Tempted to leave site

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i don't really have any concrete argument to convince you to stay (truth be told, first and foremost i'm trying to convince myself and trying to understand my own motivations for being here to begin with). but i, for one, wish wp had more members like you. i've been browsing the website for a few days, and i've seen a few of your posts around. regular members with one kind of attitude or another can make or break any group. and i appreciate yours

i get that there'll be plenty of bitter and proudly obnoxious pimple-faced kids and the like trying to find strength in numbers wherever the one common theme is asperger's (or some other kind of "asperger's magnet", like certain games for example), and consequently also at least a few bitter and defensive types struggling to survive the environment. i don't even particularly mean this as a criticism. individuals are to blame for their own attitudes, but, as a collective thing, it's essentially a consequence of the condition itself (the autistic condition, and the human condition as well). people can and do outgrow certain things, but "the community" never will

it's off-putting, but with enough patience and deep breaths i think it's possible to escape the whirlpool and stay neutral and "true to yourself". spotting those who try and manage to do the same, listening to them, and ignoring the rest. some people just want to live and improve their lives and have some meaningful human interaction while at it. it's those people i wish to see, and for sure there are some of those persistent souls who stick around

also i think i can benefit a lot from hearing more from autistic or autistic-like women out there. i think it's no use to "understand women" if it's not women i'd want to meet (and vice-versa, naturally), and i want to understand what kinds of attitudes of my own could benefit me in my pursuit to find "someone like me", what kinds of compromises i should be prepared to make, and which of those compromises i'd be honestly willing to make (or else what's the point, right? better be honest with myself and take responsibility for the consequences)

i know this is just my own thing, my own individual interests. but by saying this i also mean that your presence alone, just by being around and expressing yourself and letting others get to know you a little bit, makes a difference to me in particular, and makes me want to return the favor by being around and expressing myself as well. it's gratifying when i feel at least a little bit like i don't need to be a total cynic all the time. i assume (or at least i hope) that everybody who manages to "just be themselves" (as cliché as it is) has their own "audience" likewise, who appreciates their presence for various individual reasons, even when there's no direct contact and no clear expression of such appreciation

sensitivity is a vulnerability, but not necessarily a weakness. i think people who refuse to understand this deserve to be ignored. or patronized, when ignoring is not an option. all that being said, only you can tell what environments are good for you or not, of course, as well as what moments call for a break. be good to yourself. mourning is never easy or predictable, and i think it makes for a good moment to remember it's okay to be human

patience, and deep breaths. and goosfraba...

i wish good luck to you and i both

I agree you are really nice and it would be sad if you left. Also your avatar picture is really pretty.

This.

And this.

In the past year there seems to have been an increase on WP of petty nastiness, though whether this is a real change or something I notice more as a moderator is not quite clear. If the increase is real I wonder what drives it. Various theories: it could be that other autists are seen as "safe" targets for hostility by some disaffected, angrier autists. I don't recall the level of anger being so fierce in its expression and outbursts before either, though maybe it was. Nor I do I recall in the years past so many people posting like this from the moment of joining, so hostile to anyone who doesn't agree with their point of view.

Is it possible that part of this is the impact of whatever has been happening in "special education" over the past 10-15 years, could it be that maybe this system is somehow producing some exceptionally angry and shamed and stigmatised survivors that they are looking to do to others what has happened to them? Or is it rather that growing up in a culture of stigma toward autism which has been so politicised, so deliberately (it seems) hostile to people on the spectrum, that the "new" nastiness is some kind of imitative behaviour which has been socially learned?


I don't know, it confuses and concerns me. I hope you don't leave WP, OP. You would be missed if you did.

I do think though that special education causes a lot of problems and it could cause this problem but this was very crude to the point. More so then what is necessary but I think being autistic probably didn't make you consider that you are kinda insulting in entire group of people who have been in special education classes. I don't mean this post offensively but I think that special education produces people who are immature and ill equipped to handle life as I saw a lot of homeless youth when I was homeless. So I do agree with you but I think you have to be careful not to make people feel less about themselves for being in special education. Great people can come from bad backgrounds.

Last edited by dcj123 on 17 Jul 2016, 10:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I see where you are coming from.

Be assured that I don't look down on anyone for being in special education, (including my grandson number one). My concern and theorising was more about systematic processes that may be structurally harmful to the people trapped in those processes, (for example are they more readily identified as targets for bullies). However that's a topic for another thread at another time perhaps).

Indeed it is but my point is made so I'll move on. It could be that we have just got more people who are hateful as the site expanded. People are more aggressive on the Internet because there is a sense of anonymity so the more people you invite, the more people you get that think this way. Best I can come up with, the good news is that all the broken people from the special education system will have even more life experience when they finally get "unbroken" because of what the system has done to them. We learn the most from our own painful experiences and we all have them and those experiences are the ones that make us wise.

what i notice here is how the "it's-not-fair syndrome" doesn't seem to be uncommon. that's very much in contrast with the schizoid-themed website i'm coming from, where the typical type of annoying member will declare and insist instead that they are better and better off than everybody else for rejecting social contact (while still whining about life in general, of course). i've read a lot about it, and there is actually no clear distinction between autism spectrum and schizoid personality disorder (even academically speaking), and there's a huge overlap between the two things no matter how they are defined or interpreted. granted, there's more to it, but still, among relatively "high-functioning" people i think the fundamental difference between one thing and the other is perspective and approach

i have absolutely no idea what special education is like in reality, but my skeptical nature tells me it's probably worse than even just ignoring the condition. i imagine that, instead of receiving actual guidance on how to navigate life in a foreign world, kids are probably being taught the modern trope and myth that "you can be and achieve anything you want if you apply yourself", while being explicitly singled out and being shown day after day in practice that something's off about that idea. what would naturally follow to something like that is "i applied myself and did my homework, but i'm still frustrated. who's to blame?". and there's no one to blame other than everybody

political correctness is a social cancer. it's the insidious and passive-aggressive cousin of outright segregation