I ask because it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t but I regularly have dreams where I continue books I’m reading irl (they usually devolve into naritive nonsense over time and then sometimes to blank pages, but the actual text is definitely deciferable), text messages, computer screens, and road signs, in both lucid and regular dreams. Am I the odd man out or is it actually just something people say?
I’ve debugged code in my dreams before, so I think dream reading is something that varies from person to person. Also I only have minor issues using computers and phones in dreams, like my typing sucks but it’s not too difficult, keyboard shortcuts don’t always do what I expect, etc; but I’ve heard of plenty of people who can’t use tech at all or don’t even dream of their phones.
This reminds me… I used to play a lot of video games. (I still play, just not as much.) Sometimes I’d have dreams where I was wearing the power armor from Metroid, or had the guns and powers from Destiny, but I couldn’t use them without imagining the controller or keyboard.
Guns are the same way. It’s a pisser, because I want my bananas dream action sequence, but nooooooo…
it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t
I’ve never heard that before. What I have heard several times is that text is not static, so if you read something, look away, and then read it again, it’ll say something different. That I can corroborate, along with the idea that this is how you realize you’re in a dream and induce lucid dreaming.
Yep that’s it for me
It’s also hard to tell if I can “read” something, or if I look at an object and just know what it says. Same with mirrors, supposedly you can’t see your reflection in a dream but I might look at one and ‘know’ that I see myself
It’s commonly used as a plot device in stories, and in my experience people will tell you about it as a way to “wake up” in the dream if you complain about nightmares and people I’ve spoken to IRL about it take it as accepted truth
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That makes a lot of sense to me given my personal experiences. Reading this thread is interesting. I’ve never heard the idea that you can’t read in dreams. The last couple of months I’ve been having dreams where I’m doomscrolling headlines on an app, and I’m actively reading the headlines to myself. But since I’m doomscrolling , I notice them and move on. I’m aware of when I’m dreaming, so sometimes I’ll laugh to myself and my partner about the stuff my sleep- psyche comes up with. I don’t know if this is a recent development, but I can’t remember ever trying to read something in a dream and being frustrated that I can’t.
I have a number of problems that result in unusual and unhealthy sleep patterns, so that probably contributes to odd dream experiences.
Oh geez, I can’t remember ever seeing a single letter in a dream.
Does it count if its sponsors on race cars? I’ve been getting that a lot.
Yes EcoBoost Ford GT, I read you loud and clear. You can stop appearing every time I sleep…
Let this be a lesson to everyone: Don’t sign up for beta testing brain chips like this guy. It’s subsidized by subconscious advertisements.
Or for any kinds of brain chips, for that matter
I can read signs or short texts, usually a little slowly since I guess technically I’m spelling it out in my mind as I’m reading it.
No. Everything just looks like complete nonsense.
A good way to tell if you are in a dream is to look at your hands. For some reason, your brain while dreaming is a lot like a diffusion model in that it’s hard for it to comprehend what a hand looks like.
Sometimes I see signs I can read but that’s about it.
A while back I had an incredibly vivid dream about getting to and on the tube at King Herod station. That tube logo roundel with the name in the strike through was so, so clear and in several places in the station, along with a map of the line I could read. Upon waking I spent a good ten minutes googling it as I was so convinced it had to be a memory and was a real place.
Books and the internet have never worked for me in dreams though and I’ve had plenty of dreams where I’ve been trying to text someone and couldn’t as the keyboard was gibberish and words didn’t work.
And kinda related I suppose- I had a dream I was trying desperately to unlock my phone throughout this long adventure, and when I woke up my memory of my phone unlock glyph was fried as I’d basically overwritten it by doing it wrong so many times in the dream.
The whole following day had me freaking out trying to unlock my phone, to the point of drawing the nine dots out in my notebook over and over and over again, trying to link them up in the way I knew had to be right but wasn’t working.
When it finally came back I realised that I’d been drawing it out mirror flipped all day. It’s made me slightly uneasy ever since for some reason. It hasn’t helped that I’ve started to notice other mirror flipped things in dreams after that too.
I can’t think of any dream I’ve ever had where there was any text to even try and read. Common knowledge about “how dreams work” doesn’t seem like an exact science - like you said, you can read in dreams.
In the movie Waking Life there is a claim that you can tell if you are dreaming by trying a light switch, and that light switches don’t work in dreams. I had a lucid dream where I tried it and the light switch did work. So I don’t think there are any rules.
The only rule for me is the Doctor Who’s “do you remember how you got here?” as in, a dream is a collection of edited scenes instead of a long one shot. Like, I’m in my house an them I’m in a park with no memory of getting out of the house and traveling there.
At least, that’s the only consistent rule in my dreams
I’ve had both, “now I’m here, now I’m here”, as well as ones with continuity where I went through a forest, down a hill, across a road, through a field to a tennis court, and it was all the “same place” connected like in the real world.
Maybe there are different “dream rules” or trends among individuals.
For me dreams are usually somewhat surreal landscapes with not much happening. If there are man-made structures they are warped like the Dreg Heap area in Dark Souls 3, or the city bending in Inception. Sometimes I’m myself, but other times I’m no one, like a ghost observing and wandering the space. Very rarely are there other people or animals, and when there are it’s usually only one of them.
you can read in dreams but there’s no “continuity” of what you’ve read – within the dreamscape, you think (or you tell yourself) you’re continuing to read a book you’ve read in real life
this lack of “continuity” is one of the main tricks of lucid dreaming – read something twice (ex. time on a digital watch (not an analog watch)) – if the content changes, you’re dreaming – the secret of lucid dreaming is if that change triggers enough frisson for you to “wake up” inside the dream without kicking you out of the dream completely
I’ll have to try that next time I’m lucid, never noticed(as far as I remember anyway)
Yes, I can. The prose is pretty bad though, it has that markov-chain feel where it only flows logically relative to the surrounding few words.
A technique I’ve used to trigger lucid dreams is by reading. If I read something, look away, and then look back in a dream it will say something different. Then I know I’m dreaming… or they’ve installed digital billboards.
I can’t, though I can lucid dream. When people say “read,” I feel like they’re thinking of printed text but I find some I have similar problem with technology use. Like sometimes I’m trying to find something on the internet, or to show something on my phone to someone and it keeps not making sense. And I keep trying it again and again and it just get worse until I realize I’m dreaming.
I have not heard of this as “common knowledge.” I can’t particularly remember reading in a dream, but I don’t remember much about past dreams. Is there a source here, or is it just something you’ve kinda heard a few times?
I remember seeing this claim in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series
that holds more weight in my mind than it probably should…
edit: it’s true-ish, and apparently many people associate it with BTAS! https://www.inverse.com/science/can-you-read-in-your-dreams
Hahaha, amazing!
I was reading in my last dream. I remember it well because the content was a language mess full of puns that my dream made up.
(Something about “el ga coguLLMeli bianchi e priti de tante grosserìe”; roughly “there are black and white mushrooLLMs of many sizes/incivilities”. The book in the dream was mixing Portuguese and Talian this way. If anyone wants I can narrate the dream here, but be warned that there isn’t anything too interesting in it.)
I once tried to read a license plate and couldnt read it multiple times until the car was gone.
Normally this is a good Lucid Dreaming trigger.
One of the few times I’ve been able to do it was when saw a billboard (ordinary) and remembered “Hey written text is supposed to be nonsense in dreams, I wonder if I can take control?” and it worked!
Nice. I am way too unconscious for that.
I think the key is to be aware and undistracted while awake, as its way harder when sleeping
