DanielW wrote:
There are a lot of reasons that anyone might not pick up on social cues or interpret them correctly. I'd put faking and lying at the bottom of that list - if I included it at all (there is very little proof you could produce that would show that everyone around you is fake or a liar...if you said so openly to most people they would probably call you paranoid or delusional.
I think "faking" and "lying" are loaded words, and that is where the truth is being lost.
There is a really old phrase, used by old farts like me, that says "Go along to get along", and I'm familiar with it because I never have.
Tribal behavior is, inherently, choosing to do something different in order to blend with the tribe. We're primates, and like just about all primates, we're tribal. We change what we say, what we do, what we believe, and how we look according to what our tribe does. This is why people in the same region tend to follow the same faith, dress the same way, have the same language accents, listen to the same music, eat the same food, just about everything you would put inside the word we call "culture".
It isn't dishonest. It's a natural subjugation of self in order to support a tribe.
But ... I have no tribe. Never have. Other Aspies are as close as I get, and I didn't discover that until I was forty. I don't think the same way as neurotypical tribes. I don't find the same things appealing. I don't have the same priorities. That makes me stick out in basically every crowd I join.
It's not fake or dishonest what neurotypicals do. It's just tribal behavior ... but not for my tribe. You'll see very similar symptoms when a person from a radically different and isolated culture comes to ours. They will seem different, a little ridiculous. They miss social queues, interpret language a little too literally ... feel me?