includedmiddle

Jewish Transbian (Greater Seattle)

Frantically pantomiming behind a one way mirror



shel
@shel

An autistic friend of mine who has lived in the Midwest their entire life was telling me about how Extremely Polite everyone is and I made a comment about how I could never navigate that like I struggled enough with learning tact even in the part of the country most known for being blunt and rude. They told me that the way to handle it is to just always accept all of the niceness at face value and essentially play dumb even when you’ve started to figure out some of the euphemisms and indirect hidden meanings. Because it’s ultimately to your benefit anyway and if they’re putting inordinate amounts of effort into being nice to you to their own detriment then that’s just stupid and not your problem.

Which is such a beautifully autistic solution to a lot of social anxiety isn’t it? Like oh they offered to do something for me but didn’t really want to do it? Well too bad. I’m accepting their offer and they’ll learn not to offer to do things they don’t want to do. Their illogicalness of their behavior is a them problem.

Of course this is also one of those autistic people who lives alone, wants to live alone in the woods forever, does not generally want to be around other people who aren’t Specific Special Exceptions for basically any reason and will go out of their way to avoid people even in common circumstances, and generally does not care if people like them or not.

But like…. Man that’s a lot easier than seriously entertaining dumb thoughts like “nobody actually likes me that much they’re all just feigning enthusiastic love and admiration for me for some reason” which is an objectively ridiculous thought if you think about it for two seconds


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in reply to @shel's post:

I make it a point to tell the people I care about "please speak directly if you have an issue or are trying to get something across to me, because otherwise I will not get it" - and for the people I don't care about? I take your friend's approach. If they offer, if they say complimentary things, it both makes my life easier to take it at face value and annoys the people who want to be jerks that I'm not getting ruffled by their veiled aggression. If you want to be a dick, drop the facade and be a dick where everybody can see it.

And, well, if the people I want in my life can't understand my need to have things stated in direct terms so that we can converse about them openly without an obfuscating layer of misdirection? Maybe I need to reevaluate whether I want them in my life, y'know?

also from the midwest, also came to the same conclusion as your friend. I got lectured by my grandma as a kid for accepting help from the neighbor and I was like, well now I'm gonna keep doing it even harder, if they don't want to help they can stop offering lmao

I’m autistic and grew up in the Midwest and my preference is absolutely just to be polite and friendly in a genuine way and assume other folks are being genuine about it too. It’s like that “what if we build a better world and it turns out to be for nothing” cartoon. It’s still a worthwhile thing to do.

Same. And when I can tell they're being shitty and it's leaking I just switch into having fun playing chicken with their social presentation if the anxiety doesnt get me first.