A blind TikTok user named Toby, known as @blindtobes, posted a video explaining how people with visual impairments express emotions through facial expressions. Toby shared that, due to his limited vision as a child, he never learned to recognize or imitate facial expressions.
He asked, “Do blind people understand what emotions are?” Although he had partial vision in his youth, it wasn’t clear enough to discern facial cues, so he didn’t pick up on them. Now, he expresses emotions naturally only when he genuinely feels them, and in the video, he decided to try some expressions out.
Toby experimented with expressions like “perplexed,” “shocked,” and “seductive,” explaining that to make these faces, he has to think of something that brings out the specific feeling. For instance, to look perplexed, he thought about mirrors and asked himself, “How are they so shiny?”
When he tried to show anger, he admitted that instead of looking angry, he just “starts twitching.”