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Porygon Was Innocent: An epileptic perspective on the infamous Pokémon episode

162 points by Aissen 2y ago

valorzard 2y ago
[flagged]
outworlder 2y ago
> These include Absence Seizures, when a person stops what they are doing altogether, loses awareness but does not collapse or have visible convulsions; Myoclonic Seizures, when a person’s limbs suddenly jerk uncontrollably but they remain conscious and aware; and Tonic Clonic Seizures where a person loses consciousness, collapses, and their whole body convulses. I've witnessed something that I've never seen described anywhere – a very similar thing to an 'absence seizure', but the person is still aware and responding but seem unable to break away from the empty stare even when they try.
- NeuroCoder 2y ago
  There are all kinds of presentations for seizures. Ones in the frontal lobe are particularly hard to catch based on external presentation. If one is suspected of having seizures they will get a continuously monitored EEG where times associated where the seizure like state is monitored electrically. Sometimes it's a really weird presentation of a seizure or sometimes it's psychogenic. Either way it's good to have these people get some help I'd it keeps happening.
- _def 2y ago
  This is the first time I came across this somewhere else other than this one person I know that has this. Fascinating.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  This movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker is usually panned but it has a lot of great ideas in it including a light pulse gun that reliably causes absence seizures. Probably my favorite weapon from sci-fi movies although I have a soft spot for the zap gun out of Battlefield Earth which must be like one of those ray guns that Hubbard thought people have been using to implant us with bad ideas for trillions of years. Just a bit ahead of its time it's like a 1984 movie that came out in 1981.
- d1sxeyes 2y ago
  That sounds like a focal aware (simple partial) seizure. There are other things that it could be but if you want to search, you could try starting with those keywords.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  I knew someone who would get seizures when sleep deprived and was aware during them. I only saw one once. He was sitting on a couch, clutching a pillow in front of him, and kept shoving his face into the pillow. At the time, I wasn't aware of his seizures, and asked him if he was good. He just said "I'm fine, I'm having a seizure. Just give me a minute and it will pass." Sure enough, after a minute or two, he stopped, explained the situation, and said he needed to call it a night before it happened again.
aaaronic 2y ago
I thought it was common knowledge that Pikachu was the culprit.
- Aissen 2y ago
  I think it is, but the article really is about giving more context around what happened, and how it impacted the industry.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Pikachu isn’t real but the writers are.
  - the_af 2y ago
    It's probably more the animators than the writers at fault. (Though not on purpose, of course).
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Pikachu is real to me :'(
asynchronous 2y ago
I’m glad they bring up the techniques of ghosting and others to pass the Harding test, and the outcry from western audiences about it. Because personally, I find the diminishing of the animation quality really distracting during those hype scenes. I wish we could find some solution where we distribute the epileptic-safe versions alongside the unsafe ones and users could choose.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >I wish we could find some solution where we distribute the epileptic-safe versions alongside the unsafe ones and users could choose. They seem to be able to distribute uncensored & censored versions for some of the more risque or violent shows, as well as various levels of censorship for different regions. So, the solution is sort of already there, there's just not enough motivation I guess.
- VincentEvans 2y ago
  I wonder what people think about that part of the article where the author paints people who want to see the unedited version of the show in a negative light. The author presents “but i am not epileptic” crowd as ableist and insensitive. I strongly disagree and this kind of take makes me sympathize with the author less than I would otherwise, subconsciously. I can simultaneously support the idea that we should make adjusted content for people with epilepsy, or in a more general sense - it is a sign of elevated society to strive to accommodate people with disabilities or differences, but at the same time resent the notion that accomplishing the above has to mean that asking for an unaltered experience is “wrong”. I feel that putting those two demands on the opposite sides of the scale is “wokeism”.
  - the_af 2y ago
    I think the author does a fine job of pointing out you don't know whether this scene can harm you (you can be hit by it while not having had a seizure before in your life), so you cannot make an a priori judgment on whether you can safely watch the scene unedited. So playing the edited scene seems like the safest choice for everyone...
mmmlinux 2y ago
Serious question for epileptics. Are those failed LED flashing street lights an issue? I feel like they must be. Even to me they can be disorientating at night when the one flashing lamp on the exit ramp is the main light source.
- monetus 2y ago
  While anything could push you over the edge, it seems like 5 to 20 hz is the bitter spot that will make someone flop around. I don't have tonic-clonics anymore, but the strobes still trigger some seizure activity in me. To your question, not too bad of an issue unless you're easily triggered. Their speed is kind of off, ime.
- SkeuomorphicBee 2y ago
  I cant speak for epileptics, but I do suffer from photosensitive migraines (which the author briefly mentioned in the article), and in my case failing flashing LED lights are indeed an issue. Luckily for me it is not as instantaneous as a seisure, I feel it building up over many seconds, so in many situations I can just look away or close my eyes and it doesn't turn into a full blown migraine (just a kind of "hangover" in my head).
- _def 2y ago
  I'm not epilectic but I'm always super annoyed when someone walks their bicycle and the led front light keeps pulsing in bright rapid flashes because of the dynamo
  - isoprophlex 2y ago
    God yes. Primo headache material. Seems so lazy too, to design a light that goes full blast as soon as there is enough voltage from the dynamo. Stick a capacitor in there for chrissakes!
  - jandrese 2y ago
    I don't see that, but I do see a fair bit of ultra-bright LEDs set to strobe mode because some study somewhere said that was the most visible to vehicles. Now I get blinded and dazzled by both oncoming and leading bikes. I don't know why bike headlight manufacturers are so damn insistent on improving safety by blinding everybody else in the vicinity. Why do so few bike headlights have a "low beam" mode? Instead its 1,000,000 lumens in a 180 degree cone turning night into day but burning out the retinas of everyone else on the trail.
outworlder 2y ago
> Unlike with “Electric Soldier Porygon” the movie continued to be shown unedited in American cinemas throughout its entire run. Since the movie failed to pass the Harding Test, an alternative cut had to be shown in the UK, Ireland, and Japan. This meant that for at least two months of its theatrical run, Pixar had a safe cut they could show to English speaking American audiences and yet still chose to have the unsafe version in US cinemas. Exhibit A - companies will only ever do anything if they are forced to, even if what they are doing is harmful and compliance is relatively easy.
- meltyness 2y ago
  An optimistic take is that the organization was simply too incompetent to identify and assess the financial risk of injuring someone.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I think they correctly judged that the general public wouldn’t care one way or the other, whereas in Japan they knew they would be publicly crucified if they kept it going.
isoprophlex 2y ago
Okay strong "forbidden fruit" vibes here; I had the strongest compulsion to look up that scene on youtube. It's very unpleasant to watch, at least to me. No wonder this gave people seizures.
- Jaxan 2y ago
  It’s crazy: full frames with a solid blue and red alternating. To me also very unpleasant, but an effect I haven’t seen before.
  - MrLeap 2y ago
    I've recently noticed reminiscent effects in Arcane. They have some vfx that quickly alternate between yellow and magenta or yellow and blue. Not full frame. I think they look rather striking. It's a shame that kind of thing is a danger to some.
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      Yeah the person I watched the newest episodes said as much as well, she's quite sensitive to these things. That said, that show does have the warning ahead of the show.
- the_af 2y ago
  Very uncomfortable to watch indeed. I wonder how the animators themselves could stand it.
- layer8 2y ago
  I had to look it up as well (I had already tried many years ago, but back then it wasn’t on YouTube yet) and I actually like it a lot artistically. There should be a way to safeguard people whom it causes issues for, while still allowing others to enjoy it.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  Link for the lazy: https://youtu.be/B4wSFjR9TMQ https://youtu.be/B4wSFjR9TMQ I didn't find it that bad, but over time I've found that I think I keep my screen's brightness a little lower than most people, because I don't find light themes to be blinding.
anotherhue 2y ago
Gee this seems like an actual useful feature to build into smart TVs.
- GaggiX 2y ago
  I was thinking about the same thing, also as an accessibility feature for your phone or software for your PC (I imagine this last one already exists).
  - mbrubeck 2y ago
    Apple's "Dim flashing lights" accessibility option is built into tvOS, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
- bitwize 2y ago
  The NES Classic is somehow able to detect rapidly flashing screens in its built-in games and temporally blur them as an anti-seizure measure. Nintendo certainly learned its lesson from the Pokémon incident.
  - jonny_eh 2y ago
    That's a better solution than putting warnings in front of every game.
    - recursive 2y ago
      The cookie banners of the 90s
      - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
        Cookie banners aren't warnings though, nor legal requirements; the legal requirement is that the user has to make an informed choice before the website is allowed to place tracking cookies. It was the websites themselves that implemented it in a hostile fashion to intentionally annoy the user into just accepting it or to complain to the EU. But the EU never mandated the big cookie banners / popups. Be very careful with who you think has caused that.
GaggiX 2y ago
For more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon The Wikipedia article also has the scene that you can watch at your own risk.
neilv 2y ago
> I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter in comparison to a few brighter shots of teenagers using their magic powers to punch each other. As a person who's never had a seizure, and who doesn't want to find out the hard way that I'm vulnerable, nor have anyone vulnerable be harmed, I get angry at filmmakers who throw in rapid strobe light scenes. (Secondarily, it even happens in non-action movies, so you can get the sudden strobe lighting when you're just watching a movie at night, in a dimmed living room, to wind down from the day before bed.) It's often a nightclub scene, but most recently it was a fight scene with gratuitous strobe light. The strobing is usually a surprise, as evidenced by the startled note to my initial curse word. An engineer solution would be to make a software filter that operates on video playback in real time. A lawyer solution would be to wait for someone's family to be devastated, then sue the perpetrator so hard that US companies start caring. A social media mob solution would be to downvote punish movies that did this, then go through the credits, and downvote all the other properties in which those people are involved. A human solution would be for people to be more considerate and responsible.
- Vecr 2y ago
  What do you mean by downvote? Has Reddit become real life? Given what people get away with for art a simple warning at the start is probably all that you need.
  - neilv 2y ago
    Downvote, loosely, such as on social media sites/apps that have up/down votes, and with minimal stars on interfaces that use those. I don't know a good term or phrase for it.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Entertainment is becoming more and more "in your face" harmful as technology evolves. From night-clubs that move high-power lasers around blinding people, concerts with sound-walls that people have to use ear protectors to get close, events with closed-loop air-conditioning that poison (and contaminate, but the trend on that is unclear) people by not taking enough outside air, to whoever invented that safer fireworks can be used close to people. And yeah, the strobo and UV lights. Governments aren't rushing to fix optional activities, so yeah, expect all of those to get worse.
shadowgovt 2y ago
The mechanics of the human optical system are absolutely wild, and the abstraction many have of "the eye just gathers pixels and sends them to the brain to interpret" is just wrong. One of the most fascinating things to me about virtual reality was the discovery that we can mitigate VR nausea by giving people temporary "tunnel vision" when they are repositioned in space without their bodies being moved in the real world. For a significant percentage of users, it's the motion in the peripheral vision that leads to the gross dissociative-body nausea, and simply cutting off that stimulus helps significantly. And for other people, it doesn't!
- crooked-v 2y ago
  Distill that down further and you get iPhone motion sickness protection, where just having dots overlaid on the phone screen that move based on the accelerometer noticeably help reduce nausea (or at least they sure do in my case).
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    I've been using an equivalent Android app called KineStop and same thing here, it definitely helps.
taylorbuley 2y ago
An interesting viewpoint. And from it, a good example of how failure can be positive -- even when it hurts.
hinkley 2y ago
I really resent the use of “unsuitable for some viewers” in story arcs. Is someone with epilepsy just supposed to watch the rest of the series with a hole in the middle of the story? Why even do that. Tell the writers to fuck right off and try again.
chriskanan 2y ago
I don't understand why in the current era we don't have videos just post-processed by the media player / TV. That seems like it would increase accessibility while not irritating folks who do not have epilepsy. I tried to search to see if something like a plugin existed for VLC, and I didn't find anything. Seems like it should be solvable at least if the media can be parsed ahead of time or with some delay for a live feed.
- MBCook 2y ago
  I’ve wondered about that too. My immediate suspicion is liability fear. If you add that feature, even if it helps a tons of people, someone will sure you when it doesn’t help them/their family member.
  - zeta0134 2y ago
    I'd just market it as a comfort feature rather than a safety one. I don't have epilepsy but I also don't particularly like strobing flashing screen effects, especially in older games. Having an option to turn them off increases my enjoyment, even if it doesn't really affect my safety.
- xahrepap 2y ago
  Similarly, I would love if videos/blurays/streams/etc had a way to adjust volumes separate from each other. So many movies have such loud music and quiet dialog. So I'm constantly adjusting the volume between different scenes.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  The software to do this doesn't exist. We have some software to assess the "epilepsy-safety" of a given piece of media, but it's proprietary and afaik not realtime. There was a bounty to make an open-source replacement, but I've lost my link. I've still got the WCAG info sheet, though: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/three-flashes-or-below-threshold https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/three-flashes-or... if anyone wants to have a go. (I'd suggest making a standalone application, plus something that works with GStreamer.)
ompogUe 2y ago
On the other side of the coin: have a kid with epilepsy. After learning about possible effects of K448/Mozart's sonata in D Major, we keep a copy of it on all our phones, and it does seem to relax him when he is having a seizure. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95922-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95922-7 Always thought it was funny that the only other song they had found (up until 2021) with a similar audio signature was from "Yanni Live at the Acropolis" Also, I found and watched the porygon episode in the last year, and it's certainly pretty intense.
- Uehreka 2y ago
  Wait what? And it’s just those two songs? Is it just difficult to study this with a wide variety of songs because you need to perform the study in an MRI machine while a patient is suffering a seizure? It seems weird that one particular song by Mozart would have this effect but not other classical music with similar arrangements or instruments.
  - whamlastxmas 2y ago
    As someone who had a partner with intense seizures for many years, it’s a super helpless feeling to see them suffer in such traumatic fashion and not be able to do anything about it. Having small tasks like playing music seems really unlikely to help but it definitely gives a care taker something to do.
  - ompogUe 2y ago
    It IS weird. Not sure if it helps with the lightening storm going on in their head, but it at least does help calm the situation. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28567682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28567682
- whamlastxmas 2y ago
  I watched the clip now and even though it’s only one or two seconds it’s wildly uncomfortable and makes me feel weird.
alexey-salmin 2y ago
> I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter in comparison to a few brighter shots of teenagers using their magic powers to punch each other. I don't get it. Why is it bad wanting to see the unsafe version for yourself? > Over 2500 fans signed a change.org petition asking Crunchyroll to take down this edited, safe, version of the series and instead upload an unedited version that was true to the original vision—even if it had the potential to cause seizures. That's not how I read the petition in question. People are asking to get access to the original that they know exist. I can't find a paragraph that demands deletion of the edited safe version. >> As fans, we implore Crunchyroll to try to acquire an uncut version of the simulcast as we are paying good money each month for the services they provide.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  This is a giant liability issue for any company. If you want the raw version, I'm sure it's out there...
  - ballenf 2y ago
    I'm skeptical unless the company has promised its shows to be safe for epileptics. Is this because it's for kids? Anyone have a source for this?
    - Uehreka 2y ago
      > unless the company has promised its shows to be safe for epileptics Many jurisdictions have regulations requiring this. It’s also not a tough criteria to fulfill. Most of the things you need to avoid are pretty obvious, and the less obvious things can be caught by automated tools. The blowback for creating or hosting epilepsy-triggering content is pretty intense. It’s not something most companies want to play around with. I don’t get why people want CrunchyRoll to host this content so bad. It feels like people demanding to be able to set off firecrackers on a wheelchair ramp. Sure it probably won’t hurt anyone most of the time, but why do people want this one specific thing so badly when they can get it somewhere else?
Waterluvian 2y ago
Is it possible to program a look ahead filter that detects too much sudden change across a window of frames and blanks it or somehow stifles it?
AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
It seems to be something of an urban legend that the original Pokemon seizure clip was subsequently rebroadcasted by Japanese news stations in the immediate aftermath of the first broadcast, thus increasing the number of impacted viewers. I can't find any source backing that claim, though, in the Wikipedia article.
siva7 2y ago
> In an ideal world, the animators in 1997 should absolutely have been aware of the risk using flashing lights could cause, but in reality, their ignorance is understandable. Cmon, just 600 out of 7 million people experienced this. You have my sympathy but we can’t take every imaginable condition into account and make it a legal requirement. Just today i’ve read that Costco called back all their butter to destroy it because they forgot to print that butter contains milk. It’s getting absurd.
- gnulinux 2y ago
  > Just today i’ve read that Costco called back all their butter to destroy it because they forgot to print that butter contains milk. Oh no! What will these multi-billion dollar companies do? Who is there to protect them? I think maybe we should create a foundation of sorts that we can all invest our money in to advocate for the rights of Costco et al. It seems like otherwise the evil government will cause too much damage on them while trying not to kill people due to allergy attacks or medical insensitivities. I can't ever imagine a situation where saving at most one or perhaps two hypothetical human lives being worth the risk of causing a butter recall. Someone should protect shareholder profits no matter the consequences, and especially if the consequences are so minor (just a few possible deaths) compared to thousands of dollars in profits shareholders can make.
  - 1317 2y ago
    if you need a warning that butter contains milk, frankly you had it coming
- zappchance 2y ago
  I understand this argument for something like an small indie studio or some YouTube channel, but I'm less likely to accept that as an excuse for a company that can easily afford to hire a11y experts.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  It would've been many more if the episode wasn't pulled though. "cmon" is minimizing the harm caused and dismissing the victims - literally children having seizures and being admitted to hospitals. Sure, some laws are absurd, and people with lactose intolerance or allergies probably do have enough common sense to avoid butter, but at the same time people need to be protected from harm.
treflop 2y ago
I think the author’s tone in the article causes more damage to the cause than good. Even if you are right, you don’t ever win the hearts and minds of anyone when your argument comes off as entitled or deserving. The mockery that OP refers to is the direct result of the tone that the author uses. Mocking the other side is how you get mockery back. Then you have to write an article about being mocked.
- yedava 2y ago
  The history of disability rights, or any rights for that matter, has been more of raising the cost of ignoring them rather than just being "nice". If they were "nice", nothing would have ever changed.
  - treflop 2y ago
    Being persuasive means understanding that there are a million more dimensions to communication than just “nice vs. assertive.” After reading OP’s article, I did not even feel “I want to like a Facebook post in support.”
LeoPanthera 2y ago
> In Japan, the stricter rules for passing the Harding Test have resulted in techniques known as “dimming” and “ghosting”. These are also used in the UK, and in fact are automatically applied to video going through the broadcast chain, in order that live broadcasts are also considered "safe". If the system detects bright flashing at any point, the white point of the video is clamped down to a lower level, until the flashing has stopped.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sleepybrett 2y ago
It's unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be a free open source version of the harding scanner that flags possible sequences that could be triggering in this way. Or probably I'm just searching wrong.
moi2388 2y ago
“ I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter” Or simply that if there is a warming, it’s your OWN choice to Watch it or not. If I get a migraine from the colour yellow, should it then be banned from television? Seems a bit weird, no?

162 points by Aissen 2y ago

[flagged]

> These include Absence Seizures, when a person stops what they are doing altogether, loses awareness but does not collapse or have visible convulsions; Myoclonic Seizures, when a person’s limbs suddenly jerk uncontrollably but they remain conscious and aware; and Tonic Clonic Seizures where a person loses consciousness, collapses, and their whole body convulses. I've witnessed something that I've never seen described anywhere – a very similar thing to an 'absence seizure', but the person is still aware and responding but seem unable to break away from the empty stare even when they try.

NeuroCoder 2y ago
There are all kinds of presentations for seizures. Ones in the frontal lobe are particularly hard to catch based on external presentation. If one is suspected of having seizures they will get a continuously monitored EEG where times associated where the seizure like state is monitored electrically. Sometimes it's a really weird presentation of a seizure or sometimes it's psychogenic. Either way it's good to have these people get some help I'd it keeps happening.
_def 2y ago
This is the first time I came across this somewhere else other than this one person I know that has this. Fascinating.
PaulHoule 2y ago
This movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker is usually panned but it has a lot of great ideas in it including a light pulse gun that reliably causes absence seizures. Probably my favorite weapon from sci-fi movies although I have a soft spot for the zap gun out of Battlefield Earth which must be like one of those ray guns that Hubbard thought people have been using to implant us with bad ideas for trillions of years. Just a bit ahead of its time it's like a 1984 movie that came out in 1981.
d1sxeyes 2y ago
That sounds like a focal aware (simple partial) seizure. There are other things that it could be but if you want to search, you could try starting with those keywords.
Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
I knew someone who would get seizures when sleep deprived and was aware during them. I only saw one once. He was sitting on a couch, clutching a pillow in front of him, and kept shoving his face into the pillow. At the time, I wasn't aware of his seizures, and asked him if he was good. He just said "I'm fine, I'm having a seizure. Just give me a minute and it will pass." Sure enough, after a minute or two, he stopped, explained the situation, and said he needed to call it a night before it happened again.

aaaronic 2y ago

I thought it was common knowledge that Pikachu was the culprit.

Aissen 2y ago
I think it is, but the article really is about giving more context around what happened, and how it impacted the industry.
hinkley 2y ago
Pikachu isn’t real but the writers are.
- the_af 2y ago
  It's probably more the animators than the writers at fault. (Though not on purpose, of course).
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Pikachu is real to me :'(

asynchronous 2y ago

I’m glad they bring up the techniques of ghosting and others to pass the Harding test, and the outcry from western audiences about it. Because personally, I find the diminishing of the animation quality really distracting during those hype scenes. I wish we could find some solution where we distribute the epileptic-safe versions alongside the unsafe ones and users could choose.

ziddoap 2y ago
>I wish we could find some solution where we distribute the epileptic-safe versions alongside the unsafe ones and users could choose. They seem to be able to distribute uncensored & censored versions for some of the more risque or violent shows, as well as various levels of censorship for different regions. So, the solution is sort of already there, there's just not enough motivation I guess.
VincentEvans 2y ago
I wonder what people think about that part of the article where the author paints people who want to see the unedited version of the show in a negative light. The author presents “but i am not epileptic” crowd as ableist and insensitive. I strongly disagree and this kind of take makes me sympathize with the author less than I would otherwise, subconsciously. I can simultaneously support the idea that we should make adjusted content for people with epilepsy, or in a more general sense - it is a sign of elevated society to strive to accommodate people with disabilities or differences, but at the same time resent the notion that accomplishing the above has to mean that asking for an unaltered experience is “wrong”. I feel that putting those two demands on the opposite sides of the scale is “wokeism”.
- the_af 2y ago
  I think the author does a fine job of pointing out you don't know whether this scene can harm you (you can be hit by it while not having had a seizure before in your life), so you cannot make an a priori judgment on whether you can safely watch the scene unedited. So playing the edited scene seems like the safest choice for everyone...

mmmlinux 2y ago

Serious question for epileptics. Are those failed LED flashing street lights an issue? I feel like they must be. Even to me they can be disorientating at night when the one flashing lamp on the exit ramp is the main light source.

monetus 2y ago
While anything could push you over the edge, it seems like 5 to 20 hz is the bitter spot that will make someone flop around. I don't have tonic-clonics anymore, but the strobes still trigger some seizure activity in me. To your question, not too bad of an issue unless you're easily triggered. Their speed is kind of off, ime.
SkeuomorphicBee 2y ago
I cant speak for epileptics, but I do suffer from photosensitive migraines (which the author briefly mentioned in the article), and in my case failing flashing LED lights are indeed an issue. Luckily for me it is not as instantaneous as a seisure, I feel it building up over many seconds, so in many situations I can just look away or close my eyes and it doesn't turn into a full blown migraine (just a kind of "hangover" in my head).
_def 2y ago
I'm not epilectic but I'm always super annoyed when someone walks their bicycle and the led front light keeps pulsing in bright rapid flashes because of the dynamo
- isoprophlex 2y ago
  God yes. Primo headache material. Seems so lazy too, to design a light that goes full blast as soon as there is enough voltage from the dynamo. Stick a capacitor in there for chrissakes!
- jandrese 2y ago
  I don't see that, but I do see a fair bit of ultra-bright LEDs set to strobe mode because some study somewhere said that was the most visible to vehicles. Now I get blinded and dazzled by both oncoming and leading bikes. I don't know why bike headlight manufacturers are so damn insistent on improving safety by blinding everybody else in the vicinity. Why do so few bike headlights have a "low beam" mode? Instead its 1,000,000 lumens in a 180 degree cone turning night into day but burning out the retinas of everyone else on the trail.

outworlder 2y ago

> Unlike with “Electric Soldier Porygon” the movie continued to be shown unedited in American cinemas throughout its entire run. Since the movie failed to pass the Harding Test, an alternative cut had to be shown in the UK, Ireland, and Japan. This meant that for at least two months of its theatrical run, Pixar had a safe cut they could show to English speaking American audiences and yet still chose to have the unsafe version in US cinemas. Exhibit A - companies will only ever do anything if they are forced to, even if what they are doing is harmful and compliance is relatively easy.

meltyness 2y ago
An optimistic take is that the organization was simply too incompetent to identify and assess the financial risk of injuring someone.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Aeolun 2y ago
I think they correctly judged that the general public wouldn’t care one way or the other, whereas in Japan they knew they would be publicly crucified if they kept it going.

isoprophlex 2y ago

Okay strong "forbidden fruit" vibes here; I had the strongest compulsion to look up that scene on youtube. It's very unpleasant to watch, at least to me. No wonder this gave people seizures.

Jaxan 2y ago
It’s crazy: full frames with a solid blue and red alternating. To me also very unpleasant, but an effect I haven’t seen before.
- MrLeap 2y ago
  I've recently noticed reminiscent effects in Arcane. They have some vfx that quickly alternate between yellow and magenta or yellow and blue. Not full frame. I think they look rather striking. It's a shame that kind of thing is a danger to some.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Yeah the person I watched the newest episodes said as much as well, she's quite sensitive to these things. That said, that show does have the warning ahead of the show.
the_af 2y ago
Very uncomfortable to watch indeed. I wonder how the animators themselves could stand it.
layer8 2y ago
I had to look it up as well (I had already tried many years ago, but back then it wasn’t on YouTube yet) and I actually like it a lot artistically. There should be a way to safeguard people whom it causes issues for, while still allowing others to enjoy it.
Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
Link for the lazy: https://youtu.be/B4wSFjR9TMQ https://youtu.be/B4wSFjR9TMQ I didn't find it that bad, but over time I've found that I think I keep my screen's brightness a little lower than most people, because I don't find light themes to be blinding.

anotherhue 2y ago

Gee this seems like an actual useful feature to build into smart TVs.

GaggiX 2y ago
I was thinking about the same thing, also as an accessibility feature for your phone or software for your PC (I imagine this last one already exists).
- mbrubeck 2y ago
  Apple's "Dim flashing lights" accessibility option is built into tvOS, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
bitwize 2y ago
The NES Classic is somehow able to detect rapidly flashing screens in its built-in games and temporally blur them as an anti-seizure measure. Nintendo certainly learned its lesson from the Pokémon incident.
- jonny_eh 2y ago
  That's a better solution than putting warnings in front of every game.
  - recursive 2y ago
    The cookie banners of the 90s
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      Cookie banners aren't warnings though, nor legal requirements; the legal requirement is that the user has to make an informed choice before the website is allowed to place tracking cookies. It was the websites themselves that implemented it in a hostile fashion to intentionally annoy the user into just accepting it or to complain to the EU. But the EU never mandated the big cookie banners / popups. Be very careful with who you think has caused that.

GaggiX 2y ago

For more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon The Wikipedia article also has the scene that you can watch at your own risk.

neilv 2y ago

> I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter in comparison to a few brighter shots of teenagers using their magic powers to punch each other. As a person who's never had a seizure, and who doesn't want to find out the hard way that I'm vulnerable, nor have anyone vulnerable be harmed, I get angry at filmmakers who throw in rapid strobe light scenes. (Secondarily, it even happens in non-action movies, so you can get the sudden strobe lighting when you're just watching a movie at night, in a dimmed living room, to wind down from the day before bed.) It's often a nightclub scene, but most recently it was a fight scene with gratuitous strobe light. The strobing is usually a surprise, as evidenced by the startled note to my initial curse word. An engineer solution would be to make a software filter that operates on video playback in real time. A lawyer solution would be to wait for someone's family to be devastated, then sue the perpetrator so hard that US companies start caring. A social media mob solution would be to downvote punish movies that did this, then go through the credits, and downvote all the other properties in which those people are involved. A human solution would be for people to be more considerate and responsible.

Vecr 2y ago
What do you mean by downvote? Has Reddit become real life? Given what people get away with for art a simple warning at the start is probably all that you need.
- neilv 2y ago
  Downvote, loosely, such as on social media sites/apps that have up/down votes, and with minimal stars on interfaces that use those. I don't know a good term or phrase for it.
marcosdumay 2y ago
Entertainment is becoming more and more "in your face" harmful as technology evolves. From night-clubs that move high-power lasers around blinding people, concerts with sound-walls that people have to use ear protectors to get close, events with closed-loop air-conditioning that poison (and contaminate, but the trend on that is unclear) people by not taking enough outside air, to whoever invented that safer fireworks can be used close to people. And yeah, the strobo and UV lights. Governments aren't rushing to fix optional activities, so yeah, expect all of those to get worse.

shadowgovt 2y ago

The mechanics of the human optical system are absolutely wild, and the abstraction many have of "the eye just gathers pixels and sends them to the brain to interpret" is just wrong. One of the most fascinating things to me about virtual reality was the discovery that we can mitigate VR nausea by giving people temporary "tunnel vision" when they are repositioned in space without their bodies being moved in the real world. For a significant percentage of users, it's the motion in the peripheral vision that leads to the gross dissociative-body nausea, and simply cutting off that stimulus helps significantly. And for other people, it doesn't!

crooked-v 2y ago
Distill that down further and you get iPhone motion sickness protection, where just having dots overlaid on the phone screen that move based on the accelerometer noticeably help reduce nausea (or at least they sure do in my case).
- spondylosaurus 2y ago
  I've been using an equivalent Android app called KineStop and same thing here, it definitely helps.

taylorbuley 2y ago

An interesting viewpoint. And from it, a good example of how failure can be positive -- even when it hurts.

hinkley 2y ago

I really resent the use of “unsuitable for some viewers” in story arcs. Is someone with epilepsy just supposed to watch the rest of the series with a hole in the middle of the story? Why even do that. Tell the writers to fuck right off and try again.

chriskanan 2y ago

I don't understand why in the current era we don't have videos just post-processed by the media player / TV. That seems like it would increase accessibility while not irritating folks who do not have epilepsy. I tried to search to see if something like a plugin existed for VLC, and I didn't find anything. Seems like it should be solvable at least if the media can be parsed ahead of time or with some delay for a live feed.

MBCook 2y ago
I’ve wondered about that too. My immediate suspicion is liability fear. If you add that feature, even if it helps a tons of people, someone will sure you when it doesn’t help them/their family member.
- zeta0134 2y ago
  I'd just market it as a comfort feature rather than a safety one. I don't have epilepsy but I also don't particularly like strobing flashing screen effects, especially in older games. Having an option to turn them off increases my enjoyment, even if it doesn't really affect my safety.
xahrepap 2y ago
Similarly, I would love if videos/blurays/streams/etc had a way to adjust volumes separate from each other. So many movies have such loud music and quiet dialog. So I'm constantly adjusting the volume between different scenes.
wizzwizz4 2y ago
The software to do this doesn't exist. We have some software to assess the "epilepsy-safety" of a given piece of media, but it's proprietary and afaik not realtime. There was a bounty to make an open-source replacement, but I've lost my link. I've still got the WCAG info sheet, though: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/three-flashes-or-below-threshold https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/three-flashes-or... if anyone wants to have a go. (I'd suggest making a standalone application, plus something that works with GStreamer.)

ompogUe 2y ago

On the other side of the coin: have a kid with epilepsy. After learning about possible effects of K448/Mozart's sonata in D Major, we keep a copy of it on all our phones, and it does seem to relax him when he is having a seizure. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95922-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95922-7 Always thought it was funny that the only other song they had found (up until 2021) with a similar audio signature was from "Yanni Live at the Acropolis" Also, I found and watched the porygon episode in the last year, and it's certainly pretty intense.

Uehreka 2y ago
Wait what? And it’s just those two songs? Is it just difficult to study this with a wide variety of songs because you need to perform the study in an MRI machine while a patient is suffering a seizure? It seems weird that one particular song by Mozart would have this effect but not other classical music with similar arrangements or instruments.
- whamlastxmas 2y ago
  As someone who had a partner with intense seizures for many years, it’s a super helpless feeling to see them suffer in such traumatic fashion and not be able to do anything about it. Having small tasks like playing music seems really unlikely to help but it definitely gives a care taker something to do.
- ompogUe 2y ago
  It IS weird. Not sure if it helps with the lightening storm going on in their head, but it at least does help calm the situation. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28567682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28567682
whamlastxmas 2y ago
I watched the clip now and even though it’s only one or two seconds it’s wildly uncomfortable and makes me feel weird.

alexey-salmin 2y ago

> I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter in comparison to a few brighter shots of teenagers using their magic powers to punch each other. I don't get it. Why is it bad wanting to see the unsafe version for yourself? > Over 2500 fans signed a change.org petition asking Crunchyroll to take down this edited, safe, version of the series and instead upload an unedited version that was true to the original vision—even if it had the potential to cause seizures. That's not how I read the petition in question. People are asking to get access to the original that they know exist. I can't find a paragraph that demands deletion of the edited safe version. >> As fans, we implore Crunchyroll to try to acquire an uncut version of the simulcast as we are paying good money each month for the services they provide.

999900000999 2y ago
This is a giant liability issue for any company. If you want the raw version, I'm sure it's out there...
- ballenf 2y ago
  I'm skeptical unless the company has promised its shows to be safe for epileptics. Is this because it's for kids? Anyone have a source for this?
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    > unless the company has promised its shows to be safe for epileptics Many jurisdictions have regulations requiring this. It’s also not a tough criteria to fulfill. Most of the things you need to avoid are pretty obvious, and the less obvious things can be caught by automated tools. The blowback for creating or hosting epilepsy-triggering content is pretty intense. It’s not something most companies want to play around with. I don’t get why people want CrunchyRoll to host this content so bad. It feels like people demanding to be able to set off firecrackers on a wheelchair ramp. Sure it probably won’t hurt anyone most of the time, but why do people want this one specific thing so badly when they can get it somewhere else?

Waterluvian 2y ago

Is it possible to program a look ahead filter that detects too much sudden change across a window of frames and blanks it or somehow stifles it?

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago

It seems to be something of an urban legend that the original Pokemon seizure clip was subsequently rebroadcasted by Japanese news stations in the immediate aftermath of the first broadcast, thus increasing the number of impacted viewers. I can't find any source backing that claim, though, in the Wikipedia article.

siva7 2y ago

> In an ideal world, the animators in 1997 should absolutely have been aware of the risk using flashing lights could cause, but in reality, their ignorance is understandable. Cmon, just 600 out of 7 million people experienced this. You have my sympathy but we can’t take every imaginable condition into account and make it a legal requirement. Just today i’ve read that Costco called back all their butter to destroy it because they forgot to print that butter contains milk. It’s getting absurd.

gnulinux 2y ago
> Just today i’ve read that Costco called back all their butter to destroy it because they forgot to print that butter contains milk. Oh no! What will these multi-billion dollar companies do? Who is there to protect them? I think maybe we should create a foundation of sorts that we can all invest our money in to advocate for the rights of Costco et al. It seems like otherwise the evil government will cause too much damage on them while trying not to kill people due to allergy attacks or medical insensitivities. I can't ever imagine a situation where saving at most one or perhaps two hypothetical human lives being worth the risk of causing a butter recall. Someone should protect shareholder profits no matter the consequences, and especially if the consequences are so minor (just a few possible deaths) compared to thousands of dollars in profits shareholders can make.
- 1317 2y ago
  if you need a warning that butter contains milk, frankly you had it coming
zappchance 2y ago
I understand this argument for something like an small indie studio or some YouTube channel, but I'm less likely to accept that as an excuse for a company that can easily afford to hire a11y experts.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
It would've been many more if the episode wasn't pulled though. "cmon" is minimizing the harm caused and dismissing the victims - literally children having seizures and being admitted to hospitals. Sure, some laws are absurd, and people with lactose intolerance or allergies probably do have enough common sense to avoid butter, but at the same time people need to be protected from harm.

treflop 2y ago

I think the author’s tone in the article causes more damage to the cause than good. Even if you are right, you don’t ever win the hearts and minds of anyone when your argument comes off as entitled or deserving. The mockery that OP refers to is the direct result of the tone that the author uses. Mocking the other side is how you get mockery back. Then you have to write an article about being mocked.

yedava 2y ago
The history of disability rights, or any rights for that matter, has been more of raising the cost of ignoring them rather than just being "nice". If they were "nice", nothing would have ever changed.
- treflop 2y ago
  Being persuasive means understanding that there are a million more dimensions to communication than just “nice vs. assertive.” After reading OP’s article, I did not even feel “I want to like a Facebook post in support.”

LeoPanthera 2y ago

> In Japan, the stricter rules for passing the Harding Test have resulted in techniques known as “dimming” and “ghosting”. These are also used in the UK, and in fact are automatically applied to video going through the broadcast chain, in order that live broadcasts are also considered "safe". If the system detects bright flashing at any point, the white point of the video is clamped down to a lower level, until the flashing has stopped.

deleted 2y ago

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sleepybrett 2y ago

It's unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be a free open source version of the harding scanner that flags possible sequences that could be triggering in this way. Or probably I'm just searching wrong.

moi2388 2y ago

“ I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter” Or simply that if there is a warming, it’s your OWN choice to Watch it or not. If I get a migraine from the colour yellow, should it then be banned from television? Seems a bit weird, no?