I found I can wiggle my ears enough to walk my glasses back up my nose when they've slipped down.
What's something weird and mostly useless that you can do with your body?
2 years ago by Interstellar_1 to c/asklemmy
now that's useful!
I’ve just tried that and you’ve changed my life
Child me would've loved to see that.
Adult me would love to see that
I can rumble my eardrums. Mostly useless unless i wanna block out some annoying sound but i can only do it for like a minute at a time.
I think I have the same thing. Is yours also kinda connected to blinking? I can do it without blinking, but closing my eyes at the same moment as rumbling the eardrums feels easier and more natural than rumbling with eyes open.
Mine feels more connected to my jaw, I kind of tense my jaw right near the joint to activate the rumbling.
I can do it without closing my eyes but when i was younger, I remember closing my eyes or scrunching my face made it easier to do. If you can wiggle your ears without lifting your eyebrows, it kind of feels like its the same muscle group that causes the rumbles. The rumbling sounds like white noise inside my head. Its caused by constricting Tensor Tympani muscle in the ear voluntarily. From Wikipedia:
Some individuals can voluntarily produce this rumbling sound by contracting the muscle. According to the National Institute of Health, "voluntary control of the tensor tympani muscle is an extremely rare event",[5] where "rare" seems to refer more to the scarcity of test subjects and/or studies more than the percentage of the general population who have voluntary control. The rumbling sound can also be heard when the neck or jaw muscles are highly tensed as when yawning deeply. This phenomenon has been known since (at least) 1884.[6]
I do this thing where I pop my ears (like when pressure changes from altitude) and then it's like I'm hearing my breathing inside of my sinuses or something. When I breathe this way, it effectively blocks conversations I don't want to overhear. Do other people do this, or am I odd?
I can do this. If I'm in a really quiet area, I like to take in a deeper breath and then exhale as slowly as possible while doing it, which then allows me to hear my heartbeat. Super nifty.
I can also use my soft pallet to block airflow from my throat to my nose. Can you do that too?
I can't block my nose in that way. I tried when your comment came in, but I can't conceive of how to do it.
With the ear popping thing, I just hear the rushing of my breath. I can see how you might be able to hear your heart. I might be making this up in my head, but I feel like maybe I could hear it when I was younger.
I can do this! I forget the name for it but I can rumble my ears, and then I can also 'pop' them if I go a little further. I'm so grateful for it if I ever go through a pressure change, I can't imagine how people cope without being able to do it.
Wait a minute. If I hold my jaw right, I do get a very short rumbling apart from my breath. Is that what you guys mean?
Came here looking for the tensor tympani rumble cause I know it well; not sure what your thing is! If I notice sounds going quiet on a flight I'll pinch the nostrils shut and make an exhalation effort till I hear a pop in each ear, then sounds are normal. Almost like the reverse of yours.
I can also ear rumble, it is not tied to my blinking at all, but if I vibrate my eyes while my ears are rumbling they both move at the same ~60hz frequency.
Mine is activated by blinking hard.
Mine is connected to blinking, but it doesn't always work.
This is my time to shine, my body is full of useless, I can:
A friend taught me how to gleek in 7th grade. I never stopped doing it lmao
click my tongue extremely loudly
Learn Xhosa.
By shoot, does it have force or do you mean it just comes out?
It has “force”, but it’s not very impressive, I can shoot saliva in approximately a 1ft / 30cm arch.
I can also gleek but it's nowhere near what my grade 11 English teacher could do. I don't know how it came up in class, but, in front of the class, she turned sideways and made the biggest arc I'd ever seen: maybe 6 feet long
that sounds so satisfying
You know that feeling you get when you listen to really awesome music and your hair stands on end and your skin has like an electric tingle all the way up and down? I can do that feeling at will. It's called 'voluntary frisson', normally an autonomic response. Makes music a real.trip.
I think that's the weirdest one I've seen yet
That's actually pretty cool, I haven't felt that in a pretty long time so I'm pretty jealous of you there
Same! I liken it to a knock off version of Mongolian Throat singing.
I love doing this because it sounds like you're charging a laser weapon
Hmm I can hum independent of my lips 🤔
Should be a filter on tinder
Is that like the sound you get when you yawn? I can do that too!
I can make my left elbow sound like biting down on dry cornflakes, just by doing a push-up.
They weren't made to be healthy. They were made to keep you from masturbating.
And it's working. I'm still unable to masturbate to Cornflakes.
I had a complex fracture in the elbow twice, 34 and 30 years ago. There's no pain, no loss of function, and it didn't get worse in all that time.
Nothing I can really do but hope it will stay like that for the next 30.
truly
I just remembered this, I can open my eyelids and look in a direction where only the whites of my eyes are visible. Apparently it's very creepy
Do you roll your eyes up or down?

That always used to give the heeby-jeebies to watch.
I think upwards, kinda hard to tell though
I can twitch my eyeballs left and right really fast, and not just a little bit - but most of the way.
Completely grosses people out when I do it.
Edit: I can even do circles, but not as fast as left and right.
This is called Voluntary Nystagmus.
Neat! Thanks for the name/info.
I’m the only person I’ve ever met who can do this. It’s apparently somewhat more common than I thought.
I’m an old man, but I still do it specifically to my sister because she cannot stand it. /sibling rivalry lives on
I think we have the same talent. Does it look like your eyes are vibrating?
Oh.........then maybe we have different talents. I can see the whole world having an earthquake when I do it.
Ey wobbly eye gang here
I can do this but only a couple mm
I can voluntarily open my eustachian tubes and hold them open, without needing to yawn or swallow. Makes it much easier to clear the pressure in my ears when changing elevation (like when flying in a plane).
Huh I think I can do the same. I always thought it was one of those things that everyone could do.
Same. Sometimes I can't, such as when congested, and it's super annoying and unbalanced.
Apparently there's a thing called lucid dreaming that many people try very hard to achieve.
Most of my dreams are "lucid".
I can also, using only my facial muscles, pull my eyelids back extra far so it looks like my eyeballs are popping out.
cries in has chronically useless dreams that can't even go in a dream journal
I have a hypothesis that there is no such thing as lucid dreaming (before you get the wrong idea, I've done it before. My meaning is that it's misunderstood, not that people are lying about having done it).
That feeling that you're in control? You're just dreaming that you're in control. You're just dreaming that you have the experience of choice-movement-feedback.
How is the feeling of being in control any more real than other sensations you experience in a dream?
When you experience the sensation of enlightenment in a dream, do you say you were really enlightened, or were you just dreaming that you were enlightened?
When you experience the sensation of blue in a dream, do you say there was actually blue, or were you just dreaming there was blue?
Your brain telling you you're in control is just as suspect as your brain telling you there's blue. They are both creations of your brain for the purpose of the dream.
Whatever action you're taking in an attempt to demonstrate control is just as easily explained as something your brain created as dream decoration.
Remember, this is just a hypothesis.
The question is, is there a practical difference between lucid dreaming and dreaming about being lucid? I like to think it's the memory afterwards that counts.
Lots of things that ultimately come down to hyper-mobility (thanks Ehlers-Danlos!), including:
I can dislocate my shoulder to the music of Billy Joel. The Pawnee Journal once called it, "Why would anyone do this?”
It’s a quote from Parks and Recreation.
I can flex some muscle in my head that causes a roaring sound in my ears. Not sure what that's for.
Is it the same muscle that lets you wiggle your ears? Because I can do that, and I get a similar roaring.
My ears don't seem to move when I do that.
Same here. Someone else in the thread said that's your tensor tympani muscle.
I can hammer nails and icepicks into my head. I'm very fire resistant and eat fire. I have a split tongue. I can keep my eyes open for a VERY long time.
TBF I'm a sideshow and fire performer so I'm cheating
Are you a demon and who summoned you
Psssshhhhhh, look at this guy, existing! Not like the rest of us simulated humans! Buy ovaltine! Just sitting around in society. Pretending to exist, so we can slip subtle advertising into daily conversations. Buy ovaltime! Bet you didn't realize that we're all in the matrix, and your entire purpose for existance is to be made to be miserable. Currency is worthless outside the matrix. We're only doing this to make all in the matrix suffer!!!
Mwahahahaha!!!! Thats my evil laugh! Do you like it?

Yeah more airy or something I can't really do it on command that well
Found a video that shows it, didn't know it was a beat boxing thing now I have a goal haha https://youtu.be/_uQDmZmvvSY?feature=shared&t=120
I can whistle in three different ways. The classic pursed lip whistle, a whistle using just the tip of my tongue and the roof of my mouth, not using my lips at all, and then another using the tops of my bottom teeth. I can make decent bird sounds using my bottom teeth, but I can do pretty much any tune I can think of with the pursed lip method. It has been relevant to my life exactly zero times, except to entertain myself.
I've got a tooth gap through which I can whistle. And it's working so well, that I can also audibly whistle while breathing in. So, I can actually whistle pretty much continuously for like 10+ minutes, until my cheeks start hurting. Only really useful getting on someone's nerves...
That's how I learned the bottom tooth whistle! One of my bottom front teeth was a bit crooked and created a tiny gap at the top, and I learned to whistle through it. When I got my teeth straightened I lost the ability to do the invert whistle and some of my control but I can still do it well enough with the pursed lip method.
Ah! I have another whistling method! I can use my throat. It's like a heavily modified sigh? It's the best way I can describe how to even try to do it.
With practice I think I could get it loud enough to be disorientating to the unsuspecting though. Lol
I can roll my R's like a Spaniard and move my boobs on their own but that's it.
Video of both at the same time?
How does one do that on here?
Upload to an image host like catbox, imgbb, imgur, gfycat etc?
But those don't do video.
What are you, a turtle?
If I press on the corners of my eye it forces air down my naso-lacrimal duct (that lets tears drain into our sinuses) and it makes a squeak loud enough for people sitting next to be to hear. I have a built in nose flute.
I can whistle while either exhaling or inhaling
Idk how special or weird it is but everyone I've tried to teach the skill to seems entirely incapable of doing the inhale one
It's super useful for whistling complex songs or long bits without stopping, though
Hello. I, too, can do this!
Sooo I can cause what honestly feels like a small and constant electrical current flow through any part of my body. If I center this feeling on my chest it is easily more prominent than anywhere else with my head being second. Extremities are dead last. If I am hooked up to a heart monitor I can make it freak out at will. Any location I focus it on tends to want to tense up.
I like to tell people this is the result of me grabbing onto a metal item when I was younger that was still hot. Couldn't let go for a solid 6-10 seconds, can't say exactly how long. What I am able to do feels very similar.
As in sexy
Electricity. Hand curled around it to grab and got rooted. I still remember the sensation of my repeating mental command to "LET GO" feeling as if it was slowly travelling down my arm. Weird is a word that comes to mind.
Wow that's wild, my only experience with that tingling feeling is testing 9V batteries with my tongue. I've had a healthy fear of electricity and always LOTO at work, so I'm hoping it stays that way.
The wild part is it didn't hurt. I don't remember any pain at all. Just an intense knowledge that something was very wrong and I needed to get away as quickly as I could. But like no matter how hard I tried my body would not listen until that signal I mentioned hit my hand and I let go.
I was also surrounded by people and not a single person noticed.
But yeah, Iiii wouldn't repeat the experience.
Me too! But only the ones on my right foot.
Ditto.
I can poop on the floor. But I bet you can too.
Instructions unclear. Anyone know how to clean a popcorn ceiling?

Well, I can still do a cartwheel, it's good for surprising children. Thumbs bend backwards.
I can also reach all of me, which my husband seems to think odd, can put sunscreen on my own back so I don't think it's useless.
Hi yes I'm a big fan. I'd like to know your credit card details please
Thank you, my dream has been fulfilled
I can rotate one finger at one direction and the other on the opposite direction while pointing one to another, simultaneously. I don't know how uncommon it is but, back at high school, no one else in my class could do it. Totally unuseful skill.
My fingers don't rotate unless you count wrist involvement, so I'm a little confused by what you're describing.
Something like this. Sorry for the poor image. The wrists can move too, I think it doesn't change much.

If I’m understanding your description correctly (the image didn’t come through), I can do this too! I heard once as a kid it was impossible and I refused to accept that, so I practiced until I could do it.
Rephrasing to see if we’re talking about the same thing: I can point my fingers towards each other in front of me, then circle one hand away from myself and the other towards myself, and continue looping them in opposite directions. Most people can do it for 1-2 loops, but then end up moving both fingers in the same direction.
I believe we're talking about the same thing. Welcome to the club!
Neat! I just tried it and it's hard (harder one way than the other, for some reason), but doable.
I can put both my hands In a "pray" position behind my back between my shoulder blades. I can vibrate my eyes. Perpetually crack my right ankle. And pull my arm out of it's socket.
I can vibrate my eyes.
Oh shit. You just gave me a memo of middle/high school. I use to be able to do that. I just checked and maybe if I keep practicing, but it's not there anymore.
Someone I knew did it to me in school. Like just vibrated their eyes while looking at me. Then asked if I could do that. Well no, but it intrigued my young ass enough to figure out how he did it. He told me and after a few days I was able to do it pretty easy.
That's similar to how I learned! My brother could do it and I was envious and figured it out, he can do it for as long as he wants but my eyes tire after maybe 20 seconds or so
I can fit the majority of my little finger up my nostrils. My nose might be slightly larger than normal and my hands are about normal. It just fits up there with a little twist.
I can make fart sounds with only my hands
I can too with my hand and armpit ;)
The trick is to wake up standing, as well.
I can move my fingertip joints without moving the rest of my finger.
I can snap with my toes the same way people snap their fingers, but only with the right foot for some reason.
I used to do this all the time. Since I stopped, they don't pop so easily anymore
I can
I used to able to touch my fingers to the back of my hand in middle school, but 10 years later I can only bend them back a little less than 3/4
It was a neat party trick while it lasted, because everyone thought it hurt me to do it lol
People are often so worried I'm pushing back hard and damaging my joints. So I let them push a finger back softly, then they're shocked how easy it is, but no longer worried about my joints! 😁
I came here to say this!
Form a bubble under the tip of my tongue, scoop it up, fold tongue, gently blow.
The best way I can describe it is I can make the nerves on the back of my neck, upper back, and shoulders feel sensitive at will.
I can whistle with my lips just slightly open (like a ventriloquist).
I can make a really high pitched whistle like that and it confused the hell out of other people while they trying to find where the sound came from (high pitched sound is harder to pinpoint the location as it's bounce around the room).
But as I get older, I find it getting harder and harder to do so. 10 - 12 years ago I can whistle an entire song like that and it would sound crystal clear. Now it's really hard to follow a tune or make complex sounds.
Yeah that's what I meant. My lips can move freely while I whistle and it doesn't affect the sound at all. I just specifically mentioned the "slightly opened lips" as it's more interesting to the story I'm telling.
I can one up you by doing that with my chest
I can do both of those and I can do it with my collarbone up against my neck. I do it accidentally all the time while leaning over and it catches me off guard all the time...and makes me giggle, because I am very mature.
palm over eye socket fart gang checking in
I can bend the last joint in my fingers independently. I also have a small nub on the tip of my tongue, which is only useful in one situation.
Getting peanut butter off the roof of your mouth?
Yep.
I can bend the last joint of my right hand middle finger independently. Not any of the other ones though. I found out when I was playing Double Dragon in the arcade and smashing the attack button. My finger when stuff with the first joint bent and still smashing the kick button. I didn't know what it was.
I can lick my own uvula.
Curious how? I can curl my tongue back and flick it.
You mean that isn't normal? Well TIL
Next step, go behind it and reach your tongue up into your nasal passage above your soft pallet. Congratulations, you're now able to pick your nose from inside your mouth.
I've been able to do this for about a decade now because I got bored one day.

That's both titillating and disgusting. Bravo.
THANK YOU
That sounds stressful
have you considered getting your thyroid checked? anecdotal evidence, a former colleague mentioned they had thyroid issues (on the hyper side) and could hear their pulse in their head before solving it. somehow that bit of info stuck with me
Never heard this, interesting. I usually only hear it in places with low background noise, it kinda reminds me of the sound a CRT TV or something kinda like electricity, it's not really like those things, but it's the closest thing I can think of.
I can also hear myself blink if I have silence in a room.
I also actually do have a thyroid condition, but that could be pure coincidence.
heh, I can also hear myself blink sometimes in a quiet room. my thyroid tests are inconclusive though.
I can bring my hands from the back of my body to the front (and the opposite) while holding them together. There might be a use for this if I ever get tied up.
Me too. the local police even stopped handcuffing me behind my back because I'd just step over so my hands were in front again.
The handcuff thing. Being on a first name basis with the local cops is pretty common in a small town like where I lived for a bit when I was an angry teen.
Would've been a nice skill for me to have at one point.
I can spiral my tongue, so that the front part is fully upsidr down - but only to the left. I can't rotate it to the right at all for some reason, it's like the equivalent muscles are missing.
Sometimes when I open my mouth really wide, I somehow spray a little stream of saliva, like from a squirt gun. It makes me feel like the dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park, but so far I haven't been able to do it on purpose.
I can fold my ears twice - so from the top of my ear I fold it towards the bottom of my ear and at the point where it folds I can fold it again across over the first fold.
We have a couple things that run in the family. All men in my direct family (so me, my dad and my brother) can twist our mouths in both directions at once, so upper lip one side lower lip the other side, looks funky. We can also do eyebrow dances with moving only single eyebrows but I think that's more common.
I can make my right arm vibrate by tensing up the muscles in my forearm. I dont me shake really fast. I mean vibrate.like, fast.
Outside of beating my brothers on specific mario party mini games that require repeatedly pressing a single button (or other games that have that use mechanic) or unlocking the cheats in bomberman 64 (needed a turbo controller to hit start repeatedly on the main menu) its pretty damn useless.
There was one Mario Party mini game (i think called domination) where you had to hit A as fast as possible, with each press making a thwomp or "domino" appear in a line. At the end, they all fall down, and you see whose line is the longest.
Some people couldn't reach the finish line. Some could just about get past it. Mine just kept going and going.
Otherwise, totally useless.
I thought that was normal and I just had not learned how to not vibrate, I can vibrate my whole body by tensing up or whatever part I focus on. So I vibrate like crazy when I do the plank... Extremely annoying....
Mad how everyone has such different experiences and how they shape our outlook on the world and what we consider normal. Like in my circles my arm thing was unique to me. I never met anyone that could do it. But looking at the comments in this post it seems like most of us think our weird trick is unique but there are almost alwas other people who have the opposite experience.
Interesting.
Pfff. Everyone can do that..... Two times.

I can blow air out of my tear duct. Really useful for clearing it out.
You know how you can end up with crusties in your eyes in the morning? Well that gunk comes partly from your tear ducts and drys there. So sometimes when I blow them out I get some light white mucus as well as tears. When it's really full it will make tiny bubbles. Lol and it whistles a little so people in the same room can hear it.
Also as a party gag. Lol
I can usually make my goosebumps on my arm go away by concentrating alone.
With your powers combined, you are... Mangoose!
We don't talk about The Room
I can diverge my eyes really far, almost equivalent to how far I can cross them. Way easier when I'm super sleepy.
I have a few that some others in the thread have already mentioned, but I can also:
I can click my tongue (?) very loudly. Entirely useless
I can snap the tendon over my knuckles kinda hard to where it makes a popping/snapping sound. If I do it close to someone's cheek, it stings like releasing a tiny rubber band.
I can also move my ears independent of one another.
My knees pop even when I just casually walk. Maybe I should see a doctor.
I can make my left scapula pop/click by moving my scapulas closer together. I read on a medical website that it’s actually an ailment that can be remedied by surgery. I don’t really want surgery. I’m right handed, so it doesn’t affect me too much. Apparently, I’m the only one in my family with this issue and it’s supposedly a genetic issue.
https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Flow+artist
There's a bit of me that I can put in certain other people, and it will cause a smaller version of us to form.
What did it say?
spamming some Instagram page with text that didn't make sense.
I also like how the message was supposedly edited 3 minutes ago.
@lemmy.world
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
go to feed...
I can wiggle my ears. I used to use it to entertain children, but today's children are jaded and cynical.
save