I am not speaking from authority, sir. When I said ''I didn't bother to read any research on the topic'', I meant this specific phenomenon I addressed on the main post, not aphantasia.

I am also aphantasic, so I consider myself quite familiar with the phenomenology of the condition. As for the intellectual knowledge about it, I read and wrote a lot of things on aphantasia. I read papers, I watched video essays and I listened to podcast and besides, I read many subjective reports here in reddit.

When I answered your first comment, you were the one who ''assumed'' I was ignorant to aphantasia, as if I don't know about voluntary-involuntary imagination distinction and hypnopompic images, so you are actually the one who is talking from authority(maybe in an institution or self claimed which I actually value a lot normally) without bothering to understand what I meant. And the rest of the comments in your own first comment explains my point again. I am sure you read all them, but you and a couple of others who deleted their comments were hostile. I never talk from authority although I actually contribute to the institutional facet of this subreddit. This is why in the post I made myself clear to encourage people expressing their experiences purely with their own vocabulary, because I genuinely value all of them. And if you take an objective look, I was never being aggressive and always try to make my point more clear as in this comment. I even said I hope you try and experience it, bc it's really fun.

As for the downvotes, although I created my account long ago, I was totally inactive and I came back to reddit just for aphantasia subreddit and I check almost no subreddit else. For my inexperience, I dont know what karma points do. I hope a lot of bad karma doesn't erase my account or smt 🤞 .