes from the voices/expressions, sometimes you can't. This is just to suggest that you can't really tell 100% of the time. You probably knew this already. By the way, I'm 100% deaf.

Now, what's interesting is that animals seem much better at picking up vibes than human beings. Dogs can sometimes tell when someone's done a violent crime even though the person seems like a nice person otherwise. Of course, if you get a really bad vibe about someone else (such as that person being a rapist) you should follow your gut feeling, but in other instances where the vibes tell you that the other person is slow-minded or retarded, then you shouldn't listen to the vibes. Why? The person could turn out to be a very smart person who has an uncontrollable disease, for example, and you'd be judging a "book by its cover" so to speak.

Take for example, I haven't been exposed to the deaf world for very long. I have been kept out of conversations for most of my life that when I try to socialize, I may pause in middle of a sentence or struggle to come up with the proper term. I may even find myself unable to know the appropriate moment to blend into a conversation. My expressions may not always match my emotions because I'm not used to talking to people, and people would then get negative vibes from me and think, "Oh, he must be slow." I don't have a disease but this is a form of "social paralysis" as I've coined, because it takes time to adapt to give the correct vibes, in some instances.

One of my deaf friends who I had befriended two years earlier was at a soccer game with me. We were playing for a deaf team, and I tried to socialize with some of the deaf people by using PSE. What happened as I've described above, having to come up with a proper term to complete a sentence, and being unable to blend in, caused a few deaf girls to come up to my friend and ask her, "Is he slow?" and my friend told them, in her own words, "No he's not slow. He's a brilliant guy!" I did not know that this discussion had taken place until after the soccer game, when my friend came up to me and told me what her friends had said. She knew that I had just sent out the wrong vibes.

Therefore, vibes can also be based on a person's background and upbringing... but when you get really bad vibes that put you at jeopardy, of course you should listen to your vibes. Oh by the way, when hearing people try to get vibes by observing a deaf person's language skills, that's ridiculous because in many cases English is not a deaf person's primary language and has very little whatsoever to do with a deaf person's intelligence, as much as a biased test like the SAT or ACT would compare a hearing person against a deaf person relative on how much information the person was able to get in school using both the auditory and visual systems.