List one NT thing you do not understand.

Post Reply New Topic

Parties

All of them.

Drivers which let you go first when they have priority.

I bike a lot, and there's a lot of cycling paths here, which occasionally intersect with main roads. Usually, cars have priority here. So when I approach one, I slow down, wait for the oncoming car to pass....only to see them stop and let me go first. Then I have to speed up again, and they have to accelerate, and both of us ended up going slower than we would have normally because they wanted to be nice, traffic rules be damned.

Cars driving straight through pedestrian crossings without stopping at the lights.
Sometimes cars will narrowly miss pedestrians who are trying to cross.
Other times, cars will zoom up to the pedestrian crossing, be stopped by a red light and will impatiently rev their engines/beep their horns at the poor pedestrians trying to cross.

Pedestrians who don't "wait for the little green man" and cross the crossing in a chatting group, straight into the path of oncoming traffic. The pedestrians are often chatting/texting on their handheld phones and are paying attention to their friends rather than the road. Perhaps some of these pedestrians are under the misapprehension that if they all keep together like a herd of zebras, there will be safety in numbers when they cross a road.

It seems paradoxical that some cars will stop to let a pedestrian cross a road, but won't stop when there are pedestrians on a pedestrian crossing.

Bizarre.

Tailgating

how one of the "hallmarks" of AS is unknowingly doing / saying rude things, yet there seem to be lots of rude things that are perfectly acceptable behavior if someone else is doing it. things like not returning phone calls / emails when the answer is no, leaving someone to just wait & deduce it for themselves.

basically i think "being rude" is perfectly acceptable if it's a particular (apparently tacitly agreed-upon?) common rude behavior. unless it's an aspie being rude, then it's a symptom of a problem.

i never, ever, ever will understand this.

i always struggled to grasp the almost hidden 'system' that most people seem to have when packing groceries and hanging out laundry in particular.

when i was younger and went grocery shopping with my dad i would always get freaked out at the thought of having to help pack because i never knew what was expected to go where. everyone seems to designate certain items to go together in very specific ways whereas i'm just like, throwing in whatever will fit. together, the speed all the items come forward while i'm frantically trying to decide if i'm doing it properly and the pressure from people watching me is utter hell. often my dad would then notice my packing and re-do it himself anyway, although his way seemed to make no more sense than mine.

and then there's laundry, specifically on clothes horses or airers, (not hanging out on the line which is easy enough) i just always feel like there's a specific way people expect clothes to be placed on them and when i do it my way people question me why i've done it such, like there's a really obvious error to my system.

i just don't get it people!!

social dependency

Reverse Psychology

Saying: "Don't do that."
To persaude people to do what you told them not to do.

Confusing.

And also the: "Do as I say, not as I do" thing.
That is quite irritating.
Unless it's a minor thing and you know very well the person who's doing it.

Actually, the reverse psychology is often used in hypnotism for instance.
And it's meant to confuse.

It's meant to confuse the mental so as the person has to think otherwise as s/he usually does.
It can be a help to get out of a usual path and find another way to do things, or to think and feel about them.

for some..It works.

People are independent and want to do things their way. By telling them NOT to do something triggers their independence or rebeliousness to defy the request which therefore brings the desired result. I got my husband to learn to SCUBA dive by telling him that he would never do it. He said watch me, I said he wouldn't. That just made him want to do it more to prove me wrong. Different situation but same idea.

When I was a kid, I was baffled by this behaviour portrayed in cartoon shows.

In Disney's The Lion King, Simba's Uncle Scar uses reverse pyschology on his nephew to "warn" him about about the Elephant Graveyard:


Simba promises that he'll never go there.
Then he goes there.
I always keep my promises, so I couldn't understand why a future king couldn't keep his promises.
If I'd been Simba, I would've listened to my "Daddy" and uncle.
I wouldn't have left pride rock: I'd have been too conscientious and safety concious.
I wouldn't have wanted to upset anybody even if I had really wanted to go.


In Disney's Aladdin, Aladdin uses reverse pyschology on the Genie:


The Genie gets angry and transports Aladdin out of the cave without using up a wish.

My old friends "got" this social part of the plot immediately and laughed at the funny "trick".
I didn't.
If I'd have been the Genie, I would've probably sulked in the corner of the cave or told Aladdin to stop bullying me (pathetic I know).
If I'd been Aladdin, I wouldn't have known how to use this manipulation tactic at all.
I'd have just politely asked the Genie if he wouldn't mind getting me out of the cave.
It would've cost me a wish, true, but at least I'd have been polite.

You must have been a great kid

My idea of teamwork: Each individual, focusing on what they do best, all fitting together like a well-oiled machine. Or at least doing their best and ...
People compassionately working together sharing the load and making up for individual "deficits".

Wrong : As far as I can tell, teamwork has been redefined to mean each person does exactly the same, regardless of whether they can do it well or not. Everyone, in the meantime, would like to be seen to be doing a bit better than others - but only a bit - so if there's a promotion / any kudos to be had, they will get it. Which causes subtle unsupportive behaviour and discrete back-stabbing. However, anyone genuinely doing well will be criticised and considered to be making the 'team' look bad, and to be 'showing up' others or 'down-grading' others' contribution. Duplication of effort is perfectly acceptable, as long as someone is tick-boxing it.

So teamwork has become identikit, low-common-denominator, bulk throughput, with no real ability to gauge what has been or could be achieved. 'Teamwork' is like working in a call-centre - 'we all do the same work, therefore we are a team'. And everyone gets that all important feel-good factor, except really they are interchangeable and dispensible.

And team meetings aim to achieve a result by consensus which leaves no-one feeling slighted or rejected, rather than reach any effective decision.

At least, that is the impression I get based on observation of what has changed and a couple of net articles which highlighted why aspies don't fit into the modern workplace - because they are 'not team players'.

I don't know.
Maybe I was a great doormat in the playground (lots of reverse psychology and social manipulation tactics going on there).

This isn't a complaint, but I notice that a lot of American animation contains characters who are trying to get something from other characters. There seems to be a lot of sophisticated social persausion in American children's animation.

Whereas, where I come from, there tended to be more straight forward storytelling for children. Even some of the animation that's aimed at adults tends to contain less social manipulation. Perhaps, where I come from, the children's writer's wanted to set the kiddies a good example. Any transgression was punished by an adult in the story or made into "edutainment".

I notice that children's characters in American animation allowed to get away with far more violence and bribery. Also, the children often outsmart and make the adults look foolish.

I find some of the American cartoon stories quite interesting for this reason. In these stories, the character has an objective to obtain something from another character. There are lots of interesting social twists in stories like these. It's very sophisticated. It's not like any of the animation where I come from.