Autism

[Ebola]

Talking about aspies openly admitting to crapping themselves, it's common because they have no filter and usually can't be taught that no one wants to hear it. I recently met one who constantly talks about shitting him/herself and whenever it happens I have no idea what to say so, I just try to change the topic to one of their special interests.

In my opinion, mild autism has more to do with upbringing than anything else. Because the human brain is very plastic (even to some degree in old people), a lot of this autism shit could be avoided or treated if parents had the willpower to engage with their kids in a constructive way at all times, but I realize hardly anyone has the time or patience for it. The next best thing might be injecting spergs with chemicals like Oxytocin (the hormone responsible for love/human bonding), which might make them to bond correctly with others and develop a normal sense of empathy and self-awareness in relation to others. Medicating them with psychiatric drugs and other powerful drugs is just an attempt to keep the spergs more quiet an docile for the parents or caretakers - nothing more.

 

[Tlazolli]

The next best thing might be injecting spergs with chemicals like Oxytocin (the hormone responsible for love/human bonding), which might make them to bond correctly with others and develop a normal sense of empathy and self-awareness in relation to others.

Would this work?

 

[Ebola]

Would this work?

It's in some sort of a trial phase right now, and results seem promising so far, and even better when combined with therapy, but there's absolutely no long-term studies of exposure to artificial Oxytocin in human adults and children because it's all new. In baby mice, it makes them even more autistic in adulthood, so the same may apply to children, but even if that's true it could be potentially useful for adults. Nasal spray isn't the best method to get a drug in a body, too, so who knows.

https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/can-oxytocin-treat-autism

 

[Mungo]

I recently finished interning at a special school for autistic people in the city. They don't have a long summer break until the middle of August, so I was able to go there for around a month and a half and observe/interact with these kids.

To be honest, one of the things that struck me was how wildly varied the kids were. Some of the kids legitimately didn't belong in that environment, and were possessive of social skills basically identical to a normal child their age. With a bit of extracurricular help and therapy, those kids could have really thrived in a normal environment.

But on the other hand, there were kids that were so severely afflicted that they lacked even the basic motor skills or reflexes of most people. Some of the non-verbal students really did make me feel bad, especially when I would talk to the teachers about them.

The truly unfortunate thing about Autism and Asperger's is how many of the symptoms are preventable with the right help. Some kids are, unfortunately, lost causes from the start. The really really shitty situations, though, are those where the kids started out perfectly fine, but through parental neglect or outright abuse turned into these lost causes, when had they received help at a very early age, they would have been perfectly fine. To give an example, I met one child, around 14, who constantly walked on their tiptoes. Sometimes they would accidentally step on the balls of their feet. If this happened, they would scream and jump, almost, back onto their toes.

I asked their handler (each class had one or two kids with staff around them 24/7, and this child was one of them) why this was, and the handler told me it was because of this child's upbringing. When the child was very young, they saw someone walking on their tiptoes in a cartoon, and they decided to start walking on their tiptoes all the time. The child's parents, who didn't understand the child's condition, let them do this for a little, then asked them to stop. Being a 5 year old at the time, the child threw a tantrum, and their parents sheepishly allowed the child to continue walking like this.

Fast forward a couple of years, the muscles in the child's foot had atrophied completely, since they only walked on his toes, and the child was essentially crippled for life, as the only way they knew to walk was on their toes. Attempting to walk normally would cause extreme pain to the child. The handler, in speaking to me, told me that the thing that made him the angriest in life was seeing these cases of children who could have been almost normal, but, because of poor parenting in some form, were permanently altered in a negative way.

Because of this, I think that a large part (not all of it, but a large part) of the behaviors we see as "autistic" are not unpreventable behaviors. Even someone like Chris, I believe, is not a product of autism, but rather of the personality issues of the deranged, unfit parents he was raised by.

To end this on sort of a lighter note, on the last day of school, each class was thrown a surprise pizza party, and several of the students in one of the classes made me cards. One touched me especially.

Spoiler: A Card (large image)

 

[Alberto Balsalm]

The neoteny traits in many autistic individuals supports this could be an evolutionary trait, seeing how domesticated animals, namely mammals, after generations of domestication the offspring turns more child-like, if autistic behavior is evolution, it's a really terrible evolutionary path, being a self obsessed maniac that can't care for or understand other people is backwards and dysfunctional in a human world. What the hell is destroying us.

I find that all the people I've met who believe autism is "the next evolution" really don't have any grasp on the fundamentals of evolution as a concept. A common misconception is that evolution is some kind of nebulous force that sets us on a fixed, linear path of progress. So if autistic people are "better" than normal people, then hey, that must mean they're going to dominate the human species someday!

Except they won't. Every birth is susceptible to a huge dice-roll of potential mutations, so autistic people randomly popping out of wombs is just our species' SNAFU. What autistic people would have to do to take over this species would be to reproduce at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and really, you could not pick a worse group of people to task with that. Having shitty social skills and being a recluse (as many are by necessity) are real impediments to getting laid, and most autistic people that I've known choose to remain childfree, either because they don't have the urge for parenthood or because they recognize they would be a poor fit for that role. Some are also outright asexual, instead deriving most pleasure from their particular passions. If reproductive success happens, it is by and large in spite of the condition, not because of it.

Perhaps what people are really seeing is the increased integration of people with disabilities with regular society. We're no longer in a spot where such things are detrimental to survival, since there's really quite little pressure to survive in first-world countries. In this sense, I suppose you could say autistic people have improved their evolutionary standing, but so have people with hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, and all sorts of disorders. Until someone figures out how to alter genetics in the womb, I personally think this development is the best thing we could hope for.

 

[Tlazolli]

I find that all the people I've met who believe autism is "the next evolution" really don't have any grasp on the fundamentals of evolution as a concept. A common misconception is that evolution is some kind of nebulous force that sets us on a fixed, linear path of progress. So if autistic people are "better" than normal people, then hey, that must mean they're going to dominate the human species someday!

Except they won't. Every birth is susceptible to a huge dice-roll of potential mutations, so autistic people randomly popping out of wombs is just our species' SNAFU. What autistic people would have to do to take over this species would be to reproduce at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and really, you could not pick a worse group of people to task with that. Having shitty social skills and being a recluse (as many are by necessity) are real impediments to getting laid, and most autistic people that I've known choose to remain childfree, either because they don't have the urge for parenthood or because they recognize they would be a poor fit for that role. Some are also outright asexual, instead deriving most pleasure from their particular passions. If reproductive success happens, it is by and large in spite of the condition, not because of it.

Perhaps what people are really seeing is the increased integration of people with disabilities with regular society. We're no longer in a spot where such things are detrimental to survival, since there's really quite little pressure to survive in first-world countries. In this sense, I suppose you could say autistic people have improved their evolutionary standing, but so have people with hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, and all sorts of disorders. Until someone figures out how to alter genetics in the womb, I personally think this development is the best thing we could hope for.

Truly it's best if autistic individuals who do get married adopt rather than have more kids cursed to a shitty existence.

 

[FuckBitchesGetRiches]

Truly it's best if autistic individuals who do get married adopt rather than have more kids cursed to a shitty existence.

I'm not sure if most autistic people can earn the money required to adopt a child. Being on disability doesn't exactly net you a lot, and there are a shit ton of autistic people who are too incompetent to hold down a job...

I find that all the people I've met who believe autism is "the next evolution" really don't have any grasp on the fundamentals of evolution as a concept. A common misconception is that evolution is some kind of nebulous force that sets us on a fixed, linear path of progress. So if autistic people are "better" than normal people, then hey, that must mean they're going to dominate the human species someday!

Except they won't. Every birth is susceptible to a huge dice-roll of potential mutations, so autistic people randomly popping out of wombs is just our species' SNAFU. What autistic people would have to do to take over this species would be to reproduce at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and really, you could not pick a worse group of people to task with that. Having shitty social skills and being a recluse (as many are by necessity) are real impediments to getting laid, and most autistic people that I've known choose to remain childfree, either because they don't have the urge for parenthood or because they recognize they would be a poor fit for that role. Some are also outright asexual, instead deriving most pleasure from their particular passions. If reproductive success happens, it is by and large in spite of the condition, not because of it.

Perhaps what people are really seeing is the increased integration of people with disabilities with regular society. We're no longer in a spot where such things are detrimental to survival, since there's really quite little pressure to survive in first-world countries. In this sense, I suppose you could say autistic people have improved their evolutionary standing, but so have people with hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, and all sorts of disorders. Until someone figures out how to alter genetics in the womb, I personally think this development is the best thing we could hope for.

To me, almost all the people I've seen who say that kind of thing come off as supremacists. It's really creepy, not to mention ass-backwards. As you said, a lot of autistic people are asocial, which reduces the chance of a meaningful relationship that could help with raising a child. Additionally, some of the sensory issues that come with it could make it difficult to take care of a baby; you've got all sorts of sounds, smells, and demands coming from one and it might be overwhelming to the autistic person. Killing a child in a fit of autistic rage isn't exactly conducive to prosperity.

I've always kinda wondered about the asexuality and autism thing - mostly because I'm not sure a lot of autistic people really understand relationships. Then again, I make an effort not to interact with people that are noticeably autistic, especially on places like WrongPlanet where a lot of them are supremacists or like "FUCKING NTS REEEEEEE".

 

[Philosophy Zombie]

In all seriousness? My younger brother has autism and he drives me up the fucking wall with how he uses it to excuse shitty behaviour- don't expect to have a normal conversation with him because he will end up diverting it to talk about Persona, Magic the Gathering, Jojos Bizzare Adventure, Undertale, Yugioh 5D or Gods of Egypt- those are the only things he ever wants to talk about. He'll talk about these things for hours on end, as if he thinks he's some YouTuber that rambles on for hours like an autistic.

He's also rude and never lets other people talk in a conversation, making him extremely obnoxious to most people (even his friends find this trait of his to be infuriating). His lack of social awareness is stemmed from the fact that he will not interact with any non-autistic; because Normies won't put up with his nonsense like other autistics do.

I was so glad when my supervisors stopped giving him hours at work because of his need to argue with coworkers on just about -anything- and -everything- no matter how minor it is; he hasn't been given hours for two months now and is only just starting to figure out that the issue is him, nor other people.

At one point he flipped out on the supervisor over the positioning of a fucking desk! Then there was the time he lashed out at a female coworker over something to do with comic books for not knowing something apparently... Or some shit like that.

Did I mention that he's also 20?

I was diagnosed with aspergers at 14, a term which is falling out of favor. Now they're just "high-functioning" or on the spectrum

Anyway I rejected all treatment and medication, feeling that I was special and my inability to talk to people being just part of my personality and perfectly healthy. Then I became an adult and realized that it's just making life harder. So now I smoke a lot of weed.

Still don't have any friends, but I code for a living now and I don't care.

Anyway the best way to describe being on the spectrum is having a sort of "mind-blindedness". One's social decisions are determined by their understanding of what other people are currently feeling. But when everyone looks like a blank entity then it becomes impossible to know how to act. I feel bad for most lolcows because they're literally incapable of figuring out what other people are seeing or thinking. But they don't want to do anything to compensate, there's a ton of literature spelling out social thinking to people who need to be told things like "OTHER PEOPLE HAVE THOUGHTS IN THEIR HEADS"

But each generation is getting more self-centered and mentally isolated than the last. Now I think social thinking should be a standard subject.

Nobody involved with autism seems to realize how crippling and disempowering a lack of social interaction can be until it's too late and their son is either just a socially crippled manchild with no money to his name who plays video games/watches anime all day, or continually tries forging at some autistic project only to have it blow up in his face or burn out from either being incompetent or not being used to expending any sort of effort on things. Some practice with socialization can go a long way for any autistic, especially below the age of 25-30.

I think the moral here is don't cover up autism with money and material things and video games or it'll ferment into something untamable. The most extreme example of that would be how Borb Chandler raised Chris. I'm sure we all know that story, though specifically taking Chris out of the special needs classes and masking his autism with toys and games caused that autism to ferment rather than being managed and now we have the whole story of Chris to laugh, cringe, and feel bad about.



Autism, because that word is derived from "auto" meaning "self", has a fuckton of variables that vary from person to person, so of course researchers would think that's a lot of work. Some genetic and environmental variables could be at play with how each individual autistic person functions which could either simplify or complicate things.

It's tough to gauge autism because there are so many different variations of it that it's impossible to give them anything besides broad generalizations (either "high-functioning" or "low-functioning"). One person may be somebody who has managed to have some semblance of success in the real world (i.e. can hold down a job) while another may be someone who can't even communicate verbally.

Part of me believes that even with autism, certain social mores like general and proper conversation, situational etiquette and avoiding social tics can be learned with intensive practice and exposure (in real-life situations, not forced conversations). We are in a society based on communication, and if you can't communicate properly or effectively, you are pretty much doomed. Autistics, even the high-functioning ones, have a staggeringly high rate of being either unemployed or underemployed, which makes them nothing more than economic leeches.

Communication should be stressed a LOT more in therapy, not just for any potential social benefits, but for their long-term futures as well.

Talking about aspies openly admitting to crapping themselves, it's common because they have no filter and usually can't be taught that no one wants to hear it. I recently met one who constantly talks about shitting him/herself and whenever it happens I have no idea what to say so, I just try to change the topic to one of their special interests.

In my opinion, mild autism has more to do with upbringing than anything else. Because the human brain is very plastic (even to some degree in old people), a lot of this autism shit could be avoided or treated if parents had the willpower to engage with their kids in a constructive way at all times, but I realize hardly anyone has the time or patience for it. The next best thing might be injecting spergs with chemicals like Oxytocin (the hormone responsible for love/human bonding), which might make them to bond correctly with others and develop a normal sense of empathy and self-awareness in relation to others. Medicating them with psychiatric drugs and other powerful drugs is just an attempt to keep the spergs more quiet an docile for the parents or caretakers - nothing more.

I recently finished interning at a special school for autistic people in the city. They don't have a long summer break until the middle of August, so I was able to go there for around a month and a half and observe/interact with these kids.

To be honest, one of the things that struck me was how wildly varied the kids were. Some of the kids legitimately didn't belong in that environment, and were possessive of social skills basically identical to a normal child their age. With a bit of extracurricular help and therapy, those kids could have really thrived in a normal environment.

But on the other hand, there were kids that were so severely afflicted that they lacked even the basic motor skills or reflexes of most people. Some of the non-verbal students really did make me feel bad, especially when I would talk to the teachers about them.

The truly unfortunate thing about Autism and Asperger's is how many of the symptoms are preventable with the right help. Some kids are, unfortunately, lost causes from the start. The really really shitty situations, though, are those where the kids started out perfectly fine, but through parental neglect or outright abuse turned into these lost causes, when had they received help at a very early age, they would have been perfectly fine. To give an example, I met one child, around 14, who constantly walked on their tiptoes. Sometimes they would accidentally step on the balls of their feet. If this happened, they would scream and jump, almost, back onto their toes.

I asked their handler (each class had one or two kids with staff around them 24/7, and this child was one of them) why this was, and the handler told me it was because of this child's upbringing. When the child was very young, they saw someone walking on their tiptoes in a cartoon, and they decided to start walking on their tiptoes all the time. The child's parents, who didn't understand the child's condition, let them do this for a little, then asked them to stop. Being a 5 year old at the time, the child threw a tantrum, and their parents sheepishly allowed the child to continue walking like this.

Fast forward a couple of years, the muscles in the child's foot had atrophied completely, since they only walked on his toes, and the child was essentially crippled for life, as the only way they knew to walk was on their toes. Attempting to walk normally would cause extreme pain to the child. The handler, in speaking to me, told me that the thing that made him the angriest in life was seeing these cases of children who could have been almost normal, but, because of poor parenting in some form, were permanently altered in a negative way.

Because of this, I think that a large part (not all of it, but a large part) of the behaviors we see as "autistic" are not unpreventable behaviors. Even someone like Chris, I believe, is not a product of autism, but rather of the personality issues of the deranged, unfit parents he was raised by.

To end this on sort of a lighter note, on the last day of school, each class was thrown a surprise pizza party, and several of the students in one of the classes made me cards. One touched me especially.

Spoiler: A Card (large image)

View attachment 125579

I find that all the people I've met who believe autism is "the next evolution" really don't have any grasp on the fundamentals of evolution as a concept. A common misconception is that evolution is some kind of nebulous force that sets us on a fixed, linear path of progress. So if autistic people are "better" than normal people, then hey, that must mean they're going to dominate the human species someday!

Except they won't. Every birth is susceptible to a huge dice-roll of potential mutations, so autistic people randomly popping out of wombs is just our species' SNAFU. What autistic people would have to do to take over this species would be to reproduce at a much higher rate than the rest of the population, and really, you could not pick a worse group of people to task with that. Having shitty social skills and being a recluse (as many are by necessity) are real impediments to getting laid, and most autistic people that I've known choose to remain childfree, either because they don't have the urge for parenthood or because they recognize they would be a poor fit for that role. Some are also outright asexual, instead deriving most pleasure from their particular passions. If reproductive success happens, it is by and large in spite of the condition, not because of it.

Perhaps what people are really seeing is the increased integration of people with disabilities with regular society. We're no longer in a spot where such things are detrimental to survival, since there's really quite little pressure to survive in first-world countries. In this sense, I suppose you could say autistic people have improved their evolutionary standing, but so have people with hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, and all sorts of disorders. Until someone figures out how to alter genetics in the womb, I personally think this development is the best thing we could hope for.

I'm not sure if most autistic people can earn the money required to adopt a child. Being on disability doesn't exactly net you a lot, and there are a shit ton of autistic people who are too incompetent to hold down a job...




To me, almost all the people I've seen who say that kind of thing come off as supremacists. It's really creepy, not to mention ass-backwards. As you said, a lot of autistic people are asocial, which reduces the chance of a meaningful relationship that could help with raising a child. Additionally, some of the sensory issues that come with it could make it difficult to take care of a baby; you've got all sorts of sounds, smells, and demands coming from one and it might be overwhelming to the autistic person. Killing a child in a fit of autistic rage isn't exactly conducive to prosperity.

I've always kinda wondered about the asexuality and autism thing - mostly because I'm not sure a lot of autistic people really understand relationships. Then again, I make an effort not to interact with people that are noticeably autistic, especially on places like WrongPlanet where a lot of them are supremacists or like "FUCKING NTS REEEEEEE".

Wow guys you wrote so many paragraphs! More than I would expect from people with a disability that causes stunted verbal abilities.

Thanks for the informative content and posts it helped me learn a lot more about autism I appreciate it a lot.

 

[Hom Tanks]

Wow guys you wrote so many paragraphs! More than I would expect from people with a disability that causes stunted verbal abilities.

Thanks for the informative content and posts it helped me learn a lot more about autism I appreciate it a lot.

Stunted verbal abilities doesn't necessarily preclude decent writing skills. I think @Connor Bible could take some cues from us.

 

[FuckBitchesGetRiches]

Wow guys you wrote so many paragraphs! More than I would expect from people with a disability that causes stunted verbal abilities.

Thanks for the informative content and posts it helped me learn a lot more about autism I appreciate it a lot.

My autism is pretty mild - I was diagnosed with Aspergers but I call it autism because the DSM got rid of Aspergers as a diagnosis.

I've never really had a problem with English, and in school it was one of the subjects I did quite well in; it's mostly math where I started tripping over myself. Incidentally, autistic people are stereotyped as being good at math.

That being said, my parents did help me a lot with my poor social skills so I'm nowhere near as bad as I used to be.

 

[Philosophy Zombie]

Wrongplanet gets a bad rap around here, but I actually have an account there and I believe it can be a legitimately worthwhile resource if you're willing to separate the wheat from the chaff. my username is nca14. what is yours?

 

[FuckBitchesGetRiches]

Wrongplanet gets a bad rap around here, but I actually have an account there and I believe it can be a legitimately worthwhile resource if you're willing to separate the wheat from the chaff. my username is nca14. what is yours?

I can't remember. I tried getting my password back some time ago but I never got it, so either I got some kind of soft ban I wasn't aware of (never got any kind of notification, but I couldn't stand the people acting like non-autistics were the problem and not them so I wouldn't be surprised if this was by design and not default) or the system was broken. I don't have much desire to go back. This was before it got bought out by Autism Speaks, which was an event that I imagine pissed off a lot of people there since there were a lot of them that had some variant of "Autism Speaks doesn't speak for me" in their signature.

Did the autism supremacist idiots ever move on or is that still a problem? I think they came over from Aspergia or a site called something like Autistic Freedom Network.

Oh I remember my username there, but it has some personal information because of the introduction thread. Honestly though, I don't really feel the need to talk about my condition much on forums. I'm not interested in topics such as "I don't why eye contact is a thing or why people gossip? Is this an NT thing?"

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

It's in some sort of a trial phase right now, and results seem promising so far, and even better when combined with therapy, but there's absolutely no long-term studies of exposure to artificial Oxytocin in human adults and children because it's all new. In baby mice, it makes them even more autistic in adulthood, so the same may apply to children, but even if that's true it could be potentially useful for adults. Nasal spray isn't the best method to get a drug in a body, too, so who knows.

https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/can-oxytocin-treat-autism

It seems optimistic, but since autism is something that affects most if not all of the brain and PNS, people should not get their fingers crossed. It might be useful in children or infants with autism that have trouble bonding with their primary caregivers.

The neoteny traits in many autistic individuals supports this could be an evolutionary trait, seeing how domesticated animals, namely mammals, after generations of domestication the offspring turns more child-like, if autistic behavior is evolution, it's a really terrible evolutionary path, being a self obsessed maniac that can't care for or understand other people is backwards and dysfunctional in a human world. What the hell is destroying us.

Maybe in Aspergers, but even then it's a long shot. For this to actually be a positive advantage in natural selection it has to be a trait that increases the production of quality offspring that can allocate a mate. While there are a lot of people on the spectrum that do have children, a lot of them do not. A lot of people hate to mention that a lot of men on the ASD spectrum look a lot more manly than NT males and that a lot of the AS women tend to have more masculine characteristics. Masculine characteristics are not conducive to neoteny.

 

[DripDrop]

At my school/ daycare they weren't competent enough/ too lazy to handle my ADHD (I don't even think it's part of the Autism Rainbow, but I guess it can be considered to have several symptoms similar to common high-functioning autistics), so they either kicked me out of the daycare (and I got kicked out of a few, not just one) or would take me in the "special" classes at regular intervals, removing me from my actual classroom. I remember it being incredibly fucking confusing how I could speak and learn normally (actually being one of the highest-achieving grade wise, but that's not too relevant) and yet I was placed in the class with people who literally had no idea where they were or didn't have the ability to communicate or act for themselves.

What's worse was the isolation and weird looks I felt from the "normies" in my actual class who thought it was weird having one of "those" kids constantly popping in and out to go to the pris- I mean special classroom, and then come back. One particularly cunty girl actually started to say things like "Oh, you can't talk to them like normal people. You have to know how to communicate with them, speak soft and slowly."
So I was especially happy seeing the dumbfounded look on her face when I told her to go fuck herself.

It isn't fun being treated like a fucking zoo animal.

 

[Tlazolli]

a lot of the AS women tend to have more masculine characteristics. Masculine characteristics are not conducive to neoteny.

So that's where enbys come from.

Masculine characteristics are not conducive to neoteny.

Interestingly enough, most of the AS people I know look far younger than they actually are.

 

[H3LLH4MM3R666]

Yeah I'm actually a terrible speaker IRL. Some days go by and I don't use my voice at all. But I got writing awards in junior high and high school, people wanted me to become a writer even though I hate it

I remember it wasn't until I was 17 that I realized that most people don't actually care about video games as much as I do. It was like a grand revelation, suddenly all the countless days I spent trying to figure out a logical reason why people don't want to listen to my Metal Gear Solid theories made sense. No one cared! I became a lot less annoying from then on.

Prior to that it was as if my personal interests were some grand universal constant, what was objectively important were the things that I knew about and the things I didn't know about were objectively trivial.

When people can't fathom what others are thinking, they instead project their own mind-model onto them (thoughts, personality, quirks, etc). It's not even a conscious act, when trying to imagine something unfathomable the mind has to instead go by the next closest thing.

 

[Tlazolli]

Yeah I'm actually a terrible speaker IRL. Some days go by and I don't use my voice at all. But I got writing awards in junior high and high school, people wanted me to become a writer even though I hate it

I remember it wasn't until I was 17 that I realized that most people don't actually care about video games as much as I do. It was like a grand revelation, suddenly all the countless days I spent trying to figure out a logical reason why people don't want to listen to my Metal Gear Solid theories made sense. No one cared! I became a lot less annoying from then on.

Prior to that it was as if my personal interests were some grand universal constant, what was objectively important were the things that I knew about and the things I didn't know about were objectively trivial.

When people can't fathom what others are thinking, they instead project their own mind-model onto them (thoughts, personality, quirks, etc). It's not even a conscious act, when trying to imagine something unfathomable the mind has to instead go by the next closest thing.

It took me until I was 17 to realize nobody cared about my drawings, today I can make conversation on normal things and I outright reject too much nerdism in my life. Imitating normalcy even in the way I dress.

 

[DripDrop]

I personally blame the education and mental health systems in my country for not being able to/ not wanting to develop a better understanding of mental diseases and people afflicted by them. They choose instead to take the ostrich approach to the problem and try and pretend it doesn't exist, shoving "those people" away and out of sight, only taking them out of their prisons to be paraded around to feign concern for reputation and shekels.

 

[MW 002]

I personally blame the education and mental health systems in my country for not being able to/ not wanting to develop a better understanding of mental diseases and people afflicted by them. They choose instead to take the ostrich approach to the problem and try and pretend it doesn't exist, shoving "those people" away and out of sight, only taking them out of their prisons to be paraded around to feign concern for reputation and shekels.

I remember when I was misdiagnosed with autism (only later in life did they realize that I was actually displaying early bipolar symptoms when I had experienced my first manic episode) that I was always taken out of the classroom and put into special education, mainly because I would verbally lash out at school (to be honest, I'm not sure why they didn't call the cops on me when I broke a bunch of windows in the front foyer- or even tell my mom that my behaviour was going to land me in juvenile hall... That was when they gave me the autism/ADHD diagnosis and I was then put on Ritalin for a bit) .

So it's not a stretch to say that I can sympathize with Chris Chan's grievences about special education- it has fucked over a lot of people with undiagnosed mental illnesses. I'm 24 and still struggling to find time to upgrade my Grade 12 because I was simply passed out of pity rather than acheivement.

 

[FuckBitchesGetRiches]

I personally blame the education and mental health systems in my country for not being able to/ not wanting to develop a better understanding of mental diseases and people afflicted by them. They choose instead to take the ostrich approach to the problem and try and pretend it doesn't exist, shoving "those people" away and out of sight, only taking them out of their prisons to be paraded around to feign concern for reputation and shekels.

I don't know where you're from, but here in the good old USA I noticed and still have a lot of resentment for the "ohhh s/he's retarded!" mindset that a lot of people have. People would get offended on the behalf of other people on the spectrum; I use the term 'autistic person' and got told it was offensive even though I have a form of it myself and don't really care either way. They asked "would you like it if people called you an Aspergers girl?" even though that doesn't make sense from a grammatical standpoint. As I've said before, basically they tend to think that all people with an autism spectrum disorder are comorbidly intellectually disabled. Even with exposure to non-ID people, they're usually so scripted that anyone in a program gets treated like that regardless of how severe their disability is.

Spoiler

One of the more unusual ways I've been told in order to be employed is to take advantage of the fact that I'm disabled. I'm not talking about accommodations, but getting into vending events for free on the basis of being a disabled entrepreneur. I can't really agree with that kind of thing, because I don't want strangers offline thinking I'm so incompetent that I need to play the Tard Card to sell merchandise at an event that normally costs maybe 2,000 dollars to get in; if it costs that much, I just won't go. It makes me feel dishonest, and I think it's kinda sad that this kind of thing even crosses people's minds.