The baiting trolls on Autism Speaks message board.

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I signed up and posted. If you are still "participating" there, I left a post at the end of that.. page four when I finished.

Thanks, Fuzzy, I'll check it out. Yes, I still post a bit there.

If this is indeed a troll, he's one of the best I've seen. He "hates being autistic," yet is screaming mad at people who target vaccines as the cause? If this is a real person, of course I feel for him. If this is a troll, I must tip my hat. If this is J Beast, well, he should take a page out of Grandma C's book and seriously think about how his time would be better spent.

Zarbon sure has the natives up in arms, I'll say that.

I'm now convinced Zarbon is a grade A troll.

I've been saying for a long time, autistic people who don't want to be cured, and people who hold vaccine-based theories of autism, are not opposites, nor are they even "natural opposites". It's just that some specific people who hold vaccine-based theories of autism have set themselves up as opposites to people who don't want to be cured, and have sort of assumed that nobody has ever come before them, and that anti-cure autistic people have only ever opposed them, nobody else. Etc. Etc. Basically they think that the autistic community started whenever the anti-vax theories started. None of which is accurate.

Being against cure does not mean taking a certain line when it comes to vaccines. Neither does being for cure. Some people have insisted it has to be so, but it never has been so from my observation. I remember anti-vax people before they got particularly organized as a group, and some of them were right there among autistic people who didn't want to be cured.

Why are you people posting and reading that anti-autistics site anyway? They have nothing to offer, nothing at all.

I don't think there's any logical connection between 'hating his autism' and his opinion on vaccines as cause. Why would there be one?



He lacks the subtlety and social cunning to pull such a trick.

There's so much wrong with this post that I don't know where to begin.

I post over there as a spectrum adult sharing my experiences with NT parents. There's nothing wrong with that.

Then why do y'all complain so much about the trolling there?

I didn't say there was anything wrong with posting there, I wondered why you did given all the trolling and hate, I still do. What does it offer you?

I haven't seen a thread there (linked from here) that is not filled, post after post, with fallacies, harassments and emotional and verbal abuse. These people aren't discussing, they are fighting.

OK, I can answer your question easily. It will be somewhat of a long response. I am c.darwin there as well. I am the top poster on that message board. Let me give you some background on how I got started posting there.

My wife joined the message board when they first started it up. We had seen the advertisements on television. I had read some books on autism recomended to us by our pediatric neurologist. They maintained there was no cure for being autistic. I strongly believed that people were autistic due to their genetic makeup. I accepted that some behavioral methods could be helpful. Our son could not speak and his early intervention team seamed to be helping somewhat. Mostly his speech therapist who used a combination of sign language an pictures to coax out his first words. They were simplistic. She taught us how to continue to help him learn language.

My wife had been reading the message board and posting a little bit. She was quickly befriended by people using Biomed. Some seemed very genuine. Meanwhile, I would be voicing my opinions to her which were very much based on evolutionary thoughts I had been having. She did not want me to join the message board, because she had made friends there and though my opinions would not be well received. As time went on she was considering some of these "therapies" for our son. I was not convinced by the things she had been telling me. There was one poster who I was impressed by that she would read to me from time to time and it was Autismdiva. I agreed with almost everything she said.

One night she allowed me to join "her" message board reluctantly. She and I had both agreed that we would not tell people we were husband and wife. She did not want me to jeopardize some of the friendships she had made there. So I came on the board and wrote a thread on evolution. No one would respond to me. So she broke the ice by making a couple of moderate replies to me while attempting to not give away that we were husband and wife. A biomed friend that had been giving her advice decided to debate with me, and I was beaten down pretty easily. My thoughts were my own and unresearched.

I continued to try to voice my opinions, and was considered a troll. Finally my wife wrote a thread called who is c.darwin. She did this because there were people on the board who really thought I was JBjr. trolling as a ND trying to discredit the ND movement. My writing was pretty radical on that message board but nothing like JBjr. He had been banned and his user name was Abe Lincoln. I don't know if this is one of the reasons that people thought I was him but Charles Darwin and Abe Lincoln have the same birthday, Feb. 12. So my wife told people I was her husband, and people were like, is your husband c.darwin or Abe Lincoln. She assured them that I was not Abe Lincoln, and people started to debate me more.

My wife could not understand why I would not consider any of the biomed approaches.people there were talking about. It was causing us problems. She said I was not being "proactive". I broke down. I reversed my position, and agreed to at least try biomed and we went to a DAN. To make that long story short the DAN was a quack, and a fraud. We were both put off by this DAN "doctor" and creeped out as well. We realized that this was not the right decision for our son, and I was realizing more and more everyday that my son was just like me as a child. I would say things like there is nothing wrong with him he is just like me. That brought me to the realization that not only was he like me, but I was like him.

Since then I have really gotten into it with people. There are about 50 to 70 members there on average everyday. There are more, but there are about 50 that post all of the time. Most days there can be 400, or 500 guests viewing, and I want those guests to know that there is more than one opinion out there, and that biomed is quackery. I will never change the minds of the biomed believers. It is like a religion to them. There is a chance that I may have some influence on the new members, and guests. It is a very popular place for people to turn when they are new to there child's diagnoses.This is mainly do to all of there advertising. I do not support what autism speaks spends there research money on, or there views on life with autism being some sort of curse. Parents often complain about how difficult it can be to have an autistic child. I can feel for them, because I have at least one, if not two autistic children and it can be a challenge. I don't think it is something to be cured though. My baby is 8 months old, and is missing milestones, and has been evaluated by early intervention, a pediatric neurologist, and his pediatrician. He is young, but there is a consensus that he will be on the spectrum. I know that my children were this way from birth. I believe I was the same way from birth, myself. I have an upcoming appointment to a psychiatric neurologist to be evaluated.

My wife and I are on the same page these days, and she also believes I am most likely HFA like my older son. That is another story.

This is why I continue to post on Autism Speaks, although sometimes it causes me great stress. Autismdiva has been a major influence on us, and I credit her greatly for providing us with a lot of information which helped us form a better understanding of being autistic. Autismdiva is a personal hero of mine. Thanks Autismdiva!

convinced too. It's pretty bad that someone is stooping that low too.

Thank you for giving all that background. I knew some of it, but not all of it. I thought you were trolling when you first got there... that was a really bad guess, huh? Thank you for saying such nice things about me. You are too kind.

I would add that darwin had some very popular and funny threads going on the AS board, but the trolls over there just hated him, even when he was trying to get along with them they'd go for his throat.

I'll continue to post there as well. I am not unduly put off by people getting pissy with me. If I can stand down big angry biker gang members, I can handle some neurotic housewives..

I read some of it and admit it was over my head.

I used to take care of special needs kids and autism seemed particularly a cruel thing for a "man in the sky" God to invent ( like Altizmers) Years later I found out I was'nt in need of psychotherapy because I had a developmental disorder. Autism. I still think I'm being punished for hating the creation of Autism. Funny thing is I'm not religious.

Anyway I've only been a teacher and never a parent. I can't imagine what it's like. I'd like to find out, even though it seems scary, but while I can see myself as a good parent it seems I might not be a good husband. So I stay with teaching. I don't know what Biomed is and don't like to enter debates outside my field of art and "the downfall of society"

I will say something that I noticed on that other site that I'd like to address. I dont like the word "blame" at all. The word to use is "responsibility". Maybe My mother smoking and working at an industrial plant while she was pregnant is the reason I am as I am. But at this point I don't see any sort of reperations that would be any good against her or her workplace.

So . . .I have Autism. Its been hard . It has been the cause of every problem in my life. It holds me back, holds me from using my abilities to thier fullest. But I am the one responsible for it now and that gives, me at least, some degree of power over it.

Your children are your responsibility. And the pain and frustration ( at the disorder) I felt with my students isnt even a peek at what it must be like. But I will personally wish well for those of you dealing with a child.Or a spouse. Or a friend. Or yourselves . . .

DAve

Thank you for posting your reasons, cdarwin, I appreciate it, and I admire you for your courage.

Hi, Everyone,
I am also a former poster from AS. I no longer go there to even see what's happening. It was the first autism forum I came upon and the first message board that I took part in. I must have started just after cdarwin started posting there. I finally quit because, while I have no problem with Autism Speaks as an organization that is helping autistic people, their message boards have been monopolized by a few shrewish women who wanted to make it their own personal clique. If you didn't want to take part in their sniping and back-stabbing, but instead wanted to have serious discussion, you were harassed and baited until you quit. This is what they did to cdarwin. The forum admin there seems to not understand what its role should be. Serious personal attacks went without consequence, while a smart, snappy answer to a stupid remark would probably get you a warning.
In any case, I am happy to be here and hope to learn more about autism and Asperger's.

Ngonz, it is so nice to here from you my friend, Ngonz told off the shrewish women, who wanted to make it their own personal clique that back stabbed, harassed and baited me until I quit. Then she quit. Ngonz is one of my best friends from the other board. She was so nice to defend me after I was banned for a week. The message board there has been pretty boring ever since. One sided conversations get old quick! Keep coming back here my friend.

Last edited by cdarwin on 27 Dec 2007, 11:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Other than a vintage Creepy Crawler craft site I don't really visit other chat rooms much.

When I first got a home computer this summer I tried a local get together group" Bored in Cincinnati" WOw was it ever different from posting here. Is it because we know "somethings wrong" with us that we consider what were saying, and admit fault often when were wrong?

I read a thread On "Bored" that started with footbal moved on to the Simpsons and finally burst into an all out racist rant from two opposing races. Meanwhile the would be moderators egged them on and talked about how much they enjoyed watching the fight.