Being bluntly honest. People who are neurodivergent can struggle with being “politely dishonest” and can tell you what they think in a very blunt manner without meaning to offend.
Not engaging in small talk. Again, people who are neurodivergent tend to prefer talking about things that fascinate them and can have a hard time understanding the point of talking about just whatever.
Struggling with being on time, struggling to focus on someone or something, struggling with eye contact. In general, neurodivergent traits tend to be seen as “asshole behavior” because they are abnormal and don’t conform to society. People who aren’t normal tend to be viewed as assholes because how dare they inconvenience me by being different.
Source: personal experience as well as listening to the experiences of others. I’ve been hit with all these things at least once and accused of being an asshole, aloof, and/or self-centered.
I find that struggling to be on time is fine, actually not being on time is disrespectful of my time. In modern society we have so many options available to make sure we can keep on time. Set up alarms, time how long it takes you to get dressed and out the door, time how long it takes you to get somewhere, set alarms to keep you on time based on what you’ve actually measured, not what one “feels” is enough time.
Personally I’m more often than not 5+ minutes early; I can always wait a little more before I go in or something, it’s often harder to “just get there faster”.
BTW; if someone is late because of something outside their control that’s fine; just make sure to inform me ASAP.
I think the core trait to look out for is willingness to work around personal issues. With time that might be an openness about your problems, at the very least. Maybe aiming for half an hour earlier, communicating status often and early. Fucking up is human, but not trying your best not to fuck up is a dick move.
I tried that. I’ve tried alarms, I’ve tried timing myself, none of it works for me. I’m at the point where the steps I try to take to be on time are actually detrimental to my mental health. It’s why I’ve kinda given up on actually trying to be on time. It’s not that I don’t have respect for you, it’s that I need to have respect for myself. I was putting so much stress on myself that I wasn’t able to enjoy anything anymore. I was disconnecting myself from others because I was afraid of the fact that I couldn’t be on time and how they’d react to it. I legitimately, truly, cannot help it.
I get the feeling from your response that you’re not going to be happy and you’re going to tell me that I’m just lazy, or that I’m irresponsible or inconsiderate. I’m very used to it. Sorry.
Why would I bother with calling you lazy or irresponsible or inconsiderate? If you were someone I knew I just wouldn’t invite you to stuff after the first few times you don’t show up on time. Whether people don’t mean to be inconsiderate when showing up late doesn’t matter to me, it’s still not respecting my time and I simply don’t want to deal with that after a few times. But you are just a random person on the internet whose being on time or not does not affect me at all. But I don’t actually believe that you cannot help it at all. Doesn’t mean I’m going to argue about it, that’s your cross to bear and has no effect on me.
The solution for you might be to have all/most social stuff at your place so you don’t have to deal with getting somewhere at a specific time.
I think it’s important to bear in mind that some of those things are what neurotypical folks, I guess you could call them, use to convey interest or disinterest. Eye contact is a way to express interest, and helps to show one is intently listening to the speaker. Conversely, frequently glancing away is kind of the body language equivalent of giving short “uh huh” type answers when one is trying to disengage from a conversation.
My point isn’t that you should feel bad about struggling with these nuances; I just think it’s worth mentioning that some of those negative reactions you may have experienced just has to do with expectations in body language. It’s not that someone who’s neurodivergent is being an asshole, it’s just that they’re sending out signals we’re otherwise used to interpreting as disinterest, and that is (often) off-putting.
Again, it’s not something to feel bad about, it’s just communicating on different wavelengths so-to-speak. Sort of like a language/culture difference.
I would agree with you except that I’ve seen people try to clarify that they’re autistic, or ADHD, or bipolar, etc, and explain that it causes them to act in that manner and sometimes, no matter how hard they try, they can’t surpress it or “act normal”; only to be told overwhelmingly by the people in the room/thread that they’re an asshole and selfish for not trying hard enough.
I do understand that some of those things are used as visual indicators for people to determine how the other is feeling about the current conversation, and maybe it’s way more important to people than I realize; but there are way too many people who will tell you that if you can’t alter your behavior to be normal, then you’re an asshole.
Man, I’m sorry to hear that’s your experience. I guess some folks simply refuse to be understanding.
I mean, if somebody thinks you should alter your behavior for them and they shouldn’t do the same, then they are confidently an asshole.
Yeah, i can relate. Yesterday i empathized with people doing moral wrong stuff, saying that i can understand their logic. And than was acused that it would be my logic. That irrate me the whole night, but in the end it just was my brutal honesty and a lack of black and white thinking.
But yeah, it hurts when people missread that. I hope you doing good :)
I think they gaslit you
Not to be mistaken for “tough love,” the concept that manipulative people will often use to defend their coercive verbal assaults on their targets.
Setting up boundaries.
Massive one. People automatically assume those who have defined areas that others are not allowed to access (ie personal/physical contact, topics of communication, literal areas they restrict in their home, etc) are prudish and being willfully obstinate for unfounded reasons, without considering why these boundaries are set in the first place.
The second you inconvenience someone, they assume you’re the problem.
Having boundaries while female. Any boundary.
Asking a dog owner to use their leash rather than letting their dog walk up to you or your kids.
Not agreeing to false logic (say, out of pressure to be polite or non-confrontational), especially when the next step would be doing something based on that logic. People sincerely don’t understand why deceiving you once like this won’t work another time and think it makes you an asshole.
Agreed, and along the same lines, pointing out bad logic or factual errors used to support a point you actually agree with.
Refusing to engage.
Saying no and not backing down from it
aka Boundaries.
Too many people can’t deal with that, but that’s their problem.
“I’m just asking questions.” Could be a child, could be a moon-landing conspiracy person.
Could be someone who’s genuinely trying to understand someone’s viewpoint, but it reveals inconsistencies in the other person’s logic, so they get irritated.
I think the big deciding factor is how they’re approaching the questions and what the questions are. Like, if someone is “just asking questions” where the questions just so happen to be a common bad faith talking point, yeah, I’m gonna assume they’re also acting in bad faith.
Eg, leading questions are a particularly common example here. The amount of lean towards their already-decided viewpoint can vary. They might word their question to be convinced away from their viewpoint as the default (“why isn’t the moon landing fake?”), or maybe they’ll provide a statement that obviously gives more weight to their side (“the government is so untrustworthy, so how can we trust the moon landing was real?”).
But often, they even do word the questions in a perfectly valid way, because they’re not trying to get an answer. They’re not gonna be convinced and they’re trying to get an answer. What they want to do is make someone else mistake being stumped for “this person might be right”. Eg, if someone asks you “is the moon landing real?” and you don’t actually know how to prove that it’s real, that can make you think that perhaps it wasn’t real. After all, you can’t explain how it is. But that’s a fallacy. You not being able to explain it has nothing to do with whether or not it’s real. Asking questions is cheap and easy. It takes no time investment compared to answering or understanding an answer. That makes it effective for planting seeds of doubt. And of course, people should think critically, but many folks aren’t going to or aren’t don’t have the time. So they’ll retain this low effort seed of doubt and that’s it.
Plus of course, searching for these questions, especially leading ones, can get you to fall into conspiracy theory or alt right echo chambers, which will have the leading question included in multiple times and technically is a better match from a pure SEO point of view. Search engines do try and train themselves against the common leading questions, but they often have to do that explicitly. This is actually an area where search engines like DuckDuckGo do worse at. You’re more likely to have a leading question in the top results because, again, it really is the most accurate match for that question. Should search engines direct you to the correct results or should they direct you to the results that are most accurate for what you searched for? Nobody really agrees and it’ll be criticized either way (personally, I think that correctness is far more important because otherwise the search engines propagates misinformation).
I usually find the best argument against “is the moon landing fake” or equivalent stuff to be the fact that the Soviet Union stated it was real, when they would have benefited a lot more from denying it and/or proving it to be fake. When your enemy supports your argument then it’s more probable that it’s true.
Eh, if it’s coming from an adult who should know better, I wouldn’t say it’s being misinterpreted as a sign of being an asshole.
E.g. Tucker Carlson is just asking questions so that he can supply his own answers to them, that he doesn’t want to suffer the obvious consequences for stating.
Not being a conversational person.
I don’t do small talk very well and I very quickly run put of things to say to someone I don’t know so I don’t like to just talk rubbish with someone, I prefer to remain quiet and get on with what I am doing.
I don’t mean that the person isn’t worth talking to or I don’t like them, if they need something from me or have a question then I’ll galdly answer or help them, but almost everyone takes it as a slight against them when i dont want to engage in idle chit chat and assume I’m an arsehole when I’m really not trying to be.
As an autistic person I love interacting with people like you.
It took me way too long to realize when someone asks how my weekend was it’s because they want to talk about their weekend
listen, as someone who needs to be social but isnt, it is ok to let there be awkward silences. it is ok.
it isn’t your job to be entertaining. conversation is a 2 way road.
contribute, motherfucker
No. You’re not mandated to listen me ramble about free will, artificial intelligence or simulation theory and I’m not mandated to listen your thoughts about the weather or see pictures of your child.
Conversation is a two way road so when you notice that it’s only flowing to one direction then take the hint and move on.
People don’t need to talk to you if they don’t want to People are so selfish just let people be some of use are on the spectrum and don’t want to be forced into dumb conversations just because you can’t be quite for a few hours
My resting bitch face
Parking in a handicapped parking spot and having no visible disability.
It’s bizarre to me how many people assume that disabilities must be visible. And not just visible, but that it has to be glaringly visible.
You’d think that it’d be well known that visibilities might not be obvious, but nope.
I have an invisible, part-time disability. I used to have a wheelchair and a handicapped hang tag, but I got rid of the tag because it wasn’t worth getting hassled everywhere I parked. Thankfully, the medication is helping and I haven’t needed the wheelchair in a very long time, but that doesn’t mean I won’t need it tomorrow.
It’s like people want any excuse to be a righteous jackass.
What about parking diagonally across two or three disabled parking spots?
In general if you’re parking across 2+ parking spots you’re an asshole, no matter if the parking spots are disabled or not. There are exceptions, but one would have to be considerate in how one parks for those to be legitimate (IMHO).
That’s being an asshole who might be addicted to tic tac toe.
Offering a concise answer to questions, without softening language.
The way you can tell the difference between honesty and being an asshole is of they say they just “tell it like it is,” they’re assholes.
This is a joke, not a rule, but it’s based in reality.
In addition:
Beating around the bush, with way too soft language.
This seems to be a cultural quirk in North America in particular.
Indeed, I feel quite at home in northern Europe, generally speaking.
The fact that they have a record.
Look for a pattern, not a single instance. And yet companies and people hold bad decisions of the past against most folks.
Same goes for having no record, aka the famous gap in a resume. It’s not really about being perceived as a dick, but the same applies nonetheless.
If you ever get a question about a gap in your resume: “I signed an NDA”.
… just don’t tell them it was with yourself
That’s obviously part of the NDA
I turn the question around… people who are clearly liars, deceivers… politicians and businessmen that people line up to vote for with their money or public votes. You really wonder what people think an “asshole” is when you see the kind of politicians that get massive support in a population - to a point people have their photograph on the wall of their workplace or home, put stickers on their cars, etc. to support people that are clearly monstrous. A lot of people do not seem to like to study the crowds of Europe 1930’s terrible leaders and just how many lined up to cheer on such persons.
The scientists a person believes also is a huge indicator of who they consider to be an ‘asshole’. Just passively listening to people who support denial of climate change, denial of microscopic germs and virus, etc. The enthusiasm that followers to non-factual science seem to be very high, and they draw crowds in ways that fact-based science does not seem to do.
When you make up fake science out of whole cloth, it’s easy to make up something to that accords with people’s biases. Actual truth is simply less likely to fall into that category, and more likely to be uncomfortably inconvenient or terrifying. There’s nothing fun about global warming, deadly pandemics, nor microplastic pollution.
Fake news never makes demands on its target audience. Sometimes it says “you are the victim”, or “those people are the problem”, or at the very least, “this is fine.” But it never says “if we don’t get our shit together we and our children face a dismal future.” Instead it always appeals to the greedy and the lazy amongst us.
Fake news never makes demands on its target audience.
consumerism, purchasing the sponsor products, donating to the clergy…
Well for one, I wish I could tell people no when they ask me to social events without being interpreted as an asshole
“I’d love to, but unfortunately I am busy tonight.”
Still kinda rude. You have to at least imply you’ll try to swing by for a short time, as a bare minimum.
Honestly, in a situation like this, I don’t care. If I’m busy, I’m busy. And if politely telling them that is seen as rude, it’s not me who’s the problem.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t understand the concept of “I’m busy tonight.” Nor have I ever heard of someone thinking it’s rude to not always be available.
But if you have no intention to then you’re just lying and now you’re actually being an asshole instead of just being thought to be one
I once had a coworker tell me he wasn’t going to a company event because he “was working on saying no to things.” I thought that was really cool. Not sure how well it would work though for, say, saying no to a friend’s invite 🤷♂️
