Aspergers and watching fictional television as a child

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Somewhere in our lives we learn about the existence of fiction specifically that not everything on television is real. Now I believe that Aspergers can complicate this and delay our realization that not everything is real. So until about 11 I thought talking dogs were real, magic, witches, etc but it was around then when I 'began' to question the accuracy of these facts. But there was one specific bit that has always stood out. When I was about 7-8 I watched a Charlie Chaplain, silent, black and white, comedy film called the ?Gold Rush?. In this movie just from the few minutes I remember there is one attempted murder for the purpose of cannibalism, one assault with the intent of murder and one death. I didn?t know it was fake so naturally watching that was quite disturbing considering from my perspective it was all real.

So I?m just curious if other people have had experiences with not knowing that fiction existed?

And perhaps what age did you discover that fiction existed and developed that separation between it and real world?

I believe that I was somewhere between four and six years old when I started to realize that actors weren't the characters that they portrayed and that their performances were only pretending to be real. Some performances are obvious (such as when actors paint their noses black and wear clip-on dog ears; I never believed that they were dogs). More realistic performances required some help from my older sisters who would tell me that I should watch a favorite actor would be a talk-show guest after the program in which he just acted. In some cases, I denied that the actor had anything to do with the character(s) I was anticipating to see because he no longer looked the part. It took some repeated attempts to teach me before I realized that most actors were never as exciting as their characters.

But, I suspect that learning this at the age I was at the time is normal for fictional comprehension. Maybe not.

Although I think I always understood that TV characters were not "real," I always had an issue with seeing drama on TV as representative of healthy interpersonal relations.

Yes, I think autistics are naturally wired to filter out real from unreal, or conceptual things, but our society operates almost entirely in the conceptual world (like TV shows), which is very confusing for autistics.

I was just becoming a teenager when I started realizing that most people around me were experiencing reality deep inside their own imaginations, and shortly after realized that more than 90% of most people's behavior was for the purpose of psychological manipulation.

For me I experience the entire conceptual world much like a NT experiences a TV show. I can observe, learn from, and mimic it, but it never becomes primary to me. I always know that it isn't real.

As a child I had no reason to think that interaction with other humans involved mostly imagination. So yes, initially I think we are fooled by the imaginary world until we devise a solid method of sorting the real from the conceptual in our thinking.

I don't remember how old I was exactly when I realized, but I remember distinctly when I was eleven believing that Harry Potter was real and I was going to get my letter that summer. And I still tend to get over-invested in television shows, to the point where I cry a lot when bad things happen to my favorite characters. I know that it's not real, in my brain, but my emotions seem to think it's entirely real.

<----'s subconscious is probably waiting for the Cylons to inflict humanicide

(I watched the original series over and over as a little one according to my mother.)

And Jesus was totally a Jedi Knight to me.

Interesting topic. When I was a kid a lot of stuff on TV and in movies scared me, even if it was clearly not real. Like "Dark crystal" Really really frightened me even though I knew it was puppets. Looking back, I think my emotional response to it is what scared me so much, not the movies itself. ET frightened me so badly as a child that I had to be removed from the theater and I've never watched the movie. Ever. I'm 36. Never seen the full movie.

Now my ASD daughter... she has understood since she was 4 that tv and movies are FAKE. And she is able to 100% compartmentalize this and have zero negative impact to anything she has ever seen. she accidentally walked in on DH and I watching some VIOLENT VIOLENT things (like GoT red wedding for example) and she didn't care! She said "ew.... good thing thats fake, huh?" SHES SIX. This kid blows me away. I shooed her away and said "this isn't appropriate for you" and she said "why not? I know it's fake. It's no different than tom and jerry really."

I think I always knew when TV was fake, but that didn't make it less entertaining for me.

If I watch too much of one show, it becomes my reality, more so than REAL reality.

If I watch too many episodes of Supernatural, for example, I have to take a few days break so I can go outside and touch the real world to ground myself again. I start thinking too much about the characters- like 'could I give Sam a call and ask him about this?' then I catch myself and think 'No, ninny, he's made up by a room full of writers, painted by professional makeup artists and edited to fight well.'

But I can easily lose myself and think of their world as the real one and this one as the fake one. If I didn't have the ability to go outside and touch a tree and remind myself of the physical rules of MY reality... I would be totally lost.

I do get embarrassed about this lack of firm reality boundary. I have never told anyone about it.

No, I knew very well that the children's shows (and bedtime stories) were fiction. That was never confusing for me. I understood about entertainment. I also, as early as daycare age, understood that news were real.