Youtube decided to show me this video, and it makes a lot of great points:
Basically, face blindness is like being shown a bunch of carrots (or red apples, or garlic cloves) and being told their names. They all have distinguishing characteristics if you try really hard to find them. But, you have to find them, memorize them, and attach them to a name.
But, apparently some people see a face and their brain just....remembers it. They don't have to put in effort to try to memorize it. They don't need to use features like hair color, style, etc, to remember a person.
Some people are so good at cataloging see a face once and remember it forever. And, some people are so bad at it that it so bad that they can't tell their mother's face apart from another person of the same age, hair, and build. And some are somewhere in the middle.
I've always struggled with names and faces, especially when people are outside of their normal context. But, I figured I was just bad at it and not working hard enough at remembering people. I had a lot of guilt! I hadn't realized that I probably have some form of face blindness until Covid happened. I was talking to another person, and they were complaining about how much they didn't like the masks because
it made it harder for them to tell people apart. And, I thought in my head, "What? It's exactly the same with masks and without them!" I used other cues, like hair and eye color and style of dress and mannerisms to tell people apart.
Some people have really unique faces, and I'll remember those with their names, especially if I see them in circumstances where they're distinct from everyone else. Sometimes, a name and face sticks. But, woe betide me if I enter a classroom and there's three thin boys with short, light hair, or four girls with long brown hair who act in similar ways. Sometimes, I do manage to sort them out...but not always. And, it's even worse if I haven't seen them in a while.
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