"People just DON'T say that"

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Do you ever say things that people take offense to but you don't understand why, even after they explain it to you? Here's my situation: I post on a forum that goes on Tinychat every night, which is a chat room. They switched to a room run by a member who is only on the board because of her boyfriend, who is an established member there. I said that the room might not last a long time because if the couple breaks up, the member would likely stop posting and chatting, thus leaving the room without an owner. People proceeded to jump down my throat because I said they had the possibility of breaking up and that most relationships don't last an extremely long time. Am I just supposed to pretend that we live in a world where all relationships last forever? I was just trying to be logical about why the chat room might not last, but people don't seem to want to be rational about it.

Anyway, it was nice getting that off my chest. What sorts of things have you said the people have taken offense to but you don't understand why?

I once complained at an old job because one of the supervisors would routinely sleep at his desk, in the middle of the office. Then the management asked me if I wanted to work in a "police state," or something similar.

That was a strange response from your company. Its the company that was being strange, not you, the aspie individual, being odd in that case.

Dad cracked a joke like that once. He owned his big iron printing press in the basement, and had cases of lead type that he would set by hand and print as a hobby.

Once when he was printing stationery for my cousin's upcoming wedding and found it harder work than he expected. He joked with mom and I about "I hope the marriage lasts longer than the stuff I am printing" or something like that. No one present took offense.

I guess that the difference between what you said, and what my dad said was that my cousin and his fiance were out of earshot thousands of miles away. The couple you were joking about were right there in the same "room" in cyberspace to read your comments. So thats why what you said seemed objectionable. Even so what you said doesnt seem that bad to me. But I sorta get why folks were upset.

If it was rude of you to mention the fact that the thing isn't likely to last forever, it was also rude of them to jump down your throat for it. I guess a lot of folks are kind of insecure and don't want to hear that their precious little circle of buddies might have a limited shelf life. It's probably wiser not to tell them, but that's slightly different to being expected to actively pretend relationships will last forever. They know they won't, but they don't want reminding of it, they don't want it rubbing in.

I once complained at an old job because one of the supervisors would routinely sleep at his desk, in the middle of the office. Then the management asked me if I wanted to work in a "police state," or something similar.
That must have been an uncommonly cushy workplace, at least for that supervisor. I wonder if you would have got away with slacking like that?

When I was 14 I asked a deaf girl if she liked being deaf and got massively hold off by teachers for it (they even told my parents, so they could yell at me at home too). I only asked her that because we'd discussed disabilities in class and we were taught that disabled people aren't necessarily unhappy. At university, aged 19, a bulimic girl was talking about having eaten cake so I asked her "did you throw it up?" I didn't mean any offence - it seemed a logical question to ask, especially when she'd talked about her bulimia in detail to me before.

On both occasions, I asked the questions in front of a full room of people and was ganged up on both times. I was only diagnosed with ASD at 22 so everyone assumed I was deliberately trying to be hurtful (and I was confused, not realising what I'd done so wrong). Think about it this way: if I knew it was wrong, and I was setting out to offend, would I really do it in front of that many eyewitnesses?

I'm now 26 and have mostly learnt what's appropriate to say and what's not, but it's taken me a long time, many misunderstandings and a few lost friendships.

I was thinking that too. Thats shocking that they would respond that way! That was the company being weird for responding that way, and not the OP (for being a weird aspie) for complaining about that. And yeah, how would they feel if the OP took a snooze on the job?

I never would have gotten away with it. I had trouble meeting standards at times, which was why it was frustrating. I worked for a construction trade paper, and had to get information on jobs which contractors would then look at before placing bids. Well, I had a difficult territory to cover. It included a lot of New Jersey. One of the supervisors would regularly show me news articles about specific construction companies in trouble for legal reasons (I think they were usually mafia-related). So, of course these companies didn't want to to give me information, and it was hard to meet standards. Yet, the other supervisor got to sleep while I worked. Very annoying. What I said wasn't wrong professionally, but he was friends with the bigger bosses, and I should've seen that, I guess.

There's something about public pessimism regarding personal relationships that are supposed to bring happiness that a lot of people really don't like. I still occasionally get into some weird conversations when I casually mention to extended family/de-facto in-laws that I make contingency plans for my life based on the possibility of divorce or a child's disability. My fiance basically understands...he knows there have been a ton of divorces in my family, and my former quirks (I may have had a mild case of Type 3 hyperlexia and/or moderate social communication disorder, but grew up to be NT) and his current ones (OCD) could show up in our kids. But other people are like, "No, come on, you're being too pessimistic. You'll probably be fine, and most people's kids turn out fine even if they have them when they're 40."

I guess a lot of people associate negative predictions with hopelessness and resignation, when sometimes they're just meant to be logical or an attempt to prepare for and control disasters, which is largely how I use them these days. Obviously, I tend to think more people should anticipate trouble and try to plan for it. But I can't make them, and sometimes their plan for trouble, and it may work for some people, is to try not to worry about it until it actually comes, because they just depress themselves thinking about it.

^
I've seen that kind of fake confidence a lot in people. With just about anything that might go wrong, they seem to need to ignore the risks, in order to psyche themselves up. Such a way of working is almost completely alien to me. I have no great problem in staying aware of the real situation, warts and all, in fact if anything I become anxious and daunted if people paint too positive a picture for me - if it were a boss I'd feel that they were deliberately playing down how hard they were trying to work me, if it were a fellow collaborator I'd be suspicious that wishful thinking might be creeping into the situation. For me, full awareness of risk doesn't daunt me from giving a task a go.

A lot of people think if you talk about a possible negative outcome, you might make it more likely to happen. It's known as 'jinxing it'. People think this because of experiences where they or someone they knew predicted something bad and it happened, because they don't understand statistics well enough to understand that sometimes things happen together purely by chance.



Asking the deaf girl that question is actually appropriate, but a lot of people who don't understand disabilities expect disabled people to be a lot more sensitive about their disability than they really are. For example, I have some friends with cerebral palsy who were joking about how one of them needs to be spoonfed because she has no hand use, and one of her friends with milder CP was feeding her and then had an arm spasm and dumped food all over her shirt. Most non-disabled people would have been shocked by them making two disability-related features (needing to be spoon fed and having spasms) into a joke, but this is normal for disabled people.

In other words, the deaf girl was probably fine with you directly referring to her disability. But the teachers assumed it would be a sensitive topic, likely because of their own negative views on disability.

Asking a bulimic person if they vomited, on the other hand, isn't really appropriate, because bulimic people tend to feel very complicated emotions about their eating disorder. Vomiting is not fun, but a bulimic person feels compelled to do it due to intense shame and guilt around overeating and body appearance. So reminding them of that behavior brings up the emotions associated with it. Only really that person's counselor, and maybe close friends and family, should be asking that question, because they can offer support if the question upsets the person.

Once someone asked me why I had so many cats......I asked them why they had so many kids....NTs can also be socially insensitive.

Ha! Great comeback.

Interesting - I have a relic of the opposite superstition in me, i.e I feel if I get complacent about a plan going wrong, it will go wrong. It would make a good scientific study. I suspect there's a grain of truth in both superstitions - if I don't focus on the negative outcomes then I feel anxious because I know I'm unprepared, and if a bad outcome takes me by surprise I can't fix it in time. But if they focus on negative outcomes, they get a reverse placebo effect, their confidence falls and they screw up.

Yeah, the deaf girl didn't really seem offended, just the teachers. The bulimic girl wasn't obviously offended either, just the bystanders. I did apologise to both when I realised I'd said something offensive and they both immediately accepted my apology - it was the (NT) bystanders who held a grudge against me.

I wish people would calmly explain why things are offensive so that I learn from it, like you've just done, instead of losing their heads and yelling at me.