And it has all kinds of implications and context and shit.
How the fuck am I supposed to tell what’s just people doing things at random and what’s a part of all-singing-all-dancing-shit-show the neurotypicals call “social norms”? Down with NTs.
Honestly while it’s really fucking annoying that refusal to participate could result in some silly neuronormo interpreting a completely innocuous action as an offense, and it can cut you off from social shit, I think it’s basically the only way. The same button never does the same thing twice. Screeching rn.
Might I ask which pointless social norm prompted this? I’m pretty good at helping my wife who’s autistic navigate them.
My ADHD ass understands that I’m breaking the social norm but reaaallly needed to say something lol
No :3
Breaking the social norm is usually based. This one requies a facial expression I can’t really make…
Is it a smile? I swear I haven’t figured out what the fuck a smile really is. I can manage a grimace that’s the best you get
I can smile when laughing or w/e but cannot make it happen naturally. If somethin makes me happy or whatever it works great, otherwise no lmao.
mfw I found out that “are you hungry” actually means “will you eat with me” and “what’re you doing this weekend” means “would you like to make plans?” 🤦
these are things I learned in the last 12 months – I just turned 42
pretty much all the time, it feels like everyone got a memo that I missed
Once again this comes down to allistic people being afraid to be honest or vulnerable. If i ask you to go for dinner and you say no i have all the bad feelings of rejection and shame. If i say “are you hungry?” And you say not really i can still continue as if i wasn’t rejected.
It used to be an innuendo to ask a person “would you like to see my etchings(drawings)?” I remember a teacher of mine finding old newspaper comics that reinforced this
I often ask my wife “are you hungry” and then we both have a discussion about both our hunger levels and actual willingness to eat, lmao
We really do need a Gayroller-2000 style emote for neurotypicals.
your comment made me realize that’s the exact conversation I have with my husband about food, too
NTs are the weirdos, we make perfect sense!
But this makes sense because i want to know other people’s hunger levels to make a decision on what to do about it. The followup question is usually about what kind of food and when and coming to a consensus on what eataging will satisfy our differing hunger levels.
If I’m asking a rando colleague out to lunch my question literally just is. “Pub?” And i get a yay or nay
HOW MANY MORE COMRADES HERE ARE OLD ENOUGH TO BE MY PARENTS :kitty-cri-screm:
spoiler
You’re cool, I love you for being cooler than my dad. It sucks my dad isn’t as cool :sadness:
I found out that “are you hungry” actually means “will you eat with me”
Oh I just realized this one too, a few seconds ago. I wonder how many times I’ve said not really when I should have said yes??
Probably about as many times as I should have! 🤦😂
oh well
How many people were flirting with us or just trying to be friends with us, and we were totally oblivious??
How many people were flirting with us or just trying to be friends with us, and we were totally oblivious??
I would imagine quite a bit, can be hard to tell with NT people, though I generally can pick up quite a bit though I have had quite a few people just randomly ask me out or what not in the past so they can misread me being interested in them
Girl invites me over to watch a movie. I watch the fucking movie and eat a bag of popcorn. Go home.
God this one happened to me and I only realized the fumble I’d made like two years after the fact 'cause she was like. The homie, we’d often take our breaks and hit the smoke pit at the same time, one time when she’d gone back home for a holiday, she actually brought me back a jar of apple pie moonshine because I’d mentioned never knowing shiners who flavored their stuff-- I just thought she was one of the most considerate besties I’d ever had.
Never mind the fact that I know what tattoos she has and exactly where they are, I just thought she was the homie. Been kickin’ myself ever since.
People ask this because it’s an invitation to eat with someone without the respondant having to admit that they are would like to be fed, which could be consisdered as implying that their host or whatever is being negligent to the needs of their guest. It is a little silly. But, and I am a ND person who has learned a lot of this by trial and error, there are deep instinctual behaviors that these rituals are about. I’m not here to say whether or not any of this is good or not, but especially the rules about hospitality strike me as things that got ingrained into culture in order to make common uncomfortable situations more reliable by the means of rituals that people follow or don’t, indicating whether or not they’re someone who is going to play their prescribed role - this is maybe why there are often many ritual refusals and acceptances. It’s a way to play-act giving someone something that historically might have been precious and if they don’t play along, you can weed out people who are likely to take advantage of you. It’s imperfect of course and not considerant of neuroatypical people, but it just kind of had to work well enough to keep going.
It is definitely frustrating to not know ettiquette and I often feel like throwing all of it out in favor of a more direct system. Sometimes I do! But for the rest of the time, I find that ettiquette manuals are super helpful, especially when they explain the reasoning behind otherwise inscrutable rituals.
I found out that “are you hungry” actually means “will you eat with me”
Or as they say in my neck of the woods: “didjyeet?”
You should do what I do and assume that everything everyone does has some kind of hidden meaning and spend hours analyzing it.
👍
Been thinking about this recently. Best solution I have thought about is acquiring a hip-hop hypeman to answer this shit for me, but I’m too ND to recruit one.
My name’s Dickey_Butts and I’m here to say
I’m having an existential crisis in major way
Its a lyrical miracle that I’m here-ical and not in my bed curled up spherical.
I do that, erratically.
Most of the time I just do the usual reflexive “good, you?” exchange. But it’s good to be a little bit mercurial or playful about playing along - if they’re weirded out, well, it broadens the mind and all that so it’s good for both of us. Amusing either way.
This was like the first NT social cue i learned and know it very well and have to do it almost daily and I still fuck it up constantly. My brain automatically always wants to answer it literally it takes so much mental overriding to not do that but the “correct” answer always comes out stilted then i forget to ask it back
I just learned this Persian word:
In the rules of hospitality, taarof requires a host to offer anything a guest might want, and a guest is equally obliged to refuse it. This ritual may repeat itself several times (usually three times) before the host and guest finally determine whether the host’s offer and the guest’s refusal are genuine, or simply a show of politeness.
The host is then expected to say one should not do taarof (“ta’arof nakon” - similar to “don’t be polite!”) for which the appropriate response would be to say “no” two or three times and then pretend to cave in to the host’s insistence and pile on the food.
I suspect every culture has examples of this (we can find it everywhere from The Water Margin to Curb Your Enthusiasm), but it’s nice to have a word for one of these neurotypical song-and-dance routines that even the neurotypicals haven’t mastered.
I hate this kind of shit so much. It reminds me of trying to leave family gatherings and getting stuck saying goodbye to people for an hour. Leave the theatrics for the stage and screen, I just want to say how I feel in the moment.
