General Autism Discussion

I guess that part of it is that I never outgrew having a "childlike" imagination like you're apparently supposed to. Apparently, you're supposed to get to an age where you don't want to play pretend anymore and do whatever boring adult thing instead. And and I hear people talk about it all the time. In my kid lit class, everyone talks about how "adults have no imagination" and about losing it when you grow up. Can't relate. My imagination is perfectly intact from when I was a little kid. It didn't go anywhere, and I couldn't imagine how horrible and mundane my life would be if it did go anywhere. I live in my imagination constantly and couldn't imagine not

That's why I like working with kids so much. When I was a camp counselor, I wouldn't take any of my breaks because I preferred playing with the kids. Why would I want to just sit and gossip with the grown-ups when I could play pretend?

I really like the illustrations and creativity in children's literature (one of my friends, who isn't on the spectrum, has a collection he's shown me before), but don't actively consume it.

I don't really think most of my interests are particularly unusual - probably the one that would most qualify is my interest in animation, I guess. My latest big interest is film and television (which I've been watching a lot of recently) which is as mainstream as you can get.

edited 19th Sep '17 7:47:15 PM by Draghinazzo

At most I can express a disinterest in too-long series or things that have been running for years unless I'm watching them for years. Though it's hard for me to say what would be expected for various reasons.

I have my personal favorites, but I don't think that's too strange. Video games like Deadly Premonition, Survival Kids, Alley Cat, Agent USA (okay, that one is obscure), and I once was attached to a book called The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek when I was in sixth grade, and cried about having to give it up. (I later bought it as an adult, reread it, and concluded it was probably a ★★★☆☆ book)

But, is that all that strange?

I really liked a few kid adventure movies too, like one with the generic title of The Lost Medallion: The Adventures of Billy Stone, which is so obscure it doesn't have a works page on this site. It has pretty much all I ask for from a story in that genre: fun character interactions, good scenery, genuinely threatening villains, onscreen death of minor characters (to make the danger feel more real), suspenseful moments, captures and rescues, etc. The only thing I'd do differently if I were the producer would be to add a "serious dialog moment" or two and a "relaxed" moment to let the viewer take in the atmosphere. But it has everything else. And I'm sure nobody's ever heard of it before; and the only way I even discovered it is by looking up the actors in a So Bad, It's Good movie I watched in the Cytube Troper Coven to see what else they'd been in.

I really wish I could find more movies or books or even cartoons or TV shows of that nature!! It sucks to really love a certain genre and it's one that's unpopular and rare. I know Europe had their Enid Blyton, but we didn't really have anything of that nature in the US.

@Unusual interests: Long post incoming. Just a copy paste of the same discussion at Discord, with a few updates and corrections:

As a child, I find the Islamic call to prayer aired in TV fascinating. In other Chinese households (I'm Chinese-Malaysian, btw) people switch channels when that happens. I somehow managed mangle my Islamophobic mom to watch an Islamic travelogue/documentary hybrid series with me back then.

Then, during secondary schools, I actually bothered to learn Malay culture and Islam where my peers find them not worth bothering for. This is in part due to my reading of my Muslim peers' Islam Education textbook.

Then, during matriculation I started watching anime, play arcade games and listened to mainstream J-pop music. That was also a time where I watched local football, something which is considered weird even by the locals. Nowadays, however, as things improved slightly it is no longer seen as weird anymore. Other local sports, however, are always normal to watch though.

This continued during my university days, except that I stopped watching anime and attended lots of public forums by different kinds of people spanning different kinds of topics. It's kind of amusing that I am the only person who is not (expected audience type here). I also switched to Vocaloid music for the first 2 years and switched again to doujin music for the next 2 years.

After I started working I started watching anime again, starting with Accel World. Then, thanks to TV Tropes I discovered Canada's Worst Driver and Polandball. Watching the former actually improved my knowledge of driving even when I can't drive. I also plays freeware games from Japan through several Japanese freeware game repositories. I remember the moment that I tweet the producer of a game that I like and his reply is in mangled English when I was working.

A few years ago, after I got my smartphone, I started playing smartphone games a lot and most of them are rhythm games, but now I play only Puzzle of Empires, a SRPG/match 3 hybrid. I used to be the sole foreigner among the sea of Japanese players, but now a player from China has joined in. He utterly kicked my ass everytime I encounter him.

After my trip to Japan last year, thanks to Twitter I found a lot of music livestreamers in SHOWROOM and Twitcasting Viewer, all Japanese of course and I'm the only foreigner most of the time. I'm officially a Japanophile, I suppose....

Speaking further of strange tastes, most anime viewers prefer Tsurezure Children over Konbini Kareshi, but for me it is the other way around because I like the steady relationship buildup in the latter. Oh, and I like to watch little boys anime (even though some of them are shonen in Japan) such as Puzzle & Dragons X and Monster Strike.

For another topic, does anyone here likes to do things on their own? I prefer travel or go out by myself because I don't need to accommodate others and I am well aware that what I am going for is unlikely to be a common interest.

Does railfanning count?

I'd say being a big fan of trains counts. Trains are actually frequently mentioned as a common autistic special interest actually. So much so, that an Arthur episode about an autistic classmate features it. (It's a positive portrayal, also, and the sort of portrayal I think we need more of, even if it did go for the stereotypes)

Google Glass, that wearable device that puts a computer screen in front of your eyes, now has an app designed to help autistics figure out the next thing to say in a conversation. Admittedly, this is a thing that a great many of us have a hard time with, but is this the right way to do it?

What if none of the above is the correct answer? This seems like a questionable way to teach social skills.

90 percent?! So that means that nearly 1 out of 10 times, it's not good at detecting speech. Talk about very flawed.

So, in essence, it creates an illusion that you're talking to the person wearing the glasses.

@Trains: My understanding is that trains are the Trope Codifier for a mildly-unusual interest.

You mean that it's an illusion, since the person wearing the glasses is merely choosing from a list of three responses?

It makes me think of how Gmail/Inbox has a response suggestion feature. Like, if someone says they did something, one of the response suggestions is "That's cool!" or "Sounds like fun!" Sometimes none of the three responses are really appropriate. I never used the feature (as in, I never clicked any of the choices), but always thought it was stupid and heavily flawed.

I question how much these glasses would help an autistic with actual social skills, which I think would be best learned on the basis of genuine understanding, not merely following a script. I realize that scripts come first, but understanding is the ultimate goal.

And scripts can be very awkward. Anyone remember when the news was talking about that 10-year-old boy with autism who got bumped by Mike Pence, and started following him around demanding an apology? A Fox News host called the boy a "snowflake", and his parents pointed out online that he has autism and was unable to talk until he was 5 years old, and that he was following a social script. His parents had taught him that if someone bumps into him, he should seek an apology. Naturally, he followed that script to its logical conclusion: following the vice president around and demanding an apology repeatedly. Because he didn't understand when that script should be broken, when rules should not always be followed.

It's a script, and it's unnatural, but it's a starting point. It's how autistics learn social skills: piece by piece. Learn the skill first, then learn the exceptions to the rule.

Yes. It might be a useful tool for selecting appropriate responses but if it's the driving force behind a conversation, I might as well be talking to a chatbot.

Exactly. Much agreed.

I started watching this video of body cam footage from a recent incident where an autistic teenager stimming was mistaken for drug use, and things got out of hand when an officer trained in drug situations but not autism encountered the kid.

I'll reserve thoughts for later.

EDIT: Warning, gets LOUD at about 40 seconds in when the poor kid screams.

edited 21st Sep '17 7:49:20 PM by BonsaiForest

There's a saying: nature loves diversity but society hates it. I've argued with my dickhead bigoted brother that I am diversity, as an autistic, and he says, "You're still a white heterosexual male." Yes, but autism makes one sooo different from other people, that I honestly feel that it supercedes the differences between the sexes, or the cultural differences between religions and races.

I have to disagree.

It's probably not a good idea to get into a "who is more oppressed" discussion.

Yeah, the "oppression Olympics" are a bad thing. My brother constantly complains about how much worse men have it than women, while dismissing any and all problems women uniquely face. Oppression Olympics taken to their extreme result in crap like the manosphere.

My main point was what I highlighted, though, which is that we need different kinds of minds in order for society to flourish and create new ideas. But generally, a lot of people really don't like "different".

Anyway, Google News just showed not one, but two articles on the exact same topic: how autistics struggle to get and keep jobs. It's a major issue, and it's one we've been talking about in the Discord channel.

Links to both articles: The Reader's Digest article. The Slate article. They both take very different approaches to the topic.

From the Reader's Digest article:

Look past. That's exactly what job interviewers and employers need to do, is look past the things that are in their face, that trigger them immediately.

edited 23rd Sep '17 5:54:27 AM by BonsaiForest

We are all diversity, including white heterosexual males who are not autistic, let alone one's who are. Tell your brother that he's part of the diversity and see how confused he gets.

And now reading the Slate article.

The part about not mentioning his master's degree, that's an easy social mistake to correct once aware of it, of course. (Some in the comments pointed out that saying you're overqualified is a quick way to not get hired, so not mentioning it may be a good idea in some cases) But the rest is much harder to avoid.

And that bolded part, right there, is the problem.

But what's heartening to me, is that people are starting to become aware of it. That articles like this are being written. That people are hearing about this a lot more. They need to understand "invisible disabilities". They need to recognize that.

Later, someone did attempt to help him get a job that was appropriate for his intelligence.

And the breadth of the spectrum is being recognized too:

Very true.

I found a quote that I really just had to share:

@4980: regarding "doing things on your own", yeah! I usually go out and do things by myself - because I don't see why I can't just enjoy stuff by myself and do it for myself, why I "have" to invite a friend. I eat at restaurants by myself now and then just because I feel like treating myself to some food - I tend to be the only person there eating by myself but I don't really care. I usually travel to events alone too unless I know friends who happen to be going to the same thing (and travelling the same way, at the same time, from the same place)
Strangely, it actually took me a long time to realize I actually "could" do stuff like going to the cinema, going to a restaurant ect. by myself. Just seemed like a thing you "should" do with others, I guess?

edited 24th Sep '17 7:24:44 PM by Zanreo

I also go to restaurants and the movies alone when I have the money. Doesn't bother me in the slightest that I have no one with me, though of course it's more fun to have someone along.

It's only frugality that keeps me from such things. And I like cooking.

I don't go to sit-down restaurants on my own (I usually go to those with my parents) but I go to movies all the time when no one else is interested. Last week I went to see IT and yesterday I saw Kingsman: The Golden Circle.