Other people's baby pictures

Post Reply New Topic

I don't know if this is an aspergers issue or not.

How is the 50th picture of the same baby supposed to be interesting? These people are ooing and ahing over dozens of pictures of the baby sitting up, lying down, and in his mother's arms. Otherwise, they are all the same.

I lose brownie points because I can't tolerate looking at something so boring when I could be writing the manual for our client information system, or posting my incredulity on WP....

Am I the only one who finds pictures of rope in water boring? (same person showing pictures of her vacation - three pictures of rope in water????) It doesn't matter to me if its someone I know - still boring...

I love looking at baby pictures myself, have always liked them since I was a kid. Vacation pictures on another hand are boring I find especially if it's not a place that would interest me. I think partly my attraction to baby pictures is due to being a mother... some sort of maternal thing.

And I love showing off pics of my 2 sons, they are so handsome and adorable and mean everything to me, why not show them off? They make me happy and give more meaning to my life. They make me proud.

I don't think it's an Asperger's issue - I've heard plenty of NT's complain about boring baby and vacation pics too. It's just people making the error of assuming that just because something is interesting to them, it must be interesting to others. Baby pictures are like any other interest - some will find them fascinating, some will be bored to tears.

It probably isn't AS-related as such. There are tremendous normative pressures brought to bear (through the media, in peer-groups and other unspoken mechanisms of 'expectation'), to emit the coo-ing and aaah-ing noises at the sight of a noisy, smelly, incontinent non-person. For reasons that utterly elude me, there seems to be an unspoken expectation on the part of new parents that expects everyone to be as interested in their progeny as they themselves are.

A similar phenomenon can be seen when a recently-engaged young women flourishes a diamond ring that she has just been given as an engagement ring, expectating 'congratulations' and other outpourings of sickly sentiment.

The only way in which it could be remotely connected to AS is through the fact of disobeying the social expectations merely by uttering any dissent at the 'majoritarian' viewpoint.

Yes, I find such pictures insufferably dull. The only time when I enjoy or want to look at baby pictures is when
(A)They are pictures of my own offspring
or
(b) I am dating, married to, or very very interested in a man and looking at pictures of him as a baby and child. Not only do I want to expand my knowledge about him, what his childhood was like, what he looked like, etc, but since there is a chance I will bear his child, I want to have an idea what he looked like as a baby.

I like looking at pictures of myself and family.

Other peoples I get easily bored with.

If they are a friend's or family member's pictures, then I don't get bored.

NT's expect me to be interested in these things, and I'm totally not. Babies are icky (my intense opinion) so I won't pay any attention to or look at them. Vacations are boring, just hunt for distinctive landscape features in photos from other places-or small details that amuse me. Admit I've spent hours staring at photos of myself, in a sort of "I'm beautiful-no, I'm hideous" trance. If it's about me, of me, then it's of interest to me-other people's lives are there for them to live. Make sense ? Gets back to being egocentric, but I can't believe other humans are less so than I, they just hide it better/accept pretending/forget they're faking it. Or else it's "just me"...

Yes, I think MANY people find looking at someone else's baby pictures utterly boring (especially after, say, number 500).

But it is an AS thing to be totally honest and clearly bored at looking at them. I think most NAs will humor the beaming parents.

As for myself, I do not. I end up talking about something else and they soon put away the baby pictures. (Or I do an evil thing and bring out my own and make them sit and look... Muahahahahaha )

I will only indulge them in maybe one or two pictures. After that, I sincerely don't care.

Babies look like hairless moist, chubby balls of flesh. Smooth skin, decent complexion. But about as attractive as 7 pounds of lard.