As the years go on, I’m more affirmed of the position that the term ‘autism’ is used to explain every day behaviours, but by below average IQ people. They’re both cognitive spectrums, after all. But even experts of the former struggle to define it, just like the shortcomings of IQ and it’s…whatever it is.
It’s why more and more we hear, “Well I guess everyone’s a little on the spectrum.” So if it’s normal, not being so is not normal.
I think, “The average person isn’t below average” is synonymously more true—obviously—in context of cognitive application.
At this rate the modern, “Haha! NERD!!!” aka. “autistic” will be someone that folds washing or can’t socially explain the Dunning-Kruger effect to a person that thinks it’s European Ben & Jerry’s, entirely missing the critique on their education in politics being from X.
My drunken point is, who the fuck doesn’t like sorting wires? You ever dealt with those messy things?! Only an idiot wouldn’t.
There are quite a few misconceptions in this comment. For example, “Well I guess everyone’s a little on the spectrum.” is a comment that frustrates many autistic people because it misunderstands what the “spectrum” in ASD means, and is usually said in a way that diminishes the lived reality of autistic people. I realise that you weren’t making that statement, merely pointing to the existence of people who make this argument. Nonetheless, I want to emphasise that this sentiment is not representative of autism.
I do think that with the increasing awareness of autism in the popular consciousness, there is a risk that our understanding of autism may be hampered by stereotypes. I have seen diagnosed autistic people feeling like their struggles were invalid because they didn’t nearly fit into the popular conception of what an autistic person looks like. I believe that autism is probably still a useful category, in terms of helping people find the support they need to live fulfilling lives, but that we need to be mindful of how category labels can cause harm if misunderstood or misapplied.
I think classifying yourself can limit your growth potential. Just because you are autistic today doesn’t mean you have to stay that way. You can change yourself, if you want. If not, that’s fine too.
Autism can’t be “cured” and it’s something people learn to live with not move past. If you know a person who was autistic and don’t seem to be any longer, one of the following things happened.
- Therapy helped them learn ways to manage
- They learned you aren’t someone safe to be themselves around and mask around you.
- All the above.
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“affirmed of the position that the term is used”
Yrp, you’re underscoring one of my tangent points. I couldn’t be bothered making more text in the one comment, but also figured if the comment was too long, it’d get a bunch of people jumping on me before they could manage to finish it. Alas, never avoidable. So, thanks 😁
Oh, but also just keep in mind, those misconceptions are in quotes for a reason.
And I see it kind of the same way as we saw OCD being diluted, just the 2020s version of that. Only the ignorant claimed to be or claimed to say one is OCD for normal behaviours to average people leaning more towward a perceived unusual particularity, such as ironing and folding clothes, for example
But again, I’m drunk.
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I don’t like sorting wires. I just give them to someone who does like them. Then I also know who to go to if I need wires.
This is so wrong it almost wrapped around and became right again.
Maybe it’s right but poorly articulated?
Iq tests get iffy in neurodivergence due to spikey skillsets, but neither my husband or i are “low IQ”, and i’m ASD while he’s got ADHD
IQ is bad in general since you are trying to measure “intelligence” with arbitrary test problems. Intelligence doesn’t have a clear definition so the IQ test is flawed.
I’m not defending their comment (because I’m not even really sure what its stance is), but I do want to clarify that they don’t seem to be arguing that we’re low-IQ rather than autistic; rather, I think the argument is that when low-IQ people see “normal” IQ activities, the low-IQ person will chalk it up to neurodivergence.
Like in their example, a low-IQ person would see a neurotypical person folding their laundry and think, “huh, they must be on the spectrum”.
Thanks that comment makes at least 40% more sense now.
I know, right?! Glad you agree.
God damnit. Now I’m an autistic grandpa.
In undergrad I once went back to my dorm room and eagerly showed my roommate the video of Grace Hopper illustrating how long lengths of time are (https://youtu.be/9eyFDBPk4Yw). A little while later, he was talking about this scene and how he likes the writing, because engineers are often much more excited by something seemingly mundane, such as the various lengths of wire needed for a project, than “this is my spaceship.”
Anyway, I tell him, completely seriously and with no sense of irony, “yeah, but why would anyone care about lengths of wire?”
He yelled back, “You literally came in here to show me a video about lengths of wire.”
Having not seen the subtitle, I thought at first that this was a drawer full of rods and belts and whatever else they used to beat the autism out of kids, back in the day.
My grandfather was different, he said “okay” for my diagnosis, read up on it, and when he read that Albert Einstein was suspected to have autism, he thought he had a bloodline of future scientists. Also he had a great trouble with saying “it’s enough work for today”, and was stubborn enough to work on something 18 hours if it meant it could be done under one day.
The “enough work” problem is the story of my childhood… I have way too many memories of sitting in the garage, or on the driveway, either freezing to death or being eaten alive by mosquitoes, at 2:30 a.m. while trying to hold a light absolutely still in just the right position…
To be fair, I often stay up too late trying to find some bugs in my OpenGL pipeline, so I likely inherited a lot from him.
“Puts some hair on your chest”
Me chest hairless at 40. What a lie.
Everybody knows that you need to chew some black root for that.
Knowledge of sports statistics is a socially acceptable autistic hyper fixation.
Ever talked to one of these people? You mention a baseball player and they can tell you what their batting average was for each year of their decade long career, or they can tell you where every NFL player went to college; meanwhile I have trouble remembering my own phone number.
I have a friend who’s sure I’m on the spectrum, and points at things I talk about as my current hyperfixation. Meanwhile I’m talking imprecisely forgetting detail.
If I’m on the spectrum, I suck at fixating on stuff
Keep in mind there’s a strong correlation between ASD and ADHD. So that could just be the ADHD side of things.
I’ve always loved the “lengths of wire” line. As a kid I used to check out lots of outdated library books about building a home science lab, and they consistently called a short piece of wire a “length” of wire. I don’t think I ever saw that term in any other context until Futurama, so it really brought back my nerdy roots.
I think a length of wire is more about being a vague measurement and to distinguish it from a wire coil, which is a separately useful thing in electronics.
Calling things a length isn’t indicative of being short. Terms like a length of rope and length of wire are fairly normal ways to talk about things without a strict measurement.
Yes I think it’s just a substitute term for “piece” of wire. But distinctly I recall “length” being commonly used in those old science books from the 40s and 50s. To me Professor Farnsworth seems cut out of that mold, the classic black and white movie scientist character.
I’m barely 40 and calling something a length of X seems totally normal to me. Making me feel old with that grandpa talk kid.
It is normal, they’re just being weird about it because social media has rotted the brains of basically every living person.
LOL I’m 70, talking about books from the 40s and 50s that my small-town library had in the 60s.
Come to think of it I have seen length of pipe or length of tubing in modern plumbing instructions.
Amateur. Back in the 90s i collected odds and ends because I wanted to exactly be like a Sierra online adventure game protagonist.
Also I collected coins. But I guess that was not eccentric enough to be an autistic thing?
I had a Velcro wallet full of supplies like uhh… some bits of thread, some zip ties, twist ties, rubber bands, stuff like that. I never did anything with that crap. I was a strange one.
You were a protagonist of a 90s adventure game! You carried all manner of weird things to solve moon logic puzzles!
I’m too lazy to keep things organized, does that get me out of autism?
I think that upgrades your autism to audhd.
Nah, it just means the ADHD that often accompanied Autism is fight full force.
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I have a cable tumbleweed
Those aren’t any of what you just said though. I have a drawer of wires everything you mentioned, outside of VGA because why? But I do not save or sort random electric wires.
Does buckets of old nails count? Which are also next to my buckets of old screws.
I do a lot of renovating and construction, some on contract but mostly for myself, and I save so much stuff from my work … screws, nails, nuts, bolts, washers, wire, scrap wood, scarp plywood, glass, metal, roof tile, rubber products, plastic products, unique rocks, concrete block
I’m indigenous Canadian and I grew up poor in the 80s and I was raised by parents who were born in the wilderness in the 1940s. For a while I saw my grandparents who saw everything new as wondrous and special … my grandmother saved every plastic bag that was still good and had only been used once. My grandfather collected scrap wood of anything and cobbled them together to build boxes, utensils or just build a hunting shack. I got my habits from my dad who worked every single day and just collected stuff on his way saving everything in case he needed it … 50% of the it made sense and he did indeed use stuff he had kept around, the other 50% meant he just kept a forever pile of stuff that rusted and deteriorated in the yard.
Is it Autism or just well organized?
This is how you can spot a non-autistic. For autistics, it’s not just about having stuffs organized. It has a purpose and has a sense.
I can see organized things from the NT point of view. But, it’s not organized for me at all. The details don’t match what would be organized for me. Just as an example.
With autism in general, it’s rarely about what it is visible to the NTs. It’s about the invisible. Ask the autistic why and validate it. The person will be happy to explain why.
One doesn’t require the other, but let’s be honest they often travel in the same car
Could be both.
If you’re well organized your autistic, if not, you are ADHD. If you fall in the middle, you are both.
I know I’m old man shouting at clouds but it seems like social media is completely focused on classifying. It seems silly. It’s like Meyers Briggs personality tests.
The big problem with ADHD is that every human will experience the symptoms at some point in life.
Every ADHD meme is relatable to pretty much everyone, but they don’t understand what it is for those symptoms to basically be your whole existence.
My favorite thing and I’ve mentioned before, ADHD is like peeing, we all pee, but when it hurts to pee or you’re peeing 50 times a day or it’s causing negative impact in your life, you go see a doctor
The adhd gives you superpowers memes always makes me want to strangle someone.
Yeah it gives me superpowers like once every few months where for a day or 5 I get a ridiculous amount of work done. The rest of my existence is miserable and I hate myself for not just my lack of work productivity but also how hard it is to get myself to exercise, brush teeth, or just get out of bed. And not a single healthy routine sticks. Only the unhealthy ones. Why is it so easy to pick up smoking again but so hard to do anything that’s good for me?
Have you tried meds (stims specifically) ? That significantly increased my productive hyperfocus phases.
Methylphenidate doesn’t help a whole lot, I still have little control over what I hyperfocus on. It’s better then nothing though.
I should try Elvanse (Vyanse), maybe that’s more useful. Need to actually get it prescribed first though.
I mean for me both works (Ritalin just is a lot shorter and more up and downs, generally less effective).
Though, I’m indeed prescribed Elvanse it’s basically the hyperfocus drug IME (YMMV).
I’m really productive with it (I’m a passionate programmer, which probably helps), but sometimes well a little bit too productive (burning through complex problems for > 10 hours the day, sometimes completely ignoring other stuff I should be doing as well, and am somewhat exhausted after somehow escaping that hyperfocus, or finishing the issue). As I got “smarter” through it and like a learn a lot, I’ll just accept this as a net-positive effect, I have to deal with.
But I have more control over what I’m hyperfocusing at (as I’m less likely bored and distacted), and try to “focus” this on issues that deserve this hyperfocus.
Smoking gives you a sense of doing something while doing nothing. And it’s great. I’ve read that 90% of schizophrenics smoke.
Yeah, I hate how great it is…
It is beyond exhausting. Nobody takes my serious neurological disorder seriously. I’m nearly thirty and only now I’m starting to get the medical help I would have needed 20, 25 years ago. To think what could have been breaks my heart.
I got diagnosed last year. I’m 41. My entire life would have been very different. In fact, I believe I was diagnosed as a child but my mom never did anything about it or told me.
Anyway, I can tell that even my wife of ten years thinks I’m exaggerating or trying to make excuses.
For me I was actually diagnosed with just dyspraxia as a child and it was considered severe enough to have some support needs, recently my mum told me that the educational psychologist said I probably had symptoms of both autism and ADHD but I was never put in front of a psychiatrist who could diagnose that stuff.
Of course this was also back when the DSM had the mutually exclusive diagnostic criteria so who knows what they would have labelled me with in the end. I think the apparently ADHD symptoms bother me more and seem more treatable so I’ve gone in for a referral for that at least. Only 6 months to go 🙃
And yet, despite people saying what you say, I still struggle far more than neurotypical people and they can’t understand why
I am diagnosed with both, and do relate to social media posts regarding the combination of both
Oh sure it can be a problem. My issue is with the endless videos that do nothing but categorize and diagnose.
It’s like what if there were endless videos about, “10 signs you are bad at math.”
My joke in my household is that no clean flat surfaces can exist.
My medicated ADHD ass is still plenty messy, but my non-medicated wife will put any item down in any place when she’s done with it or it’s in her way. Then it disappears from existence for an hour or a month or so. Unless it’s outside or in a room we don’t use daily… then the possible range expands a lot.
Can confirm. Everything on top of my desk has a specific spot and orientation but anything additional, like important papers placed onto it will disappear from the physical nature of reality and my memory in a very short yet unknown amount of time
I am certified both. Also this is why the term neurodiversity is so much better. Overlap is quite common.
what do you think of the term AuDHD for Au(tism) + (A)DHD
That’s the term the community uses
I was eccentric when I was seven years old. They had meetings about me.
Was diagnosed with ASD around 50 years.
real conversation:
“back when I was a kid autism didn’t exist like you guys!”
“Ma… you’re autistic…”my grandpa has a collection of those glass caps they use on power towers
after searching for an image the correct term is “glass insulator for power lines” but I think “glass cap for power tower” sounds funner lol
I have a collection of those silica gel packets I find at clothing stores and supermarkets
I once dragged one of those ceramic powerline insulators across two international borders because I found it lying around and liked how it looked. It took up the majority of the space in my backpack, so I had to buy a second backpack and carry it on the front of my chest lol. Apparently the reason they have that odd shape is so that when it’s raining, water can’t make a continuous trickle between the wire and the pylon
Apparently the reason they have that odd shape is so that when it’s raining, water can’t make a continuous trickle between the wire and the pylon
That and also to increase the distance any charge has to travel across the surface of the insulator.
I think collecting those was a bit of a thing in the 60s and 70s, I’ve run across multiple older folks who did. Pretty sure it eventually crossed with the “turn random shit into lamps” fad in the 70s because that seems to have become a fairly popular thing to do with them.
that’s interesting, had no idea there was a “turn shit into lamps” trend, that’s so funny. Thanks for sharing!
The dad of a friend of mine does collect those, and ceramic ones. As an employee of the city, he got permission to open a local museum of insulators in a bulding owned by the city.
I love those things
Those packets are real nice sprinkled on bread rolls btw, also great in most kinds of stir fry / pan fry.
You should know if you have any of those real puffy pink ones, they’re particularly good.
…where does he keep them? Make sure you wash your hands after touching them!
Wait are they lead? My grandparents have some on the window sill
Nope I’m pretty sure they are glass/ceramic, but they have a nice flared end so maybe they have other uses
“Silica gel packets?”
Ohhhh, you mean the DO NOT EAT bags!
Oooh, like shoe flavor packets?
DO NOT EAT
You’re not my supervisor!
