Perceived as annoying -- would like to fix it

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Hi,

I'm someone who people usually perceive as annoying. I have no trouble making friends, NT or aspie. Yet NT people after a while start perceiving me as annoying. I don't know what causes them to perceive it. I'm guessing it may be I can be OCD with some behaviors with no flexibility.

One example was when I was in an anime club. There was a girl there who hated her math class. I jokingly wrote down a math problem as she got sarcastic. I assumed it was all in good fun. After 2-3 more times, she got annoyed, eventually confronting me to stop.

Another example was doing wisecracks during an anime show. Everyone would do wisecracks and I would join in. Yet after a while, people got annoyed with mine. I think I might have been overdoing it, with doing it more in frequency compared to others.

I also joke a lot to make up for my perceived social inadequacy. It is funny at first, but again, I assume overuse causes me to be perceived as annoying, with people becoming first malicious, then withdrawn and ignoring me.

Ironically, since I love psychology and philosophy, I do well in intellectual groups. Discussing serious topics brings out my intellectual side where everyone loves my original analysis. It is only when I'm in geek or nerd clubs that I do bad. I try to engage in the fun like everyone else and somehow come out as annoying.

Has anyone been through this or understand this? Would anyone know of what to do to counteract this or see that I don't overdo things?

Thanks,

Daniel

This can happen to me also. To help avoid it, I try to monitor the pace and rhythm of conversation in a group, then use that to avoid sharing more frequently than others.

I also try to identify the characteristics of the average share. In casual groups each person's contribution is often a single simple sentance; I try to also follow that norm. That can require effort because I normally speak in paragraphs of compound sentences.

All of that background monitoring and self-editing can be burdensome, but I find I often do better in small informal groups when I make the effort.

Jokes have a law of diminishing returns, generally speaking. Knowing when to repeat a joke and, more importantly, when NOT to, is the mark of a truly funny person. It sounds like you tend to kill jokes by overusing them, thus undoing the laughs you got the first time. I'd make yourself a rule: No repeating jokes to the same person or people.

I would advise you stop whatever you are doing when you see someone doesn't like it or got upset about it or if they tell you to stop and don't do that behavior again to them.

As to not overdo things, I wouldn't do that behavior at all since you don't know when to stop.

Everyone can be annoying and not even realize it until it's too late.

We are the most annoying people on the planet. THAT is the major negative and disabling factor of ASD & etc.

It's kind of ironic since we're also the group that tries the hardest to get along with everyone else.

Stop means stop. It doesn't mean "oh, they don't get it. it'll be cooler if I did it again to show them how cool it is". It means stop.

One thing I noticed as well was that I'm more mature when I'm around mature people. I noticed when I surrounded myself with immature people, I would try to please them by being immature and it would only make me come across as annoying. But with mature people, I didn't have to do anything crazy or annoying to get them to like me.