General Autism Discussion

He once told me that he asked a woman at work something really inappropriate about women's bathroom habits (either farting or crapping, I dunno), and told me that the woman said he was very strange.

I'm guessing he was given a job specifically because he was so obviously disabled.

Okay, here's a partial transcript of a chat with him. I'll censor out our names of course. He's red, I'm green.

Note that this was back when he still actually responded to what I said. His behavior got increasingly bad and out of control. This is also a partial transcript; there was also an instance where he used an example of bathroom humor in a comedy movie as proof that bathroom talk was socially acceptable. I pointed out that it was done in the movie to be funny, not because it's an actual example of normal social interaction.

And remember, this guy is an adult.

edited 5th Sep '17 3:36:11 PM by BonsaiForest

"Uplifted Dolphins are a subspecies of humanity"

wat

Are you sure that guy wasn't just a really persistent troll?

That's a good question. If so, he was persistent for months, and his behavior went gradually over time from bad to really bad. I think this is the real deal, honestly. Someone with truly abominable social skills who had serious problems.

More of the transcript:

If you're wondering how I met this person, a few years ago, I was feeling very depressed about my inability to connect with most people, and I decided to browse Steam's groups to see if there was an autism/Aspergers related one. I found one, and I happened to pick this guy at random (along with other people, who were basically just regular people by comparison, though I didn't connect with any of them). I had no idea what kind of ride I was in for!

Also, note the bolded part. This guy is using a comedic scene from a comedy as "proof" that talking about urine and the like is socially acceptable. "Explain that." Yeah, the explanation for Naked Gun having a scene where someone pees and unknowingly broadcasts it where others can hear it, is that it's supposed to be funny. Because he doesn't know that other people can hear it, and it's embarrassing, specifically because you're not supposed to do that sort of thing around other people.

I mean, it's totally obvious to everyone in this thread, but this guy is soooo awful at social skills that he fails to recognize something basic like this, despite being a frigging adult. I feel awful for him, but like I said, later on his behavior got worse and he started ignoring me (unless I used profanity, at which point he'd complain).

edited 5th Sep '17 4:16:13 PM by BonsaiForest

I think the idea was that legally it was easier to just classify fully sapient and sentient dolphins as a branch of humanity than to create a whole new category. Especially since there was some human DNA in the mix, apparently. And then that resulted in two other groups being classified as subspecies. One was autistic people and I don't remember the other.

I wish I could remember what book that was.

edited 5th Sep '17 5:12:43 PM by Zendervai

The guy clearly has something wrong with him, but there are a number of disorders that can explain such horrible social skills, including ones that might explain a person thinking that it's okay to pretend that they are autistic as an excuse for their behaviour, or fake absurd behaviour for 'comedy'.

Even if they are diagnosed with autism that doesn't mean they don't also have undiagnosed issues, such a narcissism or even sociopathic tendencies.

In the end one simply can't be definitive about folks you only know online, that's simply part of how things are.

edited 5th Sep '17 8:21:06 PM by Silasw

Yeah, I know false diagnoses can occur when one condition resembles another.

That guy was soooo out there, that he definitely has major issues, and I don't know what they could be.

From a review of Queens of Geek, a novel written by an autistic female author. A book that doesn't go the stereotype route when it comes to special interests - because it's written by someone who's not a stereotype herself.

A book that sends the message that the autistic doesn't need to be forced to change and act normal, but that they can (and should) be accepted for who they are!

And there's also a contrast between how autistics are often seen as rude, and how they actually do tend to care about people:

edited 7th Sep '17 8:10:37 AM by BonsaiForest

I just wanted to share that interesting quote from this.

An example of an alternative type of relationship?

I'm pretty sure that the concept of being together in each other's presence while doing ones own thing and enjoying it isn't particularly foreign to non-autistic people.

Admittedly it's probably more common amongst couples who live together, which will trend towards people in serious long term relationships.

Exactly. That sounded like something that could easily be a romantic relationship. The article made it seem like it was "alternative".

Makes you wonder what they think a romantic relationship even is.

&I'd say watching a movie in theater, shopping in a mall, having some lunch while chit-chatting in a restaurant & walk around in a park while holding hands. These are stereotypical couple activities, at least in my country.

Any of you feel disconnected from most people? My friend told me that she does. I do too. It really sucks.

I don't even feel a strong connection with most of my family. I feel connection to my friend, and my niece and nephew, and that's mostly it. I feel almost as if I'm not even the same species as most humans.

That's not that uncommon even for people who aren't on the spectrum. Most people don't feel a deep connection with more than a handful of people, if that and feeling all alone when those people aren't directly nearby, even in a crowd of other people, is something pretty much everyone experiences.

Likewise feeling like most other people are practically a different species is pretty much both the basis for all prejudice and a very normal defence mechanism resulting from the fact that we simply do not have the emotional energy to spend on really caring about, understanding or identifying with most of our 7 Billion-ish fellow humans on a personal level.

Being aware of this and knowing, on an intellectual level, that one's feelings of being alone or feeling like a different species aren't true is, on the whole, a heck of a lot more clarity than most people ever achieve.

I do. I can handle it because most of the time I don't particularly care. I need some level of human interaction, but that level is pretty low.

I'm pretty asocial, I guess.

I think that's probably a given. It's probably why I can't participate in fandoms at large (I'm far less active in the Sonic community than I used to be, I have next to nothing in common with most anime fans, the Steven Universe fandom just generally kind of annoys me, and I jumped ship from Ponies because the feedback loop of toxicity became too much to handle).

That's the same thing with me.

Sheldon Cooper is a bit of a contentious figure. Some Aspies love him, some hate him.

Here's a mother of an autistic, who hates Sheldon Cooper. She says he represents "cute autism".

She says that Young Sheldon is even worse.

I've heard conflicting opinions on Atypical, but an Aspie I know said that she loves the show and finds it funny, and that she knows people in real life just like the main character. And I think the dark side of autism should be shown. And the positive side also, of course.

edited 10th Sep '17 6:25:24 PM by BonsaiForest

Yes. Most people have difficulty making deep emotional connections these days I guess, but I have trouble making even more superficial ones with most IRL people.

A quote I gotta share. Saw this on a Reddit thread:

I thought autistics had a hard time with language in general? This really needs to be looked into more.

Seriously, though, 'most people' (i.e. pretty much everyone through history) have always had difficulty making deep emotional connections with more than a handful of people if that. This is not really new and it's true even for NT people.

What separates most NT people and most Autists is that we often either have issues with or simply don't bother with the superficial ones and we tend to make more a distinction between how we act towards our superficial connections and our deep emotional friends than many NT people do.

And I think this is really important to keep in mind. Because it's easy to feel inadequate if you don't realize that NT people don't really have more friends, they just treat their close friends and their loose acquaintances largely the same when they're all together.

I was thinking of something.

I've noticed that autistic self advocates tend to complain about TV shows and movies that don't portray autism positively enough. While parents of autistics (particularly the more disabled ones) tend to complain that it's portrayed too positively.

Both sides complain that the shows are too unrealistic, of course.

But their goals seem very different. Self advocates seem to be fighting for acceptance, and seem to believe that more positive portrayals of autism will create that. Don't portray us as disabled, just different. Or not too disabled. Show intelligence, show skills, show a likeable personality.

Parents seem to me like they're fighting to portray autism as a disability, to show how disabling it can be, so society will learn to understand it and recognize the needs that autistics have. To understand that autism affects people in ways that need understanding and support.

What is the best path? I'd imagine something inbetween. I'd like to see a show that portrays someone who truly cares about people trying their best to show it, but also unintentionally making social faux pas, while trying to learn from them. Show the social struggles, but show that the person wants to overcome them and connect with others - or at least be nice to others. Heck, show the person trying to be nice and helpful. Show them doing something thoughtful for a person, maybe the day after they piss someone off by accidentally saying something offensive. Portray them as humans with struggles who are trying their best. Not as unknowing assholes.

But... what do you think?

Looking at it from parents' perspective...I think it's in part because they have heard stories of cops gunning down autistic people because they took their behavior to be a threat.