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
