Have you encountered difficulties on NT-dominant forums?

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Just wondering.

As an Aspie whose best mode of communication is writing/reading I have tried out a number of internet forums over the years (i.e., talkboards like this one).

In practically every case, my characteristic Aspie directness and lack of social insight has proved to be a major problem.

For instance, I would joke inappropriately when a more sympathetic response was actually called for. Or I would make legally-questionable remarks (with relation to defamation), without seeing why the person to whom I was referring might potentially object. Or I would fail to appreciate and abide by the unwritten 'hidden curriculum' of each forum.

In each instance, when my 'inappropriate' behaviour has been brought to my attention, I have been genuinely remorseful, but by then the damage is done.

I find this frustrating and perplexing, not least because the internet was supposed (from an AS point of view) to be the great leveller of social interactivity. But it's plain that a great deal of nuance and context still escapes Aspies on the net -- or at least, they escape me, anyway.

So I would be interested to hear your stories of online interaction calamities, and your analyses of what went wrong.

Who knows, your misfortune may prove to be to someone else's future advantage somewhere online...

I'm often ignored or not regarded on such forums as having anything relevant to contribute. And of course, I have learned both, online and offline, the second you make a mistake... others pay attention and make sure to let you know how they feel about it and sometimes how you should feel about it.

Apart from the Wrong Planet, I do not engage in social networking sites.

Now, I had a fb account but I closed it. I'm one of those rare people who doesn't do fb or twitter! I didn't have bad experience with fb, per se, but instead mostly lack of interest. Silly posts by 'friends' that were just, well, boring. I'd see page after page after page of inane comments such as "omg i hate laundry" followed by "likes" by doting imaginary fb "friends." What's the point?? I feel that fb is like a ranking of friends based on "likes," perverting what friendship really means. It seemed that any of my fb posts were kind of ignored.

From my observation, I see professional colleagues grossly wasting their time with fb! And that becomes really counter-productive. It's really not healthy, IMO. (In fact, too much Wrong Planet is probably not healthy for the same reason).

I actually have a (neglected!) account with an autism site but I found that it's geared to parents, caregivers etc. While it's a nice site, sort-of, I felt my insights were marginalised by mums who were relatively uneducated. So I just don't do social sites.

Actually, I think I do very well on so-called NT websites. I keep in mind Grandin's distinction that since we can't sell ourselves, we have to sell what we know or can do. I choose the sites I contribute to according to what I have to offer.

Expecting an aspie to enjoy a social networking site would be like expecting a deaf person to enjoy a music show, or a blind person to enjoy pictures. We must stick to what we are good at.

The forums I go to are specialty topics so they probably attract aspies anyway. But when I have a decent knowledge and respect those who know more I do all right.

I only mentioned aspergers once on a forum. It was weather board and everybody was jumping on a particular meteorologist for his lack of people skills. I said something like the science fields attract people with poor people skills who might have Aspergers. Somebody agreed with me.

I wonder if the reason there so many ego wars on the net is because there are no faces and the NTs are clueless as to intent. Without a real face to have sympathy for the very worst of ego and macho rudeness comes out.

Excluding Facebook (which isn't really a chatboard as such) and WP, there's only one other forum I got involved with--a specialty topic which, as has been mentioned before, tended to attract Aspies (whether or not they knew they were on the spectrum).

Facebook is good for me in one way, because it gives me the sense of having a connection with someone, even if I'm not. Even still, I get a lot of silence there, too. And people only post on there what they want people to see.

I'm not on FaceBook because I don't want to expose the barrenness of my social life to others, but from the way I have seen some NT people use it, it appears to be a kind of performance art!

My main problems are taking things too literally, getting into arguments over misunderstandings, and being too longwinded. I often waffle on earnestly for far too long. At the time, it always seems to me that everything I am writing is very important and must be included, but when I go back and read my long posts again once I've forgotten them, they just seem like a load of embarrassing waffle.

have actualy found more understanding and tolerance on non autistic forums than on WP and other ASD based sites, that says a lot to self.
usualy put somethng in signature about disability to make sure am not abused as have been so on here and else where before.

I had trouble at Physics Forums even though a lot of people on that site are probably Aspies. The moderators were Nazis who would constantly change the topic of my threads when I say started discussing a different branch of physics and then give me strikes for going off topic and they also gave me strikes for calling this one scibrat a naughty word even though the naughty word was mostly bleeped out. I HATE scibrats and even if I discuss why they are so loathsome in a nice and socially acceptable way people think anything even slightly short of kissing them where the sun don't shine is vile slander. "OMG YOU HORRIBLE JEALOUS IDIOT THEY CURED CANCER THAT GIVES THEM THE RIGHT TO KICK PUPPIES AND SLEEP WITH LITTLE KIDS IF THEY WANT!! !" is the gist of their sentiment against me.

But I didn't talk about that a lot on Physics Forums. I mostly discussed my ideas and my study habits and trouble with school and the stupid people there thought I should just go back to community college and did not have the visualization ability to frame my ideas in their mind's eye.

There are so many music instead of visual arts people in science and I am the rare exception. Now don't get me wrong, I am curious to learn music one day, but I think that music is overworshiped while visual art is marginalized, and it just so happens the latter is a far less expensive talent to cultivate.
>Music talent - "wow what a well rounded kid welcome to Harvard!"
>Art talent - "that's a pretty picture have you considered applying to an art school?"

Anyway back on topic. The people on Physics Forums seemed like they were all desperate to put others down, and when I said I read books on graduate level physics, well, the gist of what they told me was "dear child, you must be ill in the head for thinking you can understand graduate level books" and I was even banned for a few days for 'hijacking threads' and trying to start a new thread on the same topic as the one they locked.

As for Facebook, well I mostly only talk to and sometimes role play with the friends on there that I met online, whenever I talk to the friends I met at school, trouble happens, and I think most of them are not interested in me anymore. And then there's my family, my dad who is a jerk, my aunt who ignores me, my other relatives who are never on, my mom who barely knows how to use Facebook. my cat who gets into inane arguments with me over such topics as how many white chocolates he is gambling away to the Piano (let's just say my cat is a few strings short of a violin) and my cousin who marginalizes me because of his perceptions of what autism is (he's a real know it all too). He once popped in on an IFLS picture where they were displaying scibrats which angered me because that would be like displaying Disney Channel tweenybopper pop tarts on a music page, there are SO MANY jackasses that 'like' that page, they even called me racist and although I hate the scibrats I am one of the few people who doesn't insult them RACIALLY (I hate white scibrats too. I'm white by the way, race is irrelevant to me, SCIBRAT SCUM IS SCIBRAT SCUM), anyway my cousin said "you all are bashing your heads into a wall here she is an autistic whose obsession is hating people who are more successful than her" (now I don't really mind if they are successful, just so long as they do the work on their own and are really talented and not overhyped and passionate about what they're doing; basically any NT scibrat is a suspect cheater in my eyes, those good traits are mostly only seen in the autistic ones which are rarer than you would think). And I love to argue so I get sucked into arguments, and since I'm not shy to admit that I believe scibrattery is an evil on par with the evils of Nazism and an idiocy on par with the idiocy of Jersey Shore, well how do you convince people of that? I need to write conspiracy theories about them on the internet so that people will start to realize how bad they are...

I had trouble at Physics Forums even though a lot of people on that site are probably Aspies. The moderators were Nazis who would constantly change the topic of my threads when I say started discussing a different branch of physics and then give me strikes for going off topic and they also gave me strikes for calling this one scibrat a naughty word even though the naughty word was mostly bleeped out. I HATE scibrats and even if I discuss why they are so loathsome in a nice and socially acceptable way people think anything even slightly short of kissing them where the sun don't shine is vile slander. "OMG YOU HORRIBLE JEALOUS IDIOT THEY CURED CANCER THAT GIVES THEM THE RIGHT TO KICK PUPPIES AND SLEEP WITH LITTLE KIDS IF THEY WANT!! !" is the gist of their sentiment against me.

But I didn't talk about that a lot on Physics Forums. I mostly discussed my ideas and my study habits and trouble with school and the stupid people there thought I should just go back to community college and did not have the visualization ability to frame my ideas in their mind's eye.

There are so many music instead of visual arts people in science and I am the rare exception. Now don't get me wrong, I am curious to learn music one day, but I think that music is overworshiped while visual art is marginalized, and it just so happens the latter is a far less expensive talent to cultivate.
>Music talent - "wow what a well rounded kid welcome to Harvard!"
>Art talent - "that's a pretty picture have you considered applying to an art school?"

Anyway back on topic. The people on Physics Forums seemed like they were all desperate to put others down, and when I said I read books on graduate level physics, well, the gist of what they told me was "dear child, you must be ill in the head for thinking you can understand graduate level books" and I was even banned for a few days for 'hijacking threads' and trying to start a new thread on the same topic as the one they locked.

As for Facebook, well I mostly only talk to and sometimes role play with the friends on there that I met online, whenever I talk to the friends I met at school, trouble happens, and I think most of them are not interested in me anymore. And then there's my family, my dad who is a jerk, my aunt who ignores me, my other relatives who are never on, my mom who barely knows how to use Facebook. my cat who gets into inane arguments with me over such topics as how many white chocolates he is gambling away to the Piano (let's just say my cat is a few strings short of a violin) and my cousin who marginalizes me because of his perceptions of what autism is (he's a real know it all too). He once popped in on an IFLS picture where they were displaying scibrats which angered me because that would be like displaying Disney Channel tweenybopper pop tarts on a music page, there are SO MANY jackasses that 'like' that page, they even called me racist and although I hate the scibrats I am one of the few people who doesn't insult them RACIALLY (I hate white scibrats too. I'm white by the way, race is irrelevant to me, SCIBRAT SCUM IS SCIBRAT SCUM), anyway my cousin said "you all are bashing your heads into a wall here she is an autistic whose obsession is hating people who are more successful than her" (now I don't really mind if they are successful, just so long as they do the work on their own and are really talented and not overhyped and passionate about what they're doing; basically any NT scibrat is a suspect cheater in my eyes, those good traits are mostly only seen in the autistic ones which are rarer than you would think). And I love to argue so I get sucked into arguments, and since I'm not shy to admit that I believe scibrattery is an evil on par with the evils of Nazism and an idiocy on par with the idiocy of Jersey Shore, well how do you convince people of that? I need to write conspiracy theories about them on the internet so that people will start to realize how bad they are...

This site isn't hard to accommodate..

But there are many so called sites in other places on the internet..that represent themselves as places for acceptance for people on the spectrum who will not tolerate any differences of opinions..from any autistic people who happen to hold a different point of view..on almost any subject in discussed..

They are worse than fundamentalist churches..in my estimate..per acceptance of differences among human beings..

IN my opinion an Autistic Person can find more acceptance for thinking differently and holding opinions outside of the 'herd' on the Autism Speaks social networking sites..at least there is some measure of empathy and acceptance there for people who think and express themselves differently..than the 'herd'..as compared to these places..one example is the Thinking Person's guide to autism on Facebook...

Some of these so called people on the spectrum..are extremely judgmental over anything that does not meet their expectations for approval....

I've read something on a medicine forum.

A: "Hello.. [introduction] I'm diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrom. [more intruduction]."
B: "You haven't got Asperger's [insults]."
C: "[More insults]."
B: "[talks pejoratively with C about A]."
D: "[stands up for the aspie]."
B and C: "[attack D]."
E: "[more insults]."

I don't usually have too many problems on other forums. The other members might find me annoying, but they've never said anything. I post a lot on yahoo answers.