Just found an essay

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The unwritten rules....Where to start. There's age, race, sex, social class and lifestyle. And that's just soft skills.

And the unwritten rules shift continuously. Plus, there's the fact, that many neuro-typicals ("normal" people) are hellish a**holes. Normal people are really flaky. They're not particularly great masters of communication. They can be very irrational - driven by fear, hatred and greed. They can have very strange ideas about the world. And they can feel very uncomfortable and threatened by people they feel to be different from themselves. This rule is actually the one that gets autistics fired - not the speaking out of turn and other hokey. It's the little differences that make them outrageously disruptive. The average neuro-typical says stupid stuff all day long, and never gets in trouble.

Then the rules get absurd. You have to be friendly, but not too friendly - there has to be a glib emptiness to your friendliness. You have to be enthusiastic, but it has to be on a certain level, that it is clearly false. If you're intelligent, hide it, it makes people feel stupid. You have to display flaws in your character - to avoid arousing jealousy - but not too many flaws (nothing weird). You have to be unclear in your communication. It's a greater sin to catch someone out fibbing and lying, than it is to fib and lie. You're allowed have emotions - but they must be shallow; never be too happy or too sad - and most importantly: your emotions must never seem genuine. You must be insincere at all times. You can be funny but remember, most normal people can't take a joke.

Then the rules get insane. Some unwritten rules are deliberately secret - they have to be probed - they're mini shibboleths. They can change without notice, warning, or even any real reason. Something is being negotiated. Not meaning to be sexist, but this method of bullying is more popular with women than men - when they say "you're meant to know!!", you, in fact, are not meant to know. Probably the version men do is worse, they don't even bother with the "you're meant to know!!". They do long uncomfortable silences...And that look ..slightly wide eyed and blank...but just enough of something to see, there's something up. The Faux Faux Pas. You're constantly on your toes.

And one of the craziest rules: You must show people you can read their emotions and intentions, but you must never give people the impression you have some magical power to see deeper into their souls, than they'd like you to. If they think you can see through them, they will fear you and hate you.

The unwritten rules are unwritten because they are too ugly to even write or speak.

People with autism, may have their problems, but "normality" is a madhouse, where they smear excrement over the walls, themselves, and each other. In a way, we're more barbaric than we've ever been. We don't go around beating each other to death with clubs, but many people will think nothing of destroying someone's career, that took years to build, over something as petty as jealousy over girl - jealousy over nothing. People with autism are spared the horror of seeing this go on, day in day out.

Normality is a bit of a piss poor aspiration. It doesn't even pay that well either.

Maybe it's a really bad idea to even try and integrate people with autism into that kind of environment. An enlightened hiring manager may hire someone with autism, only to have another manager eventually sack them, for not "fitting in" - looking a little odd at their desk. That sadly is the culture.

Imagine three people, all listening to the same piece of music, but on different systems. One person's system has the treble turned right up and the mid-range and bass turned right down; one's has the mid-range turned right up but the treble and bass turned right down; one's has the bass turned right up but the mid-range and treble turned right down. That's like having two A-spectrum people and a neurotypical in the same room. It's the same piece of music they're all listening to, but it sounds completely different to each one of them, and they can't help the fact that it sounds different. They can't adjust their ears! If none of them realise that the music is balanced differently for each of them, then they're each going to end up thinking that the other two are stupid, stubborn, lazy, crazy, or whatever, for not being able to understand what they personally hear so obviously and clearly.

One of the best parallels is to think of the two types as two different types of computers. One computer-type has a wonderfully intuitive user-interface, but comparatively lousy data-handling power. The other type has vast data-storage and data-processing powers, but a really lousy (comparatively speaking) user interface. It's a simple case of each computer type coming pre-loaded with different software; not different power. There's a huge "mythconception" amongst neurotypicals about what autism-spectrum really is. That mythconception causes so many problems for all of us, and enlightened education is the only answer to it. So, in short, please don't equate autism with disability or intellectual incompetence! Neither HFA's nor neurotypicals are "thick" compared to the others. We're just different in where our processors direct the power.

Going waaay off topic here(perhaps it deserves a new thread, but hey, the title of this thread fits it ): I suddenly remembered an essay I wrote when I were around 14 years old. We were supposed to keep it between two and four A4-pages long, but I couldn't stop until I reached 13 pages, and consequently got a mediocre grade. Is this typical of Aspies?