south park creators know asperger's better than aspies?

Post Reply New Topic

I read some on here about the episode Ass Burgers of South Park. To my surprise almost no one thought it was accurate in any way. There are Matrix references in that episode. Hardly anyone here seems to think Asperger's has a lot to do with The Matrix. But I think the Ass Burgers episode was spot on for my condition, and my condition has a lot to do with The Matrix. So what's going on? Do I not have Asperger's? But then why do I resonate with that episode? Do the creators of South Park understand Asperger's better than most aspies? What is going on?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP7userzvUQ

... How does ASD have a lot to do with the Matrix?

I don't know if it does. And I don't know if I have Asperger's. My psychiatrist said he thought I had Asperger's but I didn't have a proper Asperger's assessment. I feel that I resonate a lot with The Matrix. Neo is the aspie, agents the neurotypicals.

I still don't understand. But if it helps you understand yourself and the world you live in then that's good.

But I really don't think South Park creators know more about being autistic than autistic people. I can't speak for aspergers because that's not my diagnosis.

Don't you feel like you are out of sync with the material plane? Like you're in between worlds? One foot in this world, one foot in another?

No character in the episode is portrayed as having Asperger's. The Matrix was an analogy to Stans increasing disconnect with the world as he used to understand it, where things didn't change and Adam Sandler movies were funny. It's an episode about growing up, not about Asperger's. If you feel a disconnect with the world, then this will resonate with you. But you don't necessarily have Asperger's.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I don't feel I have the same social fluidity of neurotypical people, and certainly language is a big big difficulty for me - not just idioms, and the like, but actually decoding spoken words. But I don't feel disconnected with the world. Society isn't the world. I'm in the world, and I'm in society after a fashion.

Or maybe as I said, the South Park creators know Asperger's better than most aspies. Maybe a lot of aspies haven't woken up yet to see their condition for what it is? If you were one of those, then of course you would reply the way you just did. So this discussion doesn't seem to go far...

so is this your shtick--you make a thread asking for opinions on a subject, and then when people give their opinions on the subject you insult them and tell them their opinions don't contribute to the discussion you want to have and that they don't understand autism as well as you, even though you don't even know if you have it?

nice pattern.

Not at all. That's what you read into it. Your pattern is sensitive and defensive.

What kind of joke is it? Since you are joking, right? The episode was about anything but Asperger.

No I'm not joking. I'm surprised that I'm pretty much the only one who thinks it's accurate. Sure, I don't have a proper diagnosis. But I talked to a psychiatrist for several months and he said at the end he thought I had Asperger's. I was offended and disappointed with all of psychiatry, so I quit. In retrospect it might have been good to have made a proper Asperger's assessment. And now I'd view it as a compliment. In any case, I think psychiatry is BS through and through so it doesn't really matter. But it would have been nice since I'm not sure if I have it and it's tedious to always have to explain the situation on this forum and elsewhere. Plus I might have gotten more out of the discussions on here if I were sure if I meet the criteria for Asperger's or not.

How can you not think that The Matrix has a lot to do with Asperger's? The matrix is an allegory for groupthink. Asperger's is all about not conforming to the groupthink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Ot1OEfk9I

This just screams Asperger's through and through.

To be honest, no.

The creators at least know that the general public has no freaking clue as to what Asperger's actually is and I think that was the point. But I doubt they would be considered Asperger's experts.

I don't know about that. A running joke between people I know is that Aspies forcefeed others alcohol to get them drunk and tell them they have to save the world. Of course nowhere near true. The only real true Aspie thing I saw was Stan's desire for things to be the way they were because he didn't like change much. Other than that, the episode was a complete farce and about Cartman selling hamburgers that he shoved down his pants.
The episode made me laugh and goes to show you that nothing and nobody is exempt from being made fun of on that show.

The Matrix references in that episode probably elude to the way many of us feel while living on the spectrum. It's similar to the feeling that Temple Grandin describes as being an "Anthropoligist on Mars" or as the title of this website says, living on the "wrong planet". It's basically because of the experience that most people seem to understand each other in terms of social interaction etc but we don't. I think that the South Park creators were mainly trying elude to the ignorance that the majority of people have about Asperger's as the main point of the episode but there were also a lot of references to the real condition that I feel, most people who saw the episode didn't pick up on. But I do agree with you about the The Matrix analogy.

By the way, I've also heard that the South Park creators had been browsing WP as "research" for that episode.