Why is the site so inactive lately?

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Yes, demanding jobs. Employers actually steal a shocking amount of people's lives -- most days of their lives. The unfair and excessive demands of employers and greedy capitalism-out-of-control leaves insufficient time and energy remaining for other activities in life. Does your life belong mostly to you or to your employer? The answer for the majority of people is that their life is more their employer's property than their own.

For people like me with a family, the unfair demands of greedy employers put me in the uncomfortable position of choosing between my family/kids or a social activity such as WrongPlanet, because I don't have enough time and energy to do both. Pretty soon I'll be forced to ignore WrongPlanet for at least several weeks, because I must prioritize my family over online forums, in-between work. I don't understand why the majority of people are blind to the cruelness and unfairness of modern society even in the "best" countries.

I am aware, and I also know there are other reasons for some men to fear women, too. However, that doesn't make things any safer for me or other women. We can't tell apart those who are as wary of us as we are of them, and even if we could, that wouldn't mean those men would automatically be harmless. For all we know, they could do something out of fear. And of course, it applies the other way around, too.



Number 1 is indeed very bad, and shouldn't be done. However, what I've seen in this forum more is men denying the bad experiences women have had of men. I've been a target of this too. Haven't seen that many recently, but I think that's more because less and less women post in the L&D so there are less women to attack.

Number 2's beginning should be voiced differently, not sure how, but the last sentence is nothing but truth and should be made a rule in L&D and the whole forum, as in people shouldn't be allowed to spread lies like "All women are X", "Most women are Y" etc. Of course, saying "Most women I've met are X" would still be valid since that would tell the person's personal experience. And yes, the rules should apply the other way around, too.



This is actually a good one! I'd like the idea of moderators replacing every message that says stuff like "all men/women are this and that" with this text. And of course, banning members who make many such messages. Seeing that those people actually get consequences would make this forum more approachable.

I agree. That's because fear/anxiety triggers the primitive "fight or flight" response in people. When a man encounters an "unsafe" woman, X% of men choose "flight", meaning they simply leave the woman and cut contact with her. Flight is good because it's no danger for the woman. However the other % of men choose to fight, which does create a potential danger for the woman. This statement also stays true if the genders are swapped.


I agree that the forum would operate better if both genders would acknowledge that both genders have bad experiences with the other gender (or rather bad experiences with people in general regardless of gender).


Occasionally true statements are misused in a harmful manner, and this is an example of such misuse. The statement ("You can't blame all women because of one or two bad eggs.") is obviously the truth, but sometimes this truth is misused, because it's commonly said to a man AS IF he only ever experienced one or two bad eggs, when in reality he experienced many bad eggs.

The sad truth is, more than half of the women I've met were bad eggs, but this is unrelated to their gender, because more than half of the men I've met were also bad eggs. The gender is irrelevant, so the statement should be: More than half of the people I've met were bad eggs.


Most women live on average approx 5 years longer than men. This is a proven scientific fact backed by robust statistical data. It's not discriminatory or prejudicial to say this.

An extreme example of harmful prejudice would be to claim "All women have rape fantasies".
* In contrast, if the claim is "A percentage of women have rape fantasies", then it's not prejudicial, especially because percentages can be tiny and less than 1% such as 0.25%.
* If the claim is "Many women have rape fantasies", then "many" can still mean a tiny percentage of women, because for example 1% of the world population is 80 million people, which is many people.
* If the claim is "Most women have rape fantasies", then the question of whether it's prejudicial depends on whether or not the claim is backed by robust statistical data.

And to be fair to both genders, if X% of women are criticized for having "rape fantasies", then X% of men should also criticized for having "rape fantasies". That'd be an acknowledgement that the problem is not limited to only one gender.

I said "lies", didn't I? Spreading scientifically proven facts and spreading lies are two different things. Former is okay, later is not.

Sure, but it's difficult because how can you expect the forum moderators to know whether everything that people say is a lie or the truth? Every day around the world, millions of normal people accuse truthful people of spreading lies, and vice-versa. Often it takes a long time to research something and figure out what the truth is or seems to be.

True, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that some extremely generalizing claims aren't true, especially if they are made by members who have a history of hate speech.

When you say that, I have no complaints, but I've noticed many examples of other people in society who say the same or similar as you just said, then proceed to label truthful opinions as "hate speech". The common definition of "hate speech" has morphed into:

"Hate speech is anyone's opinion that I particularly hate."

The end result is that, although I agree with what you said, unfortunately it appears that overall the whole concept of banning so-called "hate speech" has harmed society more than helped. Sometimes a good-intentioned plan like this backfires terribly because it ends up being abused by a large number of unethical people. Likewise democracy and communism are good-intentioned systems but ultimately failures rife with corruption and abuse.

Sorry to not follow the direction this thread has taken, but I'd like to reply to the original post.

So I think there are a number of inherent challenges to maintaining lively and civil discussion on an autism web site. For example:

Autism can manifest in different ways. Not everybody has the same experience. One person's posts don't necessarily resonate with the majority of the community. For example, somebody who posts about challenges due to being asexual may actually draw hostility from those who say their autism has deprived them sexually. In contrast, let's say you stand up a site for rape victims. There's going to be a lot more shared experience on that site.

Unfortunately, lowered empathy and theory of mind is very often a legitimate symptom of autism. A lot of us don't really know how to comfort somebody who reaches out for such comfort. It may be obvious why a person is suffering but not what to say to them to make them feel better. Also unfortunate is that NTs tend to feel little sympathy for autistics so they come here but also not a good place to get reassurance because autism.

In addition to the above, some autistic people are quite honestly obtuse in how they express themselves. They say the sort of things that make them unpopular IRL and they don't win friends saying them here either. Being autistic doesn't necessarily make you less vulnerable to seemingly insensitive things another autistic person might say. We do have a much higher tolerance for eccentricity (good) but no particular immunity to being hurt by thoughtless comments. OK so this is somewhat along the lines of the recent comments as this manifests sometimes in remarks some men here make regarding women in general and by "in general" we must include autistic women.

There are basically 3 types of people posting here in the following sense:

1.) People who might or might not be "obviously" autistic IRL but can come across as "normal" so to speak on line. Many such people also have some personal success e.g. being gainfully employed and even having relationships and families.
2.) People whose autism also affects their ability to interact with others in a forum, although they can sometimes come across as conventionally articulate. What I find most unfortunate in that case is that people from group 1.) seem to pile on people from group 2.) especially in political discussions as well as discussions in L&D. Sometimes I feel like jumping in and saying something like "why are you arguing with that person as they are clearly at a disadvantage in their understanding of the world and your witty rejoinders aren't helping anyone except yourself in that you stroke your ego by scoring points against them".
3.) People who are clearly lacking in their grasp of the Real World so to speak, possibly because they've been protected all their live by "caregivers". I only include them because I previously said there are 3 types and so I must mention them. Although I could possibly also include some people who suffer from psychiatric problems. There seem to be quite a few people here with symptoms of schizophrenia and a few seem to be in the category of those who will tell you straight to your face that the government is sending messages to their brain. It's possible they've been prescribed medication that they don't take because either they can't understand why they need to or even that they hear voices telling them not to. I feel very very sorry for those people but have absolutely no idea what to say to them.

As for the OP, all I can say is that, for whatever reason, in the earlier days of WP there was a greater preponderance of group 1.) like for example somebody could post a naughty question in the Adult forum and it would lead to a lively, light-hearted discussion amongst WP members who were perfectly comfortable bantering about sexual topics. Nowadays WP no longer has a critical mass of such people. Maybe those people spend all their time on TikTok. The ones I have in mind have grown older but newer blood has been hard to come by.

I hope my words don't offend many people!

I don't know about it being inactive but I think it's been lovely and peaceful lately

Cemeteries are also peaceful.

I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

There are forums where you get a new post about once every three months or so.

Assuming they're not haunted.

If WP got haunted, who would haunt it? Would it be someone I know, or someone from way back when the site was first formed who I've never even heard of?

Kyle the ghost

I can confirm it is currently being haunted by the site owner, Alex.

He sends an army of spiders to anyone who responds to Babybird.

You've been smoking them funny cigarettes again

lowered empathy is not an autism symptom

theres often comfort and healing in the haven from what iv seen and whenever iv posted there

sometimes people make jerky comments but probably no different to when nt makes jerky comments they just feel like being a jerk maybe cos they are bored or something