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MagicMeerkat
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19 Jun 2024, 10:41 pm

When I first joined WP, I expected to find other autistic people who were special interested focuses like I am. Special interests have always been my strongest autistic trait.


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Elgee
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21 Jun 2024, 11:55 pm

One of the most prominent and/or first things that jumped out at me, while I was reading autistic content and suspecting I was autistic, was this thing called "special interests," because I've had them all my life. And a whole bunch of them began popping into my mind as I read content by autists: current and previous. I have three big ones going right now, and two are lifelong.

One of the lifelong ones is racial mixes, or what people, particularly kids, look like who have mixed race heritage. At the gym they have summer basketball camp for kids of all ages every Friday evening.

The kids and their parents walk in, and I'm often working out where I can easily watch them walking towards the gymnasium. And damn do I have a field day.

For some reason, this basketball camp is replete with mixed race kids. I sometimes see them coming in alone, and I'm like, "Where are their parents?" (So I can see what race/ethnicity they are).

Today a couple came in: black man with very dark skin; white/fair woman, and their adolescent daughter. I've honed my skill at getting as much of an observation of the facial features, skin tone and hair color/texture as much as possible without anyone noticing.

Her skin was only a few shades darker than my Caucasian skin; her hair was medium brown, and -- it was STRAIGHT. However, her facial features looked like they had "a little black" in them.

The previous Friday was a black and white couple and their FOUR kids. I saw quite a variety of mixed features. One of the daughters had long medium brown and blonde wavy hair hanging loose, but caramel skin. Her sister also had caramel skin but STRAIGHT darker brown hair.

One time a girl walked right past me (while I was on a treadmill) to go to the women's locker room, and I surmised she was either one-quarter or one-eighth black, rest white.

Thank you for letting me info dump!



Edna3362
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24 Jun 2024, 12:51 am

When I first joined WP, I only want to know what's what and whatever what means and why. :o

And ranting. Lots and lots of ranting.
Just frustrated for not having outside references for autistics.

I was in that phase, too -- expecting other autistics could or even 'should' be like me.


:lol: When it came to special interests, it's somehow meta for me.
How I express special interests is very different than the infodumping enthusiasm.

So I didn't expect a group full of infodumping and special interests.
My head is just filtered to get answers to the questions I have in my head.

In which is sort of a fixation that can border easily into an obsession than a special interest...

In a sense, the most verbose way I express special interest is constant inquiries (target topic towards my knowing) than sharing via infodumping (target topic towards everyone else's knowing).


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autisticelders
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24 Jun 2024, 6:31 am

autism is one of my deepest interests ever since I was diagnosed at age 68, I have several other intense interests as well but I don't bring them up as topics here. I have loved horses since I learned what they were around age 3, I have an intense interest in turtles, devonian skeleton sponges (stromatoporoids) fossils, geology of the area where I live and how it relates to the rocks and fossils I find. those subjects just don't come up in every day conversations :)


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JamesW
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26 Jun 2024, 3:26 am

MagicMeerkat wrote:
When I first joined WP, I expected to find other autistic people who were special interested focuses like I am. Special interests have always been my strongest autistic trait.


I'm autistic. From this statement, I can't work out whether you did find those people, or whether you didn't.



MagicMeerkat
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28 Jun 2024, 7:49 pm

JamesW wrote:
MagicMeerkat wrote:
When I first joined WP, I expected to find other autistic people who were special interested focuses like I am. Special interests have always been my strongest autistic trait.


I'm autistic. From this statement, I can't work out whether you did find those people, or whether you didn't.


I never did on Wrong Planet, but I did in other internet groups or Discord servers for my specific special interests. I've yet to meet a single Rocket Raccoon fan that is not ND. Thought we were supposed to like trains, not sassy raccoons.


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