Social Media Garbage

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YippySkippy I think that's a good way to react. That's certainly what I would have done or similar.

I understand the impulse to ignore - it's certainly not the worst reaction. But I personally feel that sometimes it better to point out that something is crazy wrong than to just let it slip, but to do it in a polite way.

It's very easy to click a link and spread misinformation...

I guess it depends on the situation.

Most of the time, if something is ignored, it just goes away.

I'd probably have to make some snide comment about ASD being the "hot cause" these days, and then rub salt in it by pointing out how superstitious people still are about anything they don't have a full explanation (in words of no more than two syllables) for.

Then I'd have to say something about hoping another "hot cause" comes along before people kill me with their attempts at "socially appropriate empathy" (instead of the real thing).

There's a reason that BeeBee doesn't Facebook.

I think your title is right yippyskippy, social media is full of garbage. This may sound awful, but your friend may have been vaguely cruising online, eating a sandwich, thinking about work, seen something with the word "autism" in it and thought "oh must tag yippyskippy, she'll be interested". Then had another bite of sandwich, seen a joke about game of thrones, picked up a text message.....
You get the picture. It may have meant almost nothing to her. I'm not saying that makes any of it right, but maybe you should respond in the same way:
"Oh another dull story about autism. Do I want a cup or tea or not?"

I was at a recent quack fest where the possible link between autism and EMF was discussed and presented as "proven science". The presenter was an individual who claimed to have "cured" one of children by turning off the wireless routers in his house, removing cell phones, getting rid of baby monitors etc. He did slip up when asked about the issue of his family's television viewing.

For once in a while, I kept my big mouth shut, and didn't say a word. I just hoped that my fellow audience would have half of a gray cell a-piece, at the least, and would know that what he was presenting was an as yet "unproven" theory. He also claimed that families that had turned off their wireless routers had seen an "improvement in their children's symptoms" (of autism). Needless to say, all of his evidence was entirely and purely anecdotal in nature.

Interestingly, there is such a theory being discussed (abstract here from PubMed) :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24095003

I wouldn't say this if I were you, especially publicly (you don't want to make your friend appear foolish). But I would pm her and discuss it with her. That is my JMHO.

She may have had good intentions. I know that in pro-cure settings, this type of info is exchanged all the time, and not in an accusing way- it's shared in case anybody else out there is pregnant and wants to avoid autism. I know people who believe vaccines cause autism and despite the fact their kid already got all the vaccines, they're still on a crusade against them because they're trying to inform the world to avoid other people making the same mistake (according to their beliefs). I don't think you should necessarily take it as a personal attack (unless she is known to do stuff like that I guess). That doesn't make it any less wrong though- I'm not trying to justify it. I find those types of articles irritating too.

I think the way you responded was good.

Out of curiosity, did she react to you? (If you don't want to share, that's alright. ).

I posted the link on my own page, not as a reply (though it was a reply) to her post. She didn't respond - it's possible she didn't even see it. But I feel better for having countered in some small way.

That sounds good. I would also have trouble letting something fallacious like that stand.

Interesting discussion.

None of these calculations about her reaction would have occurred to me, I think. If a "friend" posted something like that I would just point out the errors and provide links to better information.

Maybe I would have tried to make it a little positive by saying it's good to mean well, but important to do good and not harm and unfortunately some well-meaning ideas are harmful.

+1
From the title, I actually thought this thread was some kind of anti-FB/Twitter rant. Oh well

Can anyone think of a good term for the kind of behavior that Yippi described in the OP?
Best I can think of right now is "drive-by autism experts".


Well maybe it made everyone in the house pay a bit more attention to what the autistic kids was saying or needing - due to not having all the usual internet distractions?
Oh, and of course anyone who utters something like "proven science" should instantly lose all credibility. The scientific method works by FALSIFYING hypotheses. It's not mathematics, and it's not religion either.

I do the same thing.

One thing that helps me when I start to do this is to remind myself that people very rarely put much thought into what they do. IOW, it is very rarely as much about me as I suspect it is. I also remind myself that ignorant people often do things that they somehow think will be helpful when there is really no reason to think it will be helpful. It's just that they are ignorant, so they don't understand the impact of what they are doing. And when it comes to stuff like this, I remind myself that I do not have the bandwidth to spend time focusing on silliness like this. It's futile wheel-spinning, so I need to let it rest and move on to something that matters.

I didn't see what you were referring to, but I sure hope they remembered to include microwaves in their list of dangerous devices that cause autism. I can imagine that home security systems do, too. You can never be careful enough with these things

I've never heard of anything like that but you can probably name anything that has a diagnosis and you will find some nutjob who thinks everyday objects caused it.

For this guy, I'd ask him how I got it then since they didn't have those when I was a baby. I'm 51. I also had no immunizations because I had allergies and was allergic to the vaccines, so that's shot to hell too. I do think that some vaccines can cause high fevers which can cause brain damage, but they can't cause autism. I think that some kids may have actually had damage from fever or febrile seizures (which are usually harmless as can be but frightening) that was passed off as autism. I also think that since autism shows up around the same time as the shots that it's blamed for a lot of it.

I posted on a thread on FB before where a guy was saying that without a doubt it was the shots. I told him my story and he actually accused my mother and doctors of lying about me not having the shots. Hello, we didn't know I had AS till I was middle age, so why would they lie? He tried to make up some wierd black ops tinfoil hat reason and I called him a nutjob and he blocked me but so what. People who post and believe in these things will never, ever listen to reason until they decide to change their mind. Don't try to reason with them, just tell them to explain adults with autism now.

People are crazy, its best just to ignore those type of people.

I also tend to assess issues on social media in terms of the amount of harm they might do. Realistically, in this case, if everybody goes along with this particular quackery, you'll see less of them on social media

Anti-vaxxers actually put public health at risk, so I do tend to respond to those kinds of posts.

I think what's really bothering you is the underlying abelism of the post: autism is "bad" and someone is at "fault." Depending on how well you know this person, you may want to let them know that posts of this nature actually make things harder for people with disabilities. Here's a good link to respond with if you want to say something in that direction: http://indigowombat.tumblr.com/post/546 ... not-autism

Well certainly do not like that post, and if it bothers you tell them based on your knowledge you are pretty sure the video is false. Otherwise just leave it alone...I mean if she is prone to believing those kinds of things might be hard to convince her otherwise so maybe best just to not talk to her about psychology related topics.

I mean you can try and tell them it is mis-information, then again people post all kinds of stuff on facebook...I don't even know if they even look at things in depth before clicking the 'share' button.

I think that's a great term for them.