In an earlier entry in this series I said I’d probably write a whole post about a certain book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Well I realise now I have less to say about it than I thought, but I’ll try and give it a short post. So this book is about an autist, not an autist in the way that the term is used online on places like 4chan but an actual person with autism. A fifteen year old boy living in a town not too far from London, with just his father. The book is written from his point of view, almost like a mock diary, so you also get a view of his various idiosyncrasies. The chapters for example, are not numbered normally but rather only the prime numbers are used, because Christopher (the main character) really likes prime numbers. He also struggles to accurately interpret facial expressions, or tone of voice. He also likes things that are well ordered, in particular he likes patterns. He also likes lists.
Now it’s funny how the term autist is used on 4chan, to describe people like me. That is, anyone who struggles socially. Although since getting a customer facing job I’ve become a bit better at holding eye contact, making small talk, and so on, I am still pretty awful with people. The thing is though, I’ve never really had trouble understanding people, or picking up on social cues and nuances. I’m actually quite the opposite of autistic, even if my worst social moments may externally resemble those of someone with autism the internal mechanism is entirely different. I am overly self conscious, I’m too aware of what others are feeling and thinking and what the social subtext is rather than not aware enough. The result however, does seem superficially similar. That is, between robots and high functioning autists, people with Asperger’s for example. Which is what the character of Christopher is, or at least on his way to becoming. After all he is still quite young, although older than I was when I first read this book.
That’s basically the germ of an idea I had for this post, this analysis or investigation of how the term autism is used in a slang way on 4chan (and the internet more generally speaking). Yes of course it’s older than that. You can find films from the 80s where autism (or sperg, autist, ’tist, etc.) is used by school kids as a generic insult for nerdy/ awkward kids. Online though it’s really taken on a whole new life, so to speak, there’s a lot you could say about it. I think it’s really interesting that in fact a mind that works in some ways exactly oppositely to how certain autistic people work (in a figurative sense, not necessarily in terms of actual brain structure. I wouldn’t know) creates a very similar outward result. I’ve known people with actual autism, a good friend of mine as a boy for many years was autistic, the way he thought was very different to how I did.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately actually, after a certain awkward chat with one of the customers a few months ago I was trying to go over it and find out exactly what I was doing that weirded people out so much and I realised that from an outside perspective I really do come off kind of like an autist. For example, I’ll respond to “small talk” style questions very literally. Now I know that the unwritten rule is that you’re not really meant to answer those questions but answer a question they didn’t ask you. Like, if someone asks what music you listen to, instead of just naming the musicians you like in order of most listens on your device you’re meant to talk about some music related thing you’ve done recently or something like that.
I know this from observation, I’ve seen small talk when it goes smoothly and this is exactly how it goes. I’ve also read stuff online about this, it really is a good thing to know, but for most people it’s just muscle memory essentially. Because they were properly socialised I suppose and I somehow was not, but for me I have to remind myself to do this shit (and this question avoiding thing is like one of a million different stupid rules) and I have to do it in what is for me a high stress situation as well. I know that it’s pathetic that a simple conversation is “high stress”, but it is what it is and I can’t change that. So instead, when push comes to shove I just act on instinct instead of trying to “follow the rules” and I actually answer people’s questions… like a fucking autist.
I also don’t want to feel like I’m trying to dominate a conversation, I feel like if I just talk about something only semi-related to what was asked the person will think I have an agenda and then they’ll be resentful and talk about me to others or whatever normies do. I’ve experienced gossip since starting this job, they all get along great in person but then have complaints about the exact kind of thing I just mentioned and things like it. So I’m not imagining it, if I want to get along well with people I have to ironically kind of annoy them. It’s the only way, you have to have some kind of presence. I’m a people pleaser though, it’s my weakness, so it’s like going against my programming.
So I have to learn these rules, but for most people if you pointed out these specific “rules” they wouldn’t even know they were following them. In fact, they’d probably think you’re pretty fucking weird for even giving this stuff so much thought. For them, they neither realise they’re doing a dance every time they engage with one another, nor have the self awareness that they’re all equally as pushy or forceful in conversation as they complain about everyone else being. If you’re autistic you may have the lack of awareness, but you don’t understand the “rules”, and if you’re like what we might call a robot (or a foreveralone maybe, I’m really not sure what to call myself) you’re very aware of how people will judge you and resent you. In fact you understand these rules more explicitly than any normie, but you’re too self conscious. The ultimate expression of these internal processes, how you appear to the normie, looks rather similar in the end. You’ll try so hard, and get so far, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter.
I have two contrasting examples, that may illustrate my point. On the one hand let’s take a famous person who is diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, Greta Thunberg. And btw I do not appreciate all you meanies on 4chan (/pol/ in particular, not that I spend much time there these days) being so horrible about this little girl. I don’t care if she’s a government plant or whatever you believe, she’s a qt pie with a good heart and you can leave her alone. Joan of Arc was a puppet for more shadowy forces too, Greta will be a similar kind of spiritual figurehead for the new eco friendly reich that will soon arise. Anyway, you look at this interview with her and you can quite clearly tell that she’s not quite socialised normally.
She’s reasonably confident given that this is a 16 year old girl from a small irrelevant European country on a huge American news show, but she’s still a bit “off”. She doesn’t really hold eye contact when answering questions, she seems to look down a few times when making a statement like she’s not quite sure of her own words. I’m not great at analysing people but it’s just clear that she does indeed have autism. Now to contrast I have this interview from Robert Smith I saw recently at a Japanese music festival. There’s a new Cure album coming out soon, so I’ve been watching any new interview that comes out for information about it, and this one I’ve watched quite a few times because it reminds me so much of myself. Indeed if I had to try and give you an example of how I am in person (at least until I get comfortable around you), I would probably suggest this video.
Anyway, I’m pretty certain Robert Smith does not have autism or any associated mental illness. I’ve read a lot about him, probably too much, and I’ve never seen any mention of something like that. Yet, that interview is incredibly similar to the one with based Greta. The stilted speech in particular is what really strikes you. Now Robert Smith is no robot (if you want a robot musician, that would be Nick Drake), he’s happily married and the frontman of an internationally famous rock band, but there is some similarity. He’s certainly a gentle soul, and had only a few things gone differently would easily be another guy on /r9k/, that’s why his music resonates so much with me I think.
This post is a total mess, I’m not going to try and pretend otherwise. The quality of this blog is really all over the place, some weeks I’m really proud of what I’ve written and other weeks I’m hesitant to even go through with uploading the post I’ve got. Maybe I should upload less, I have come to this conclusion before but I always end up coming back to this weekly schedule. And to be fair, some months I do have a post I’m proud of every week, but more often I simply rush things through and that is a problem I have. Now I do have some interesting ideas in the works, it’s not all bad news, but maybe I’ll try to break away from this weekly thing again. I’ll see, clearly I have some kind of compulsion to keep writing every week but maybe when I feel like a post isn’t working out instead of doing what I’m doing here and complaining about my post being bad to extend the wordcount I’ll just give it a few days and try and make something worthwhile or delete the thing and skip a week.
I’ve also had a really stressful week, there’s been a lot of stuff going on and I may write about that but I’m gonna wait until I know how things end up first. I’ll see what happens, and then perhaps I’ll decide what to do. I also have another idea in the works, for a different post that I think could be a lot of fun for both for me to put together and for others to read, and I’m gonna see Joker next week so maybe that will give me something to talk about. It’s certainly made a splash in the usual circles I tend to frequent. So, it’s not like I don’t have plans. I’ve read back through a lot of this blog over the last couple days, because I wanted to find a few certain entries to show someone, and that’s really reminded me of how much of a mess this blog is. For every post I’m really happy with, there’s a rushed and low quality one like this as well. I think that compared to the early days I’ve improved a lot but there’s a lot of work to be done yet. If I want to make this thing into something I can be truly happy to have worked to create.
I’m not keeping this book btw, if that’s not clear. I read it many times over back in the day, I’ve talked about this before but I would read and re-read the same books multiple times in a row often and this was one of those. I possibly read this one ten times or more, sometimes I’d finish it and just start back at chapter one the same night. It was like a friend, but those days are over now.
Ramblings of a neurotic mess 