b9 wrote:
i have only been here for 5 months, so i can not tell whether the forum has changed.
i see no real particular personality in the forum. each thread has a life of it's own, and different posters of different ilks tend to coalesce in different threads.
i find the forum dauntingly large. it is so large that my efforts to post are like a a mouse sneezing in the grass beside a drag car race.
it is like trying to yell my ideas from the top spire of the empire state building at the passing traffic on the streets below.
(if that renders a notion of superiority then i will rephrase) it is also like trying to scream "i've got something interesting to say" at a jetliner passing overhead at 40,000 ft...it just sails on and on and then it is gone.
even now i am aware i am putting too much effort into my post, but i can not be brief because i need to tie up all my points.
there are so many posts here, that people scroll to the interesting people's posts to read them only, as they have not the time to read posts like mine which get in the way.
if the forum was quieter, then posts like mine would be read more often.
it is not a fault of the forum or the members. it is a matter of population.
if someome goes to a rock concert alone, no matter how wildly they flail their arms, they will not be noticed or remembered by any of the people who went to the rock concert to watch the band.
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people change their avatars too much. i do not remember posters by their name, but their avatar picture.
if a person has a new avatar, i will not recognize them and scroll past them.
i always read posts by avatars i recognize like that "sonny hammond" kid out of skippy, or that girl who is sitting down on the lawn with a hat on, or the person with the black panther head ...etc. i do not remember their names, so if they changed their avatar, i would scroll past them obliviously.
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another matter is that there are some people with subconscious sexually motivated biases.
for example, if a girl who is pretty (proven by a video or some other validation) posts something banal like "omfg" in response to a thread, then they often are quoted and replied to ad nauseum by males who seem to think the girls comment was almost an utterance from heaven.
yet when average people post interesting thoughts, they never are responded to by those males.
i see that as rather like the NT's all around me in life.
it is a shame that people can say they are officially diagnosed in their profile without any proof. there are many people who would not care about lying to attain a false status.
if those pretenders (p1) attain a following of other pretenders (p2) who believe they (p1) are really AS (because they (p1&p2) have no clue as to authenticity), then the real AS people fall into the minority, and are swamped.
i mean.. if there are mostly NT's here who have fooled themselves into thinking they are AS, and they have the "floor" (the respected attention of the majority of members), then their imaginary descriptions of the "AS state" will attain benchmark status, and those like me who really are AS, will fail to achieve the benchmark set by an NT imposter (im-poster).
not fair.
like ants in the innocently unguarded sugar.
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on this forum i feel eccentric and out of place.
i feel as if i am not saying the right words to convey what i think.
i feel that the unwritten rules of this forum are beyond my ability to understand.
i feel like i can not be woven into the social fabric of this forum.
all those things point to one fact.
and that fact is that this forum is predominantly comprised of NT's.
too long. sorry.
I wasn't actually going to post any more today, but I had to respond to your post b9, because you bring up some really interesting (and also really important) issues that should be addressed.
Everything you have said sounds fairly accurate, however personally I'm not sure it's an indication that the site has turned NT. I think that it has more to do with population than anything. Once a population gets past a certain size, it's impossible to hear the voice of every single person in it. Thus, people are forced to choose, and logically some people will come to the fore over the others for various reasons.
The part that very interestingly does strike me as rather NT about it all, is your observation that the voices which have come to the fore are actually people who are physically attractive (the whole pretty girl thing) over people who have the most intellectual posts. I've noticed this in reference to one member only, whom I actually quite like, but no others. Although if it's happening with one member, it's quite likely it come be more widespread.
Another idea I wanted to bring up is that possibly all this NT style heirachy/invisible social rules (will go into specifics here next paragraph), etc, that you seem to be seeing, could be coming from aspies who (after a lifetime of being taught to imitate NT's, and had rote learning, and social skills learning, shoved down their throats from all those around them) are acting the way they have been brought up to act, in an imitative NT fashion.
Which brings me to my next point. As one of those "NT boot camp aspies" (as I will call us), I have been thoroughly brainwashed my entire life that the NT style social communication is the only correct form of communication, and it was learn and apply this form of communication, or be disciplined (in the same way that a child is taught not to steal, etc). Thus it is likely (although I have no idea if this is true or not) I, and other NT boot camp aspies, start trying to apply at least some NT social rules to every conversation we have without even realizing what we are doing.
"i feel that the unwritten rules of this forum are beyond my ability to understand.
i feel like i can not be woven into the social fabric of this forum. "
In this, I know what you are talking about, and I have observed it (from a much more comprehending viewpoint) myself. To me, someone who has been forcibly trained her entire life to become NT and have any AS tendencies snuffed out, I see the NT social fabric of this forum as a poorly attempted imitation of the real thing, by people who are (again subconsciously) trying to imitate something they don't really understand themselves, with minimal success. Although the success is minimal, it is still there though, and perhaps enough to throw off many aspies who do not understand NT social cues to the extent that others do.
Saying this, however, does not make me any less of an aspie. By your definition I would come under the "fake aspies who are really NT's" on the site, but there is no doubt in my mind that I am AS. In my youth I was severely bullied, and I was taken to psychologist after psychologist by my parents who couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, until I was taken to a psychologist who finally diagnosed me with AS in 2000 (when AS was pretty much unheard of in mainstream society, at least where I was - I had never even heard it mentioned in my life). Neither my parents or I had heard of AS before, and everything about it fitted like a glove, and still does fit.
On that note, however, it IS possible and indeed highly likely (as the site grows bigger, and AS gets more publicity in mainstream society) that there will be NT's coming to the site who mistakenly think they are AS, or simply people with something different about them trying to find a reason, or a cause of it, and maybe coming to the wrong conclusion. I have every unreserved sympathy for these people, because I know what it's like not to know what's wrong with you, or why you're different (even after I was diagnosed with AS, I actually knew almost nothing about it until I came to WP, as my parents wouldn't talk about it, and we tended to pretend it wasn't there mostly, and I tried my hardest to be normal, only connecting a very few of my abnormalities with AS, so in all essence, the source of understanding was right there in my hands, but it was a shameful thing to be ignored as best one could, and not to be touched on or really thought about).
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Into the dark...
16 Jan 2009, 5:18 am
I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !
I do have a tendency to get drawn into complexities and details, and so often look way too deeply into things. Also that post actually took me 40 minutes to write (believe it or not!) because it was so hard to try and explain what I meant.
