Mandrew wrote:

People only came to me when they wanted something computer-related from me.

While I cannot relate to the bullying, this part is certainly something I recognize.
I did have some 'real' friends growing up, but I also found that many people were only interested in using me for computer-related issues (in fact this did go quite far in some instances, where even my own parents were using me to fix computer problems with their friends and relatives. People I didn't really know, and I didn't really want to be there, and certainly didn't want to fix their stuff).
I caught on to that quite fast, and it has left me jaded and cynical in general. I don't trust people that easily. I generally assume people want something from me, unless they prove otherwise. I get especially distrusting when people act just a bit TOO nice.

society just can't deal with the fact we're different.
and the suffering that comes with it more often than not comes from how society treats us as well.

In my child hood, I was beaten and bullied and harassed too, I even experienced a violent teacher. That has NOTHING to do with me having Asperger's Syndrome ! That is just shit happened. I do not downtone mental issues at all, in fact I have lost friends to mental issues, as in they committed suicide. Asperger's Syndrome is real, there is no way around it. Asperger's was a diagnose became it became a "popular diagnose" in the early naughties. Asperger's Syndrome is a "mild" form of autism, but it does not mean it can not be hard. Cause it can, so to those who thinks it is all mumbojumpo and what not. Be happy you have no idea how it feels, cause it is not always a walk in the park. In fact it can be a monumentally fucked up emotional roller-coaster ride. And yes I am well aware of Hans Asperger and of what ill-doings he did.

Never been beaten by those that were supposed to be my school friends. They were not. Yet they kind of made me carry their school bags for them, as they called me a pack horse. That was like 6 bags plus my own. At least I had one friend, yet he broke into my parents house in 7'th grade, stealing my fathers stamp collection and emptying me and my brothers piggy bank. No beating's here, just being squized between a glass swing-door and the wall, while they called it "The picture frame". Else it was just 10 years of being ignored.

brostenen: Be glad you did not experience that hell. Thankfully, it is a long time ago. But my photographic memory, still remembers a lot, thankfully a lot my mind has blocked over the years. But some times I get flashbacks back to the stuff. Hence the reason having such a great memory can be both a blessing and a curse. So yeah it can be a bitch. I could tell some serious scary stories, but naah , this is not something we need to dabble in here.

mothergoose729 wrote:

For me, just about every conversation I have feels like I am working from an script or elaborate flow chart. I have strategies for different contexts with different kinds of people. As my social skills have improved, I feel like I have really just gotten better at interpreting the background context and expectations, and I am only really learning to apply my social strategies better. It doesn't feel very intuitive at all. It is actually extremely mentally taxing and I don't particularly like to do it. Strangely enough though, because I am a human and crave social contact, I need to feel at least some what connected to other people or I get anxious and depressed. As I have developed a report with the people I work with, it has gotten a lot easier. It doesn't always feel like an elaborate math puzzle in my head that I have to compute in the background while also attempting not to seem like an alien.

This is me, like exactly. You tend to notice that socially-capable people do well, and it's enviable. So, I started to study rules of engagement in various social situations, and practiced mimicry of strategies that seem to work. It's exhausting, but like you, it's also necessary to me to not feel shut-off from the world.

I think part of it is just being an intelligent person. I hope this doesn't come across as boastful -- I don't believe that I am egotistical at all. But, I think when you're generally perceptive, and have mental capacity and skills that are at least somewhat significantly higher than average, it can be a really lonely world. Everyone else seems to exist only on the surface, and it's rare to find someone that can hold a conversation of any depth. I would imagine many here can relate. I don't know if it's just the introvert in me, or that I always need a challenge to avoid getting bored, but I loathe so-called elevator conversations.

We're both aware of the weather, thanks. Either tell me something real about you -- then, I'm all in, because unguarded honesty is fascinating -- or man would I love to get deeeeep in the weeds of how to efficiently translate between ASCII and Unicode on an embedded platform with limited storage and memory. Any takers? No? OK, you guys carry on about sports-ball, and I'll just mentally calculate how large an AT case I can fit under my desk without getting in the way of my feet. I couldn't care less who got a Grammy, but I am extremely curious about the pinout of this mystery connector on the bottom of my NES.

No apparently not diagnosed but I suspect I do have it as I am constantly coping with social interractions that do not come naturally to me (self-censoring) and I do get overwhelmed and tire easily in busy environments, but I DO have severe mental illness due to balding as a teenager and my growth stopped at age 13, max height: 5'7. This is something I can never get past and can not overcome, I can't 'grow any taller' so that's it I'm done.
Pure suifuel.
Also in my apartment building I know a guy that is 'disabled' due to 'aspergers', yet he's 6'2 and has a 'lil qt wife; whilst I don't have one (also he has a social life schedule that is full).
It's verging on this level of BS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XQrZVssapA. The comments there are rope fuel also, 'my boyfriend has aspergers'. IMO disqualified from having aspergers if you have a normal, hot girlfriend. Also disqualified from having it as is clearly a social super star, successful youtube channel and goes places and socialises normally. Anyone else seeing a problem with this?

I should be classified as disabled due to being genetically inferior and sub-human statured, but apparently society isn't willing to address these things and in fact it's one of the few things still acceptable to mock and denigrate and discriminate against someone for. This is very real despite of the constant gaslighting of non-Chad heighted people, where it's happening but you are mocked and told you are horrible person if you point out that it's happening. The advise from perfectly formed and endowed people to 'work on your personality', 'go to the gym' or 'take more showers / get a haircut' is straight up abuse at this point.

It looks to me like neurotypicals are masquerading as 'whatever syndrome', probably to get that disability money or as yet another way to mog people that do have a syndrome by showcasing 'look at me I have this syndrome but I am perfectly normal and capable, look I have a wife and job blah blah.' This looks like an infiltration and attack on disabled people to me, but what do I know?
If I was the psychologist determining who has what, there would be A LOT of people deemed mis-diagnosed and reclassified as perfectly able maybe diagnosed as a pathological liar instead.

SirNickity wrote:

This is me, like exactly. You tend to notice that socially-capable people do well, and it's enviable. So, I started to study rules of engagement in various social situations, and practiced mimicry of strategies that seem to work. It's exhausting, but like you, it's also necessary to me to not feel shut-off from the world.

I think part of it is just being an intelligent person. I hope this doesn't come across as boastful -- I don't believe that I am egotistical at all. But, I think when you're generally perceptive, and have mental capacity and skills that are at least somewhat significantly higher than average, it can be a really lonely world. Everyone else seems to exist only on the surface, and it's rare to find someone that can hold a conversation of any depth. I would imagine many here can relate. I don't know if it's just the introvert in me, or that I always need a challenge to avoid getting bored, but I loathe so-called elevator conversations.

We're both aware of the weather, thanks. Either tell me something real about you -- then, I'm all in, because unguarded honesty is fascinating -- or man would I love to get deeeeep in the weeds of how to efficiently translate between ASCII and Unicode on an embedded platform with limited storage and memory. Any takers? No? OK, you guys carry on about sports-ball, and I'll just mentally calculate how large an AT case I can fit under my desk without getting in the way of my feet. I couldn't care less who got a Grammy, but I am extremely curious about the pinout of this mystery connector on the bottom of my NES.

I am not even sure if it is necessarily intelligence. There are many very intelligent people I know that I have a really hard time talking to. I think for me, I have a hard time engaging with anything that doesn't' get me intellectually excited. When people talk about the minutia of their lives (what they did, what they are going to do, what home project they have going on, ect) I have a really hard time following along. I know they are just trying to tell their stories and relate to me, so I do my best to engage with them and be polite. Sometimes, after exchanging enough pleasantries, we can move on to topics of more substance, but often times the conversations just sort of fizzles out there. I fight the urge to to daydream, smile, and then go about my other (perplexing) social rituals.

If have a much easier time with it if they pepper in some interesting observation, or hypothesis about life or people in general, or even something technical about a topic that I am not familiar with. Not everyone is prepared to have a conversation like that though, and there is nothing worse than launching into a philosophical perspective and just getting back blank stares and uncomfortable body language.

The people I meet who are like myself are often the same. They avoid social situations because they find it exhausting, but about the right topics they can talk for hours and have delightful conversations. It is for these reasons that I identify somewhat with high functioning autism. I don't think I meet the diagnosis, but I do feel like people who are autistic are more like myself than I am like many other people... if that makes sense.

I have a small tip. Perhaps most of you all know it too. Yet for those that don't, then this is a nice tip.
On Netflix, there are this show/serie called Atypical. It is quite fun.

EDIT:
Yesterday I attended at this one day crash course in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It is a special one, aimed at parent, that have children that are on the spectrum. Yes, I passed it on to both my children. Yet the class/course was a rather good one. It was free and was provided by the public health sector. We went through stuff like what is ok to do and what is a big no-no. How to talk to a child on the spectrum and how a person on the spectrum see and experience the world. At one point, they told us, that it is good to know all these things, as our children see the world differently. And I was like "And what if the parent are the same? 😁 😁 Well... I am way better off than my children. Yet it was things like we need to plan the world for the children, because they can not do it or struggle doing it. And if the parent struggles with these things as well!. Naaa.... I am all good, as I get help from my woman in planning stuff.

We saw a couple of film's that can be found on youtube as well, that are created to show NT's how a person on the spectrum might percieve and see the world. I found the following one a bit exaggerated though, yet the reason might be, that the message is better to understand this way. Neighter me nor my children have it this hard. Yet here is the video... (It is in Danish) However it explain things in a way that explains a few questions on how it is to be on the spectrum.

mothergoose729 wrote:

<everything>

I'm relating to all of this! What I've accepted after years of being told I'm antisocial (and being ashamed of my social shortcomings) is that I'm just an introvert. It's an actual thing, and not a bad thing. My wife and I are friends with a family at my kids school and they're a household of extroverts - the father organises 'mens events' such as lawn bowls, golf days, etc. I felt obliged to go to the first one and oh man was it hard work. Large groups of strangers + organised sports = pain. I had to take the following day off work to recover I was so exhausted and I've refused to go ever since.

The extrovert family friends simply can't understand and undoubtedly think I'm antisocial but fuck it, I'd only be going to make them happy. I need to save my limited capacity for human interaction for those people that really matter, and I won't feel ashamed of that dammit.

badmojo wrote:

I need to save my limited capacity for human interaction for those people that really matter, and I won't feel ashamed of that dammit.

I can relate to that a lot.

even hanging out with people I like and enjoy to be around can be hard work sometimes.

According to my shrinks I might have it as well, but I'm waiting for a deeper evaluation, probably by a neurologist.

derpmochump wrote:

This is something I can never get past and can not overcome, I can't 'grow any taller' so that's it I'm done. Pure suifuel.

Silly Inkwell. Just move to SEA and marry a noodle so you can ascend.

An interesting thing is Formula 1, I think. I have been following Formula 1 from a young age. I think it's a proper 'nerd' sport: it's all about high-tech, strategy, split-second decisions, teamwork, skill, management etc.
For years, I was in a small 'bubble' of people who were into Formula 1, and these people generally were properly interested, and understood the intricacies of the sport.
But a few years ago, Max Verstappen joined the scene. And since then, a lot of people started following Formula 1.
But they do this at a very superficial level. They have no clue about the strategies etc involved. And they don't care about the sport in general. They just want to see Max Verstappen do well. If he retires, they switch off.

I found that I can't relate to these people, because they talk about Formula 1 as if they're talking about the weather. It's all very superficial, merely stating the obvious.
When I watch a race, I try to follow EVERYTHING. I try to predict who has to come in for a pitstop when, and what tyres they will switch to, and what strategy they're on. Likewise, when a safety car occurs, I try to predict things, and then check what actually happens.
Other people don't even seem to get the basic concept that someone may not be running in front at a given time, but you know they will get in front eventually, because the cars ahead are on a different strategy, and still have to pit.
These people will say: "Well, there hasn't been a single overtake, how boring!", while I have experienced the same race as an extremely tense one, because the strategies could go either way, and there was a constant threat between the front-runners.

I suppose the same happened with computers. When I started with computers in the early 80s, it was mostly for people who were really into computers, and knew what they were doing. These days everyone has a computer, and a lot of people barely know how to send an email.

Has little to do with Asperger perhaps... but in general, a lot of people are just too clueless to have any meaningful conversation with.

Fucking love your original post, i struggle with depression and anxiety. I do have that same weird hobby, but i am not a garden variety nerd. But i also hate violence and agression, and Douchebag/Neandetrhal type peole, and the world is full of them. 🤣

Anonymous Coward wrote:

A show of hands please. How many have it, or think they have it? What kind of "normal" people would be into this hobby anyway? […]
Show full quote

A show of hands please. How many have it, or think they have it? What kind of "normal" people would be into this hobby anyway?

I seem to meet the criteria for it, but never had an official diagnosis. Once a doctor thought I might have a mild case and gave me some medication to control anxiety, but after a few weeks I tossed them in the trash because they made me super unproductive and an emotionless zombie. (the pills for anxiety are the same as the ones for depression).

Personally, I think Asperger's "Syndrome" is just a bunch of bullshit. It's really just a personality type. A geeky one at that.
What exactly does "Neuro Typical (NT)" mean anyway? Most people just seem kind of demented as far as I can tell. I think the medical community should come up with a good syndrome for over-extroverted jackasses who are obsessed with team sports and belittling those who are physically weaker than themselves. Let's call it "Jock Douchebag-Syndrome"...or maybe "Aggressive Neanderthal-Syndrome". It should be classified as a Retard-Spectrum-Disorder (RSD), and the treatment should be weekly estrogen suppositories.

I'm not prone to depression at all, but I had a hell of a lot of anxiety before I moved to Asia. The original version of my post talked more about that, but I deleted it because I didn't want to open myself up to too much criticism.

mothergoose729 wrote:

I am not even sure if it is necessarily intelligence. There are many very intelligent people I know that I have a really hard time talking to. I think for me, I have a hard time engaging with anything that doesn't' get me intellectually excited.

I would like to believe this. I tend to feel that everyone has their strengths, we just don't always know how to appreciate and capitalize on them. Still -- I can't quite explain to myself, with any degree of satisfaction, how people can remain content to connect on such a superficial level unless they're just not aware of or capable of anything more. It's like being entertained by a movie where the only thing that happens is someone slips on a banana peel. You'd have to be daft for that to be sufficient to stimulate your intellect. I would love to know what I'm missing, because it's pretty depressing to think that "most" people just aren't that bright. Not to mention, we as a whole seem to be capable of quite a lot, so it's rather unlikely that everything we have is the result of a sea of dummies with a handful of uber geniuses carrying the torch for everyone else. Visionaries and leaders, sure, but someone's gotta be doing the work. Maybe this is off-topic, just feels like a puzzle that I haven't been able to crack yet.

My take on the original post is that the proliferation of diagnosed syndromes, disorders, deviations from the "normal" and so forth, is probably tightly correlated with the fact that we (as a species) are increasingly living in an environment that's incompatible with what evolution has hardwired us to - not just physically. More recent contributing factors also accelerate this, like how "norms" themselves are in a constant state of flux, and how individual behavior is being increasingly regulated/scrutinized by one's surroundings. Adaptability has its limits.

SirNickity wrote:

Not to mention, we as a whole seem to be capable of quite a lot, so it's rather unlikely that everything we have is the result of a sea of dummies with a handful of uber geniuses carrying the torch for everyone else. Visionaries and leaders, sure, but someone's gotta be doing the work.

That's because we're mostly living on past achievements, stemming from times when being a "dummy" was less well-rewarded (either in a social or a hereditary sense), self-responsibility wasn't just "for suckers", and living solely to gorge personal desires and selfish gains was at least somewhat frowned upon. Shoulders of giants, etc. etc.

Doing the work doesn't take much when you compartmentalize and specialize everything to bits, then make the aforementioned work into the total sum of the average person's life, so that nobody is asked or required to see even an inch beyond it.

I can't speak for the topic except every time I see that word I think of the South Park episode. 😉

As far as people with issues go....

Highly detail oriented. I've been troubleshooting my whole life so I see that all parts make a whole. Most people aren't like that and get annoyed which annoys me because their laziness involves more work for me and even worse when I'm part of a project and I'm not the one in charge so the laziness tends to bite us in the ass later. Story of my life.

Simplicity. I buy the bare minimum and furnish bare minimum. No crap sitting on cabinets or dressers. Clutter annoys me and it's extra work down the road.
Highly organized. Not OCD level or anything just that I'm known for it. So much so that if someone notices I have a couple of items out they comment on it.

Social. People annoy me and always have. Crowds stress me out and give me headaches. I watch people so I know what I need to do to avoid them or not annoy them. It took me a lot of time to learn the flowchart game when engaging in conversation. I've figured out over time the random BS conversation you need to engage in to not seem strange and at what interval. This takes ALOT of effort so most of the time I'm in "minimum effort" mode and then if I have to go "full effort" then I do so and then I'm done. i.e. Show up to the meeting, party etc for 15m act normal (aka think Dexter) and then get the hell out. I've always been confused why people do the things they do which I eventually figured out that people do this crap to give their meaningless lives meaning instead of doing anything meaningfull. Award ceremonies, Religion, Rituals, etc all convoluted BS. People do notice that I'm off but I don't give a crap. I live alone and always have. I don't feel like I'm missing anything since the alternative would be excruciating. I don't play multiplayer since I don't condone idiocy and I don't like my time wasted. Most time spent multiplayer was back in the BBS and LAN gaming days.

Anxiety - My dad takes medication for this but he doesn't like the effects so he doesn't. I haven't been diagnosed or anything but when I was a kid I would repeat actions and as an adult I catch myself doing so at times and stop myself.

Risk - I'm pretty risk adverse and take a lot of time to make the right decision which most people do not do. People comment on this. I would comment back but then I wouldn't have very nice things to say heh. So no sports or crazy athletic activities (Just standard running and walking) . I do make quick decisions when it doesn't matter so I'm not like that guy on the Good Place.

I've been the same way since I was a kid and I'm not young but still have a lot of years left assuming I don't get hit by a bus.

Detail,Simplicity likely came from my upbringing since I didn't have much growing up and I'm a loner so spent a lot of time reading and figuring things out
Anxiety,Social issues are both nature and nurture since I'm sure there is a genetic component but also I moved around a lot and parents didn't do much with me for socialization since they both worked. My younger brother and sister don't have these issues but they never moved around a lot and I was the test case so they knew what to do with them.

All this to say that I don't think I'm much different than anyone else we are all messed up in different ways. It's the "normal" people you have to watch out for.

Where can I get one of these flowcharts to help navigate around all the BS conversations started by extroverts?