General Autism Discussion

I'm not sure he can do that, it seems to be his "thing."

It could open the door to disability fraud, as companies may want people to get false disability diagnoses in order to avoid hiring actual disabled people. It could create an industry of doctors and psychologists being paid to falsely claim someone is disabled so as to fulfill the quota.

This is by far the most likely outcome. In fact, it's already happened to a lesser extent. It's not even necessarily malicious because a lot of mental conditions are difficult and subjective to diagnosis. So rich parents will shop around to get their kids an ADHD diagnosis or whatever in order to get more time on those all important standardized tests.

But a rule like this will make things much, much, worse.

Or as Syndrome would say, when everyone is disabled, noone is.

edited 19th Oct '14 8:45:51 AM by storyyeller

and I'm not. I'm saying that corporate greed is a real thing. Wanting to save money is a real thing. Petty behaviors are a real thing. Most of the time, no actual malice is needed. Perhaps you should go and read the actual life experiences of autistics, and read about how businesses operate (in the real world, not in theory), and then see what you can find.

Someone I talk to online from time to time tells me that at her job, a coworker is trying to get fired. She complains that "it's like I work with children." That's how she describes the culture in her office.

My younger brother got fired from his first job for social reasons - there were a lot of social games being played, and the people in charge were very incompetent. He had many stories to tell about the incompetence going on.

My dad told me a story about how at one of the offices he worked at (my dad's job took him to numerous offices of the same company, to service their computers), one person was tricked into doing something that could get her fired, and she ended up having to prove her innocence. Another office he told me about had racial and religious tensions - black religious vs. white non-religious (or white slightly religious). Amazing that this kind of crap can be going on. My office is quite tame, and I'm accepted there. But opportunities for advancement are practically nonexistent, so I'm trying to get help from various autism-related agencies where I can - one has yet to get back to me.

It's really fucking retarded. In a perfect world, business would be a meritocracy, where the most skilled rise to the top. It's not. But it damn well should be.

edited 19th Oct '14 9:55:43 AM by BonsaiForest

You can't work with what should be, you work with what is. And Autistics/Aspergers people can play and win those social games, if they put the effort into it — as well as playing the Only Sane Man on occasion, as well...

edited 19th Oct '14 12:56:25 PM by Greenmantle

I think he understands that.

I do understand what is. And I do understand there are autistics who, with a shitload of effort, can play and win the social games (in addition to the many who try their damnedest and still come across as weird and mockable - I saw a thread on WrongPlanet.net asking how autistics "pass" as normal, and many gave their examples of how they do, but also admitted that people often talk about them behind their back about how weird they are).

But I'm talking about what things could be like if there is change. And we need to fucking find some way to self-advocate, to get people out there to pay attention to us, to realize how much they're wasting putting PhD's on welfare, as Fighteer put it in the economics thread. If we do nothing, nothing changes, and nothing gets better. Yes, we have to cope with what life throws at us, but if there's a way to make it better, we damn well should.

Historically, positive social change didn't come about by saying "eh, what can we do? Nothing will change, so we just gotta deal." Hell, society is waking up to the fact that bullying is a problem, and that it can and should be addressed. Society used to accept drunken driving as just inevitable, until the "designated driver" concept was invented. And plenty of minority groups throughout history have had to fight for their rights.

So, yes I know autistics have it rough and we have to deal with what we've got... but should we not try to do something to improve our lot in life? To make it better for the next generation? The news articles about autistics and employment, saying things like there's a "tsunami of unemployed autistic adults", and so on, are drawing attention to the mainstream (little by little, as most people are not seeing these articles). Forbes, a website for businesspeople, about business and economics, talks about autism from time to time, and how to get and keep us employed. So it is being recognized as a problem. So it's not as if things will just stay as they are forever.

So let's not be cowards with a defeatist attitude and just say "eh, it'll never change." At least, we could consider how it might change, what might happen in the future, and how whatever happens will affect things.

Reality is we have big problems. And reality is that we have the power, little by little, to make people aware of that. Social media, spreading the word somehow... we need to do something. I'm sick and tired of reading about autistics who get fired from dozens of jobs both before, and after, getting diagnosed. It's disgusting, needs to change, and I think greater awareness will help.

edited 19th Oct '14 2:00:14 PM by BonsaiForest

Ok, first I wanted to comment on the bit with ASD/Depression.

No. Depression cannot "trigger" ASD. They are absolutely different things in that aspect.

ASD cannot "trigger" Depression, but the fact that ASD is a difficult thing to live with, and that hinders the life of the person, the difficulties that the person suffers due to ASD may, or may not, help trigger depressive patterns. But it is not a "Depression can turn an otherwise normal person into an ASD".

On the job thing, I cannot emphasize just how incredibly idiotic it is to emphasize that the only way to get a job, or a career while having ASD is to have law basically enforce such a policy. There are several problems with that.

• Several countries do not recognize ASD as a disability
• Several companies would rather hire someone without a leg than someone without any social skills
• Several companies are, in fact, neither tying-damsels-on-the-railroads villains nor are they idiotic bags of money trampling over the poor disenfranchised people.

Knowledge and skills are highly valued in the job market. Really, the best way for you to get a job and keep it, is to be good at your job. Why can bosses be assholes/idiotic/narcissistic pricks and still call the shots? They can if they get the job done because despite how they treat other people, they will still achieve the objectives.

ASD, unlike, say, severe cases of MR, does not negatively impact learning or motor skills that denies or hampers common job skills. What does this mean though? That people with ASD may not make great salesmen, or presidents, or customer representatives, but great engineers, programmers, accountants, or any job that does not require social contact with a customer, for the de facto disability to comprehend social queues might cause mistakes difficult to salvage.

To draw a paralel, people with OCD are highly sought in high ranking positions because of their diligence and...well, obsession with their job which makes them all too effective. Their "disabilty quota" is far less in play here. They are just goddamn useful.

What you describe of social interactions worthy of an office sitcom, are simply part of the job. A job. Any job. Whether your job is being president, CEO, public representative, car salesman, or Scruffy the Janitor living in the deepest recesses of the boiler room, or Steve from accounting living in the most obscure room in the office, you will have to interact with people one way or the other.

This is why the DSM has to point out as criteria for any and all diagnosis that the symptoms "cause a significant detriment in the work, social, family, sex, and/or community life of the patient". To put it in other words, if it was not difficult for someone with ASD to respond to the social queues and if they did not have their problems from it, we would not be talking about ASD at all. It. Is. An. Issue. Because. Of. This.

No matter how useful, how great, how amazing a person with OCD can be as chief CEO of a gigantic company, he will still be unable to not wash his hands 64 times, turn the lights on/off 65, and close the doors 66 times before leaving through the steps he will have to count to 67. This will not go away. Treatment can alleviate the anxiety, social help can allow the person to work and provide his share of what an office tries to accomplish but a job is not a place to babysit people who are looking to be babysat. It is a workplace with goals and acheivements to fulfill. If you are part of that, any intelligent company will be stupid to kick you. If you are not part of that, then ASD, OCD, Alcoholism, or completely normal, you're out.

Yes, of course stupid companies exist. But stupid companies that drive away smart people are not long-lasting.

If you notice these articles you read about autistic people in the workplace, they are success cases of people in a high position with autism and how they had to deal with it, and how the higher ends helped (or didn't), and the articles finish putting up some advantages that ASD people have and difficulties they suffer. This is because to businessmen, their interest lay on just how useful this person can be, not how can I help this person?. Sounds assholeish? Perhaps, but a job, a career, is not a place to be seeking refuge in, but a challenge to overcome and things to accomplish.

Or something.

You make a lot of good points there, but I still want to say some things.

(Emphasis mine) Good thing I didn't say it's the only way. I said it's one thing that might help, and that it's a proposed law in some parts of the world, which might have positive/negative effects. That was all my post was about. You are reading something I didn't say or even hint at. I even reread the post to make sure that nothing I said could possibly be interpreted as "this is the only way people with ASD will get employed."

I agree that people with ASD would be good at those things. I have looked up to see what types of experiences people with ASD actually have with those jobs. Unfortunately, a lot of it is rather upsetting. It seems almost any time I go to a forum about people with ASD, and they talk about their employment history, the whole "getting fired from job after job" thing comes up a lot. I talked to two women with ASD about their employment history - one said she got a job recently via an organization that tries to employ autistics (so I don't know the long-term story here, since it hasn't happened yet), while another said that at her IT job, people were constantly giving her shit, trying to steal credit for her work, and she saw all the "social golden children" move up while she got left behind. She quit and became a night security guard. Social games got a more skilled person to quit while the "fun people" got to move up.

So the racial and religious tensions at the one office my dad spent a lot of time at is simply part of the job?

I get what you're saying though, and I agree that understanding how to interact with others is important. My job is tame and the people there are nice enough, I get along just fine, even with over 100 people in the office, including a woman who is physically disabled and appears to have autism herself, now that I think about it. (Her job is low end also)

But "sitcom-like" interactions, petty social grievances and people who "act like children" and try to get coworkers fired simply for not liking them - that's dysfunctional. And apparently common. Workplace bullying articles are showing up in many publications now, including Forbes, with the articles describing how workplace bullying harms the workplace and makes it less productive, and scares away good employees. So it's apparently a big problem, and even though it's "normal", it's something business publications believe businesses should learn to solve, since it's harmful to them.

Most companies aren't Google. Stupid companies do kill or hurt themselves all the time (I think I mentioned before the company with the employee who would shout insulting stuff at me every time I walked by, and how I looked them up on Yelp, to find they had a ★★★ rating and had lots of complaints about asshole-ish customer service, and this is in an industry where they probably had tons and tons of competitors). Still, if a company is able to get stuff done, then they'll survive even if they're not getting it done the most efficient way possible. They won't thrive as much as their best competitors do, but they'll survive.

I know that. I'm saying that employers need to think in terms of what an autistic can do, instead of thinking "oh great, a retard". And I have heard many stories of people who got a job, got recognized as good at their job, then came out as autistic... and got accepted, and even had their position shifted to something they were good at so they could avoid their problem areas. In other words, the boss doing what a smart boss would do with any employee: move them into the tasks they're good at, and keep them away from what they're bad at.

Still, a lot points to these social barriers that prevent autistic employees from showing what they can do, or getting to keep doing it. I want that to change, and I'm glad there are organizations like Specialisterne and Aspiritech trying to change this perception so employers will better understand our strengths and weaknesses. But there really is a lot of prejudice against "weirdos", people who don't "fit in" to the corporate culture, that harms skilled employees. Which is dumb.

Also, OCD doesn't harm someone's social skills in the way that ASD does.

You seem to keep reading things I didn't say, and never tried to convey. You need to calm down before you give your responses.

edited 20th Oct '14 8:38:50 AM by BonsaiForest

@ Bonsai:

Bonsai, you're hardly calm yourself.

Yes, I'm angry at the situation. But I don't flip out at posters for saying things they didn't actually say.

Anyway, let's focus on the actual issues here.

* Sigh *

Don't you know, that being as forceful as you are, might drive people away instead of attracting them? It's the literary equivalent of making loud noise, of shouting.

In that case, what do you suggest? I admit I'm very angry at our lot in life, and I want to see it improve, whether it's through things we do ourselves (in which case I'd like to know what we can do to help other autistics), or external factors, such as the organizations trying to help us.

I don't know, but personally, I'm not one for shouting. In Real Life, I don't shout unless I'm really angry. I'm that sort of person.

I've been wondering for a while if anyone in the thread who's become familiar with our perennial wiki vandal, He Who Shall Not Be Named, who makes anywhere from 10 to 15 new handles on average per day and has fits of rage whenever anything is changed that he doesn't agree with, has any advice on dealing with him other than finding a functional means to block him from creating new handles.

In our research to see if there's a RL way to approach the problem, we've discovered that he is in fact autistic. This comes with a fixation on webcomics and cartoons, possibly as a way to help him relate to others. He has an OCD-level attachment to patterns and appears highly narcissistic. I find it hard to imagine that he could ever be productively employed. His parents don't seem interested in talking with us about the matter, although we haven't made extreme efforts to reach them. (No, we don't seek out personal information about our users, but he has "doxed" himself outside of TV Tropes.)

Please note that I recognize that this is a very sensitive issue since we're talking about a real person. I am fully prepared to nuke the conversation if it goes south.

edited 20th Oct '14 9:39:52 AM by Fighteer

I do not think there is any shouting going on here, from what I can tell there is no such violence here. In either case...

You will find that the Internet allows for a rather biased account of tales from people. Of course people with bad experiences will gladly share them there. How many good experiences will be narrated on the internet, however? Your source is not quite statistically definable as "the norm".

And yes, what your father went through is normal. Mine suffered with something similar, with a schism between his catholic beliefs and the place he worked at that obeyed other christian secular thinking, or whatever. Same with my grandfather. Same with my mother, working in a Hardware Store as a woman. Yes. Difficult social interactions are very normal. A happy happy joy joy land is not possible. The problem in ASD is that not only are they unable to handle it, they are also unable to detect it. Among other things. Stepford is as creepy as you might think it is.

And ocmpanies with bosses like that, badly regulated will have it fall back upon them. What happens if a better option appears without the same issues they have? What happens if this abusive behavior leads to a lawsuit? What happens if people simply get tired of being insulted? Is this volatile situation one that promises long term standing within the company? No. Good people doing their job are far more important. So, maybe they will survive, but if they do, what impact are they going to have with their culture that is going to actually count?

What can happen? what can we do? Nothing. What is being done is already being done. Research, studies, articles, case studies, success cases, education and such highly publicized examples are coming to light more and more as we understand more and more of the human brain and how it actually works. As we make sure of our research and our discoveries we can actually act on them, as opposed to having to take decades to run experiments and tests.

As education and knowledge grow, so will the understanding of companies who use the latest information to gather the best personnel to become the most competitive companies they can be.

As for what can you do, as an ASD person, it is to educate yourself, and others who are willing. Educate yourself in the social aspects that you are weak in, see what strenghts and weaknesses you have, see how you can work them. Seek help, therapy exists, if you cannot handle this alone. grow as a professional, get marketable job skills that make you valuable to have in something you enjoy. Someone is interested? Introduce them a bit to ASD, do not overwhelm them, or shove tons of info in their face. They might simply be curious, but do not allow preconceptions or stereotypes to be spread or regurgitated. Just be a source of information out there.

Live your entire life, and you will see some changes. This takes generations. We still struggle with racism, even though Rosa Parks stood up long ago against that bus driver in 1955. There will be no noticeable change but for the small sphere you can influence in your life, and from there, it grows.

As someone with first hand experience of this, it is frustrating to try and advocate for those on the spectrum. If you don't mind, I'm going to quote my previous answers carried over from the Economics Tread:

Another issue is that there are a lot of people floating around saying they're on the spectrum or something like that and they're really not. I see that here A LOT. I see it in real life too. And I call them out on it. I personally am not on the spectrum but you work with the severe cases enough you can see it easier in the mild cases.

This isn't helping.

Example: There is a kid at my son's school. Don't get me wrong, the kid has issues. But they're probably more tied to the fact his parents are on two completely different wavelengths on how to deal with him, not a disorder alone.

You can't have one parent babying and pitying the kid and the other parent being a hardass. The kid is also very inconsistent with spectrum behavior if not completely contradictory. But his mother is hell bent he's Autistic regardless of the lack of a diagnosis. I know the doctor they sent him to. If he says it's not that, it's not that.

So you have more people growing up thinking they're a special little snowflake who deserves special accommodation because of their disorders, which to a point is reasonable, but to another, just get over it.

It's harsh, but if you want a certain position, you need to be able to do certain tasks. If you can't do those tasks, social or laborious, then you don't get to have that job.

Also we are in a major recession. We have jobs here in town that previously may get only a dozen or so apps getting hundreds of apps. Autistic = accommodations in most manager's minds and why should they fool with that when they more than enough options they don't have to accommodate?

And, to play the other side, if you are so severe you are classified as disabled, you get resources other people don't even with employment. This can breed resentment. Most people don't want to be in that situation.

Uhh. If we are talking OCD patterns, then there is little we can do there. OCD has compulsions that must be obeyed, like the "washing hands thing as an example. If it is'' a case of obsession, then it is nigh impossible to "fix" it.

If it is just a case of autism, then...the person might not be able or worse, willing to understand rules. Personally, I would see if it is possible to block the IP address, rather than try and talk it out. But I am not sure how feasible that seems. Doesn't sound like it much.

edited 20th Oct '14 9:51:13 AM by Aszur

I don't know that he is OCD, just that his fixation on patterns seems like some kind of compulsion. He's also mastered proxies, so the list of IP addresses to block would be very large. We are working on a solution, of course, but I have occasionally wondered if there might be some alternative way to reach him.

edited 20th Oct '14 9:55:15 AM by Fighteer

Well that is a defining caractheristic of OCD: An obsession followed by a compulsion to quell the anxiety created by it. But online diagnosing is silly. I simply mean to say that if he is unwilling to hearken to rules, then he simply should not be allowed them. Can you follow the rules, or can you not? They can be reiterated, explained or detailed, but constant vandalism seems like limits will not be tolerated, which is why I think the IP ban seems like the only way to stop it.

Just my thoughts on that, though. Dunno what others might think. And again, I am not even familiar with how feasible, easy, difficult, or downirhgt impossible it is to IP ban someone playing with proxies.

Even if it is a legitimate mental or emotional disturbance, negative behavior cannot be permitted. If they have been unresponsive to redirection attempts so far, there is no reason not to think they care enough to even try and manage their issues.

And as much as it sucks, having a disability doesn't make people immune from being jerks or selfish either.

Regardless, I would have to recommend that if you cannot safely reach that person in real life or their guardian, and if they're that problematic they will still have a medical guardian, then you have no choice but to block them to all powers available to you.

And, might be innapropriate, but I am curious to know what is he constantly editing...

His most consistent targets include anything in the Comic Book, Webcomic, and Western Animation namespaces, mainly to undo ZCE removal, natter removal, and correction of example indentation. He also fixates, for some reason, on the format of the header line that introduces the examples section.

edited 20th Oct '14 11:17:01 AM by Fighteer

So it is all about the format? Not the content?

Pretty much, yes. He obsesses over formatting. Once in a blue moon he adds a new example.

edited 20th Oct '14 11:21:36 AM by Fighteer

Is this the troper who once went by a Dr Who-related handle?