General Autism Discussion

Blocked from where?

Blocked on Steam.

Anyway, it's a long story, and I need to find the time to tell it.

Speaking of learning acceptable behaviour, it took me 20 or so deliveries to a branch of a company that I am currently working in to fully get a hang of it. Go figure. One thing in particular, namely streamlining original marks and correction marks into one without excessive additional markings, is much simpler to understand had my coworker (who is a douchebag, it's complicated) told me so instead of saying that what I am doing is making everyone's head hurt, no one else is doing this etc. I wondered why people would do explanations in complicated way without actually mentioning what one's actually want to say.

I wondered why people would do explanations in complicated way without actually mentioning what one's actually want to say.

I believe the NTs call it "politeness".

But seriously, I agree. It's stupid. I really hate society's dumber social rules. I'm not talking about the rules that serve a very valid purpose (like the ones that "Joe" is breaking), but stuff like people's obnoxious habit of not getting to the point and saying what they mean.

Little life lesson from somebody who has tried to help and burned out: sometimes, other people don't have the means or energy to actually help, even if/when they want to. For all they see that somebody needs it.

It's not a slight if they decide they are not best suited to do so and draw the lines to decide "no: not in this case... I can't".

Remember that: just because you see the problem doesn't mean you can actually do all that duty would have you do to help fix it. Wisdom lies in working out what you can and can't do before you really mess up by doing only half a job badly. This applies to everybody with a pulse, not just neurotypicals or those with hidden or blatant conditions.

The worst messes you come across are usually made when somebody tries to help another person... and screws them over for life without meaning to.

edited 1st Dec '14 4:06:53 PM by Euodiachloris

I don't think so. That's why my initial post was aimed at the thread in general (where the idea had been floated) as opposed to you individually.

This so very much.

Even when you can help a person, you need to consider if you've the capability to go down the long road of helping a person get out of whatever dark pit they may be inside. There's a limit to how much a single person can do, there's a limit to the number of people one can be a pillar of support for. You try and help to many people and the weight of all their problems can end up crushing you, which not only hurts you, but also makes you useless to all the people you were trying to help. Beyond that there's still the problem of there only being 24 hours in a day, some people require a lot of time and effort to help, if you try and help to many such people you can easily end up in a situation where you help nobody, because you're spending all your time running between different people in crisis rather than sitting down and focusing on getting one person built up to such a position that they don't have crisis anymore.

Okay, here's the story. It's long!

On Steam, I for whatever reason joined an autism-related group. Someone friended me on there. And this guy, he was quite the piece of work.

He loved to talk about poop and pee humor, and even offered to show me his privates, and greeted me by saying "I want to pee all over you". Constantly talking about things like "do women fart?" and things like that. It fascinated him. I didn't want to hear about it. I told him that, and he tried to justify it, saying things like "Why do you think they talk about this stuff in kids' movies?" I told him "because kids find it funny, but that doesn't mean it's normal for adults to be always talking about these things". He honestly didn't seem to understand why talking about this stuff all the time was found annoying by most people.

He was preachy, trying to convert me to Christianity. Very pushy. He also hated cursing. I pointed out that by being obsessed with bodily functions and talking about them all the time, he was being a bad example of a Christian, but he didn't get it.

Anyway, he started to become very random. He would say random things in a non-conversational way. I mean, like just quoting shows and saying random memes and stuff. I was tolerant, but later on...

I'll get to that. But he also said strange and unreasonable things, like asking me if I'd watch a movie with him. I pointed out that doing so would require me to cross the Atlantic Ocean, kind of an unreasonable request to ask of someone in another country.

I copy/pasted some conversations of him (I'll hide our screennames, of course). Here's an example:

An example of him not getting why toilet humor is bad:

More bad behavior from the guy who wanted desperately to convert me to Christianity:

He made numerous references to suicide, and I felt bad for him. Still, over time, his behavior got worse and worse. He became increasingly random, and started ignoring what I said, making holding a conversation utterly impossible.

I mean it. He'd say his stuff, and even if I responded, he'd ignore me. I started telling him to stop ignoring what I say and start talking in response to things I say. He ignored me. I swore, and he'd tell me to stop, only to proceed to ignore everything else I said.

At one point he pretended to be a bot. That became his excuse for being random. I could tell he was faking it, because any time he'd type up his response, the whole "_____ is typing a message" would appear at the bottom of the chat, with a delay consistent with how big his response was. Bots don't work that way.

I told him to stop it or I'd block him. I told him this like 6 times. I finally blocked him.

He contacted me again using another screenname, and said "Dude, that was my bot that did it, not me." I told him to shut off the (obviously nonexistent) bot and address me directly. His behavior calmed down somewhat, then got even more random and insane and rude than before.

Like before, I told him exactly what he was doing wrong and what he should do - stop being random, stop ignoring me, and respond to what I'm actually saying. He didn't. I told him I'd block him. He continued to be random and pretend to be a bot. I told him multiple times I'd block him and what he was doing wrong. Same behavior. I blocked him.

He later contacted me with another screenname, but I didn't waste time this time - I told him what he had to do in order to not be blocked - don't be random, don't have his "bot" running when talking to me, and actually respond to what I say so we could hold actual conversations. That had no effect, so block it was. And this time, I went to the Steam groups I expected to find him on, searched out any screenname that could possibly be in any way related to him, and blocked all of them. He never contacted me again.

And THAT is my story of the one truly screwed up autistic who, despite being told numerous times what to do, never ever got it. I can't help him. I tried. I tried to be someone he could talk to, but he talked over me, rather than to me, so that's gone. Whatever one might say about this "Joe" person, it sounds like Joe simply wasn't told the proper rules for social etiquette. This guy, though, was totally fucked up, and wouldn't even listen when he was being told the rules. As sorry as I felt for him, someone who utterly refuses to listen at all and ignores everything I say (except curse words and blasphemy so he can yell at me to stop), is someone who is totally impossible to deal with. If his disability is the cause of that, then I don't know how to help him, or if anyone can. If instead it's an attitude problem or stubbornness on his part that he's aware of, or can become aware of, then he'll have to wake up on his own and realize that his behavior is the cause of a certain amount of his problems, and he could work on that, at the very least.

There you have it: the story of the only person I ever blocked ever. I've been blocked by more people than I ever blocked myself.

edited 2nd Dec '14 8:29:12 AM by BonsaiForest

Interesting story. Personally my first reaction when someone starts disclosing anything super serious to me online is to suggest they find someone in Meatspace to talk to (while reminding them that I am still available for them to talk to online). I'm good at being there for people but the internet has its limitations, if you need serious help you need someone in Meatspace, often enough you need a professional as well.

I have online friends who I consider good friends, but I only have 1 that knows a lot about my life and what's going on in it, I've know him for 5 years and even now the internet means that all I can really do in ramble at him and receive hug emoticons. Now with others I will occasionally moan about my family and I've had a few message me supportingly after I managed to get in a fight with family on facebook. But serious stuff I tend to deal with with either the 1 guy or with my meeatspace people.

Honestly Bonsai, I would bet money that there was more than ASD at play there (assuming ASD was at play, I trust steam groups screening about as much as I can eat it, and I know that makes no sense), that kid sounds seriously messed up.

edited 1st Dec '14 6:13:59 PM by SilasW

He wasn't a kid, but, according to him, an adult man with a job. He said one woman at work told him he was weird when he asked her some question about "do women _____?"

As for their being more than ASD involved, I'm sure. Though ASD in some form undoubtedly played a role.

edited 1st Dec '14 6:24:33 PM by BonsaiForest

And that right there is the problem. You know this guy lied to you with his whole "the bot did it" spiel, after that you don't really have any reason to trust what he says/has said.

That was what he said (and he made numerous references, consistent ones, to his life) well before he did this stupid "pretend to be a bot" thing.

You may be right, either way he certainly was acting like a child, and a spoiled one at that.

I stopped trying to understand what drives internet crazies once I got a banhammer, I've got people I know want and need my help right here in meatspace. When it comes to online I have three jobs, have fun, learn stuff and protect the people on the forum I mod. None of those require a deep understanding of what makes internet crazies crazy, just the ability to ID them and not confuse oddness for craziness.

k

Also, the "cannot tell discomfort and feelings of anxiety" is not necesarily an ASD only trait. You know who else need to be thaught to recognize and phrase their discomfort too? Children. One of the most common exercises with children who are suffering from whatever problem is the fact their lingusitic abilities are so behind what a common adult can relate to, or they communicate or much less understand that they need to be thaught about feelings.

An adult whose intellectual difficulties were never detected early or worked on could well evolve into behaving in a very ASD manner, due to the drastic combination of inhibition and impulsivity that were never thaught to be controlled.

Many times, some people are refered to a psychiatrist or psychologist because they feel depressed or anxious, whatever and the underlying issue is a disorder of another nature that triggered many a result in social or work related activities that triggered what Skinner calls "learned helplessness". Here we can be talking about a situation where the person can be thaught and where it is the responsibility of those detecting his difficulties to treat and speak him him to the best of their abilities as they are professionals who are being paid to do just that.

A friend? An acquaintance? Heck, not even family (assuming this person is an adult with a job) is strictly, legally obligated in any way shape or form to work out the other person's issues.

Brain representations of social thoughts accurately predict autism diagnosis: "Researchers have created brain-reading techniques to use neural representations of social thoughts to predict autism diagnoses with 97 percent accuracy. This establishes the first biologically based diagnostic tool that measures a person's thoughts to detect the disorder that affects many children and adults worldwide."

The more interesting thing to me is actually the 3% errors.

That is amazing news. Like the depression-through-blood-test thing any diagnosis wrought about by more biologically confirming tools is a great boon to scientific and healthcare progress.

You go, Carnegie Mellon. You are credit to team.

"When asked to think about persuading, hugging or adoring, the neurotypical participants put themselves into the thoughts; they were part of the interaction. For those with autism, the thought was more like considering a dictionary definition or watching a play — without self-involvement,"

I am guessing that "lack of self-involvement" is not exactly the same thing as "impaired social interactions".

Okay, what do you guys think when the terms "hug", "persuade", and "adore" come up?

Two bears high-fiving.

But really, at least hugging seems to be a valid thing to make others think about, but "Adoring"? That is just too subjective imo.

Still, what they are doing is noticing the brain areas that lit up and such and if there is a pattern that dfferes between those with a positive diagnostic than those who do not, then it means they are up to something there

adore is a very, hmm...easily misinterpreted word.

My first thought is a person to a baby, you know a kinda one-sided affection, but a healthy one-sided affection. You can adore a Saint, a baby, a puppy on the internet, it's so cute and adorable.

A teen may say she adores One Direction or whatever pop culture icon is hip now. (I'm a grumbly old bear. I have no idea what is "hip" now.)

hug? side hug, friendly thing.

persuade? two people talking, one with their hands out in a presenting motion.

edited 3rd Dec '14 9:50:10 AM by Gabrael

It also makes it harder for people to claim the condition doesn't exist. And there are a lot of people who do things like tell those who have depression to "just get over it", who claim that autism is just an excuse for bad behavior, etc.

It also clears up people who insist the diagnosis should be otherwise as well as allows parents the chance to discuss genetic risks or tendencies and make decisions and preparations with children.

I would love that. The more you know, the more you can do about it.

Hmm. But if it was to be diagnosed on children it kinda requires more studies to change the parameters. Very young children, much less infants, will definitely not know what a hug is, even. The manner in which they react to other infants might work, for example...so I am not sure how easy ASD might be to detect in infants given the fact that the disorder is one that shows itself on social interactions, severely limited on some levels of childhood...

Now, I'd like to know if this is common for introverts as well - non-autistic introverts. There was an article titled "That's not autism; that's just a brainy, introverted boy". Introverts have potential to use their tendency to prefer alone time with their thoughts to invent new things, create art, and solve problems. Are we potentially looking for a "cure" for introversion?

I understand wanting to solve the problem that prevents people from being able to understand and deal with others, but I'm afraid to see how this might go wrong. Once medical science gets powerful enough to understand how the human brain works in great detail, there will be desires to "fix" everything that's "broken" - both things that are genuinely harmful, and things that society as a whole simply dislikes. At some point, we may have people insisting on "fixing" their tomboyish daughter or their nerdy son.

We already have that.

It's called conversion therapy and is most often attempted in summer camps.

It's just abuse, but that happens now and always have as long as people have been around. We can try to cut it down, but we can't really make it go away unless you find a way to change human nature.

Yeah, I know all about "conversion therapy". People started to accept gays and gender nonconforming people more or less because they have no choice - the genuinely tolerant (tolerant of it because they don't see a reason to be against it or they disagree with the reasons) are probably the minority, or not a huge majority.

Anyway, let's say we can learn very early on what makes a person, say, introverted. And let's say we learn how to change that. What will stop people from doing that?

I think ethics seriously need to be considered, maybe laws passed to prevent or limit certain kinds of attempts to change who a person is, what their personality is, etc.