In the Aspie Troper Discord (link in my sig), 6 people expressed interest in a "movie night", where we'd watch The Accountant in a chatroom, and talk about the movie and its portrayal of autism in the process. The movie, btw, is about an assassin on the autism spectrum who also happens to be an accountant as his day job. It has its aspects I really like, and its aspects that some people find problematic.
Anyway, the idea is to watch the movie and chat about it.
When I mentioned this to the guy who runs the Troper Coven movie group (link to the thread here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13456679170A21340100&page=783
), he asked me, why not just invite everyone to his group and have his group host the movie?
After chatting on the Aspie Troper Discord channel, it ultimately seemed like Saturday, December 9, at 8pm US Eastern time was the time that worked out for the most people. The Synchtube/Cytube Troper Coven will host the movie (I'm a moderator there), and we can jump in. Anyone is able to join at any time. Even if you were unaware of the movie night because you weren't in the Discord channel, you can still join.
A couple things.
The website the movie will be hosted at is here: https://cytu.be/r/TroperCoven - Anyone can hop in and watch whatever is being shown. At any time, even when they're not hosting our movie night.
The movie will run off of Google Drive, and a plugin is needed in order to be able to view it. You must get the plugin here: https://cytu.be/google_drive_userscript
EDIT: Because of the movie's length, it will instead be starting at 7:30pm US Eastern Time, and again, it's still on Saturday, December 9.
Remember, anyone is allowed to join even if you never mentioned it ahead of time. Stop on in next weekend and check it out!
edited 2nd Dec '17 10:57:07 AM by BonsaiForest
MOVIE NIGHT STARTS NOW. The movie itself beings in a half hour, but the pre-show starts now. It's at https://cytu.be/r/TroperCoven
Since this is a troper coven and not a serious discussion thread, that means we can talk about whatever, right?
Here's a list of all the strange dreams I had. That I was able to remember upon waking up, and quickly get to type up.
When we did our movie night with The Accountant, 6 people expressed interest. Then 2 said they couldn't make it, and on the night itself, 2 more didn't show up, leaving 2 left. (The group was also combined with the main troper movie group, so there were other people watching it with us as well.)
I'm gonna try again with another movie. Please Stand By. I saw it and I liked it, and I'd love to share it with anyone who'd like to see it. We'd have to find a time that could work for a bunch of us. Anyone interested?
I'd say yes, but I can't guarantee I'll remember.
We'd have to find a good time for this movie as well. It would be great if you could come.
Editorial on how the average age of death for autistics is 36, and the reasons why. Besides health problems and children dying of drowning after wandering away from home, there's also the sheer stress autism takes on a person.
All that hard work to make other people more comfortable around me feels more and more pointless. I appreciate that I have people in my life who have assured me that I can just be myself, but unlearning almost 36 years of shitty coping mechanisms and performances also takes a buttload of work.
In the video of my childhood, I'm told to stop my imagination play (at age 8) and to look people in the eye (at age 9).
Tell us we don’t bore you. Tell us we don’t drain you. Look at us somewhere other than the eyes — we’re really not comfortable with eye contact and are tired of being forced to make it for your benefit — and tell us that we deserve to be alive.
About the concept of "assigned friends", where people are asked to sit with the unpopular, uncool, or disabled kids at school, here are three very different thoughts on it:
We deliberately did not assign any friendships but have encouraged interactions through play. The comment I hear most often from our buddies about why they choose to come is because “it is fun”. We have lots of break out spaces so our students can safely opt out at any time if they are feeling stressed or overwhelmed. More and more students from both groups are finding ways to have fun together. It’s been a pleasure to watch as relationships slowly develop.
What do you think of the "assigned friends" concept? My online friend said that when she was a kid, her parents tried to get her to be friends with this other autistic kid (whose autism was more overtly obvious than hers), and they were friends for a while, until he naturally drifted away. It wasn't a natural friendship that developed on its own, and it fizzled out on its own.
Do you think the concept of "assigned friends" harms natural friendships? Do you think it helps? Do you think that for some people, who otherwise wouldn't have any friends at all, it's at least preferable to nothing?
Inconvenience
The main problem is in the very definition of autism. I always feel that some people diagnosed as autistic are actually less autistic than some people that aren't, and our solipsistic society does actually discourage communication and cognizance of friendship-links, so it is mostly helpful for social people to try to put less socially apt people together if they feel those people are connected. However, assigning them at random tends to be harmful: assigning friends is as harmful as the ratio between similar or compatible attributes to other attributes, so, as harmful as the lack of effort put into analyzing the pairing. But the "tends to" is significant, as people have a lot more hidden tastes and attributes than visible ones. So trying to introduce an autistic person to 2 to 4 friends is much more efficient as one or two may be interesting to her.
Another important things is that, when someone is alone, autistic or not, sometimes that someone needs to understand the need for otherkind, who are the only ones that can dispense love, and the only ones who can make that someone live, as total autonomy is an illusion. In other words, understanding the ramifications and consequences of being autistic, consciously or not, may or will allow for an healing process to happen. I think that happened for me when I was 12-13 by simply watching Amélie alongside an educatrix and another mentally-ill girl. Then I started hugging girls and making friends along them, then some years later started feeling others' emotions.
Autists do not get natural urges for being interested in others when they "should" be (there's where most of the handicap is), but logical thought still apply to them, so if they discover a logical path to be interested in others, then they will get interested in others and it will feel like some kind of liberation to them, and from the "limits" previously imposed by the handicap 
.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Also, to heal a mind and soul, one shouldn't demolish it's house, nor its windows. So trying to destroy ones' imaginary world and forcing eye contact is not good at all. Good idea to resist against such intrusion !
From my perspective, to get rid of the eye contact problem, I feel I should work intimately with someone I'd trust enough to look in the eye without feeling bad, so to begin that work and search for an answer to the question of eye contact, I'd need to begin by being a friend to that someone. So that someone, like all other people I interact with, will just have to accept that quirk.
The primary thing is that they were bonding, building a bond between the two of them. And it was simply the means to do it was to be nasty to Frank. And then I was like, oh, maybe that's what these kids were doing when they were bullying me.
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Sorry for the wall of text !
I too can't imagine how allistics view the world. It's utterly alien to me. Things like loving wild parties, getting really into subcultures like music subcultures (whereas for autistics, it tends to be about the music itself, not the subculture surrounding it), adapting societal beliefs instantly like "men who have lots of sex are heroes but women who have lots of sex are sluts" just because... because! Yeah, allism is totally alien thinking to me.
Just wanted to pass this on. This was said in reference to someone saying that they can't even imagine how non-autistics (allistics) think.
If sand in your shoes makes you uncomfortable, then you're just like everyone else. If sand in your shoes makes you spasm and affects your ability to function, you might be autistic.
If eye contact is a "weird" concept that you don't quite understand, then it's not a big deal. If eye contact is something that you have physical difficulty maintaining and it impairs your ability to hold a conversation, then you might have autism.
If you think a social custom doesn't make sense and is inconvenient, then who cares. If a normal social custom that the vast majority of your peers find no difficulty navigating consistently trips you up and causes you grief and anxiety, then you might be autistic.
From Reddit.
Indeed, people thinking they're autistic because they're nerds with poor social skills, I've heard of that happening. And I've heard of autistics having no idea that they have it, because they don't fit the stereotype, and they grow up for the longest time not knowing why they're constantly socially rejected. It can go in either direction.
Jer gets all the girls
I actually spent the longest time refusing to call myself autistic. I'd accept Asperger's used on me, but not Autistic. The reason being the only kid I knew who people used the autistic label for growing up was, and I'm afraid I don't know how to phrase this kindly, very stereotypically autistic. He didn't communicate with others at all, he yelled randomly, he did all the things that alienate you from other kids. So tactless kiddo me saw him and heard the word and went "Like hell that's me!" and refused to let the term be used to describe me.
I realise now this wasn't particularly kind to him, and it wasn't very helpful for me either. If I had accepted the label a lot earlier, it probably would've helped my understand why I do a lot of the things I do.
Everybody's all "Jerry's old and feeble" till they see him run down a skyscraper and hijack a helicopter mid-flight.
I know what you mean. In high school, there was this girl who was very much "more autistic" than me. In fact, at the time, I knew very little about what autism was, so I actually failed to see the connection between my condition and her behaviors, which were not subtle.
What were the differences and similarities between you and this other autistic kid you knew?
Jer gets all the girls
It was a long time ago, so it's hard to remember clearly. I know some thjngs were similar (lack of eye contact, some degree of difficulty communicating with others) while other things were very different.
Everybody's all "Jerry's old and feeble" till they see him run down a skyscraper and hijack a helicopter mid-flight.
Inconvenience
It's really weird and oddly inspiring that we are one of the few Troper Covens with more or less frequent updates .
Tomorrow movie for the movie group is my pick. It's Please Stand By. Dakota Fanning plays the role of an autistic Trekkie who travels across California to hand-deliver her fan script to Paramount Pictures.
If anyone here would like to watch it, it's at 8pm US Eastern time, tomorrow (Saturday US time).
It'll be showing at https://cytu.be/r/TroperCoven
Sorry for the short notice, but I didn't realize it would be chosen for tomorrow's movie until today!
Use of certain social strategies linked to anxiety in autism
In short, camouflaging - pretending to be normal by mimicking other people's behaviors - causes anxiety and stress.
What's more, the better their social mimicry, the higher their IQ, the better their executive function, and the higher their anxiety levels. This seems to indicate that the anxiety is coming from the social mimicry, whereas the ability to engage in high quality social mimicry comes from greater intelligence. At least, that's how I interpret this data.
“If you can bring that anxiety down, you give people the opportunity to compensate more effectively because they’re not going through the stress,” says David Skuse, professor of behavioral and brain sciences at University College London, who was not involved in the research. “That’s where I see the scope for intervention.”
And now there's an article saying that autistic people are bad at detecting hints of lying. Like shiftiness or inexact answers. You know, like autistics themselves exhibit naturally.
For goodness sakes, we're the kind of people who look at evidence instead of body language and language hints, but this is meant to be a bad thing.
Research Discovers Drug That May Help Children With Autism
This looks like it could be a legit breakthrough.
Dr. Naviaux shared, “Children began to talk sometimes for the first time in sentences in their life.”
Boys who got Suramin had autism severity scores drop from eight-point-six to seven, the lowest point on the spectrum. They improved social, language and fine motor skills, and found relief from repetitive motions and fragmented sleep.
They went from low functioning to Aspie level? That sounds amazing. It makes me wonder if autism is something that is essentially always there, and additional factors affect severity level. I could be wrong, though.
The article also states that it'll take three years for them to be able to begin the final trials. (Currently, they're planning to test for safety.)
fnich my beloved
Hey. I was diagnosed with Asperger's at a young age and informed of it at age nine. Last year I took an autism screening test and no longer met the criteria for diagnosis, but I still don't feel neurotypical. My condition mostly manifests in having a hard time putting thoughts and feelings into words, social anxiety (on- and off-line), a photographic memory of random things, and storing large amounts of useless trivia about animals and Pokemon. My principal special interests (although I honestly have never liked that term; it always sounded childish to me, like "Trains are little Timmy's special interest, right, Timmy?") are: animals and zoology (especially birds), prehistoric life, Pokémon, and Free!.
They/them or she/her
Autism has been known to be undiagnosed in people who have learned how to fake the appearance of being "neurotypical". Like, they learned to stifle their need to stim, how to mimic the social behaviors others engage in at the seemingly appropriate times, how to fake the appearance of eye contact or make just enough of it to not upset people, etc.
So you've been undiagnosed? Can I ask a few questions?
- When you socially interact, does a lot of it feel artificial, like you're just going through the motions or saying the right things at the right times without actually feeling any of what you're saying? (I'm not good at explaining what I mean, but I hope I'm getting the idea across. Also, some autistics don't bother to try to fake "normality" and thus for that reason don't have this problem.
- Does looking people in the eye feel weird and unnatural to you? Like you really don't want to do it, or you just feel like you have to look away?
- Are your senses seemingly unusually sensitive? (I can understand not knowing if that's the case. Like, as a kid, I never knew that the reason I disliked bright sunny summer days and preferred overcast days was due to being more sensitive to the light and heat compared to most people.
- Do you have very few interests, and find it very hard to become interested in new things?
- Are there a lot of things that seem obvious to everyone else, but somehow not to you? (Usually social things, or "common sense".)
- Do you find it strange and uncomfortable if people do things like hug you or put their hand on your shoulder?
I've heard of people falsely diagnosed with autism because some traits were misinterpreted. Like someone who's a math prodigy who was socially behind - she's now super social and very popular. She said she never had limited interests, abnormal sensitivity to light/sound/touch/etc., difficulty with eye contact, etc., and now thinks she was misdiagnosed (as do I).
But there are also articles of people who were diagnosed with autism but later lost the diagnosis because they no longer met the visible criteria, due to having learned good social mimicry behaviors. A closer look at these people reveals they still very much have autism, but have learned coping skills, or are struggling to appear "normal". Like one boy who learned to hide his stimming with his hands by shoving them in his pockets. Look, no stimming! Totally doesn't have autism! Or another boy whose "special interest" is sports, and is obsessed with sports but unable to find interest in much else. Hey, a "normal" interest! Totally doesn't have autism! Etc.
Anyway, I'm saying either you were misdiagnosed, or you still have it but the test claiming you don't is flawed.
Basically this. If you were already diagnosed with autism, chances are you've still got it, despite what the doctors say. If I were to get a diagnosis today, they might actually say I no longer have autism, purely on the grounds of how high functioning I've become. But even though I've gotten a lot better at a lot of things, underneath that, I know I'm still an aspie. Because as high-functioning as you can get, if you ever had any symptoms of autism, they never really go away. They just get a lot less obvious. And from the sound of things, you still have them to some extent. And if you do, that means for better or worse, you probably still have autism.
fnich my beloved
and That's closer to what I was trying to say. I'm sorry for being unclear.
Where Autistic Workers Thrive. The headline makes it sound like some kind of degrading sheltered workshop, but nope. It's about companies in the real world, including Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, etc. hiring autistics due to, well, autism coming with skills.
Hans Asperger (yes I know he's a flawed human, but bear with me) wasn't kidding when he called autism a "combination of intelligence and disability that can't be separated".
“Our autistic employees achieve, on average, 48% to 140% more work than their typical colleagues, depending on the roles,” says James Mahoney, executive director and head of Autism at Work at Chase. “They are highly focused and less distracted by social interactions.
There’s talent here that nobody’s going after.”
Yeah, I'd say that chatting tends to not be our thing. :P
Managers are trained on how to work with the employees, who may not pick up on social cues and might start talking at inappropriate moments. Lessons include learning to be literal in descriptions, to give concise feedback, and to avoid asking open-ended questions.
Whaaaaaaaat? An autistic vice president?! That sounds too good to be true, but I can see an autistic person having the skills to be in that position should they reach it. Wow. This is a company that's truly trying to use genuine autistic talent. I'm impressed.
Now this needs to become more common. It's growing slowly, but it looks as if some companies have figured out how to do it right.
A Star Wars Nerd
Fellow tropers, I'm here to ask for a bit of advice.
I'm still feeling my way through this whole autism thing, wasn't diagnosed until my 20s. But I've come to realize that my main method of stimming is via picking, biting, and generally destroying my nails and the skin around them, sometimes to the point of bleeding. I'd really like to stop, but, well, it's my main stim thing and it stresses me out to not do it. Because of the nature of my job, doing something like chewing gum isn't an option.
Has anyone ever tried to change the way they stim? Is there any good way to do it beyond "just stop"? Any suggestions for something to replace this particular behavior with?
Yup. I've talked to people where I have shared interests in common, but I just don't "click" at all. One might think that I would. But it just doesn't work that way.
I can talk to my online friend about a lot of things, but when it comes to shared interests, there's like... almost nothing. And yet, I feel closer to her than I had to anyone else before.