He thought, again, I'm a woman, I'm weak like Pikamee, so I'll just run away in fear of this strong man, or whatever nonsense goes on inside his head
Dev (a leftoid) can't model the minds of others, so he can't empathize with them or correctly predict their actions.
Haidt's findings are proven right once again.
- "How does it keep happening to you & rarely to your current, & now former, associates? Why do you have such a reggular schedule of dick stomping?"
- "as for why? it's obvious. i'm autistic and i don't care all that much about optics."
No, Dev. That's not why. You're not just cluelessly stepping on toes and then going "aw, shucks" whenever it turns out (so surprisingly!) that somebody doesn't like what you did.
And you can't just use "autism" in the same way that bad writers try to use "oh, well you see, this character is insane" as a magical catch-all excuse for them doing nonsensical, out-of-character shit. There's no getting around some things just being bad writing—just like there's no getting around some things IRL being bad behavior.
But that's all moot, because he's not even autistic or oblivious to optics—he's just selfish.
He understands social interactions perfectly well. He just pretends not to whenever he doesn't get what he wants, in an effort to try to turn shit around onto other people and wriggle himself out from under whatever shit he's gotten himself into.
It's understandable, to an extent. I was the fat, awkward kid in school—I understand what it's like to have everybody looking at you when you just did something dumb, and searching desperately for any way in which you can try to reframe the situation instead of having to accept that shit really is as bad as it looks, having to be embarrassed in front of everyone, and having to take your lumps yet again. Most people reflexively do things to try to wriggle out of bad situations, at least a little bit.
But it's not "autism."
And it has a limit. Dev has taken what might've started as a reasonable defense mechanism way too far.
