Love on the Spectrum (LotS), while it is still manipulated like all reality-TV, has helped me developed some major insight. I was watching the show, and after a few episodes, I said, “Finally, a show about normal people being normal.” Then, I started thinking that if the whole premise of the show is that it’s about not-normal people, what am I thinking? I had to think about it for a few days until I reached my conclusion.
My whole life, I thought that fiction and reality-TV and movies (known as TV for the rest of this post) were so weird. I would call it propaganda and population control. To me, it was a way to get the masses to all behave a certain way. It was never anything like what people are normally like. TV characters try to be cool, play social games with each other, be mean to the weak to appear strong, conform to trends, try their hardest to assimilate a prescribed standard of beauty, etc. There were good messages too, like be nice to each other, don’t overtly lie, have morals, here’s how you resolve disputes in a healthy mutual manner, etc. Still, it was not real-life. It was not how people naturally behaved. When I would interact with people and they started acting like people on TV, I would tell them that they are acting too much like the people on TV and could probably benefit from watching TV less. When asked by someone if I think that other people will like what they are planning on wearing, I have seriously responded with, “What…are you competing in a popularity contest like on TV? Who cares what other people think? Wear what you like.” People would be upset about this, but I was proud that I “helped them see that they were being inauthentic/brainwashed”. Despite my views of TV though, I still enjoyed it for its entertainment value, but I naturally gravitated towards science shows and documentaries.
What LotS helped me realize is that…No! TV is really how “normal” people are. NTs really behave like the shows on TV. Maybe they’re not exactly like TV depicts, but they are very similar. They have their hierarchies, manipulative games, implicit/indirect communication, popularity contests, confusions, morals, small talk…all that. In my example above, the person deciding on what to wear was in a popularity contest like on TV! I made the NT-cultural mistake of explicitly pointing it out, which they understandably considered rude. Overall though, through internal and external selection biases, my life was inadvertently designed to include autistic-friendly people, which behave differently from people on TV. Either my friends were autistic or behaved with me in an autistic-friendly manner. In my personal life, I saw that non-TV-people didn’t act like those on TV, so when someone would act like TV, I thought they were brainwashed rather than NT. The whole time, I was the “weird” one insisting that the world itself was “weird”. OMG. I’m cracking up! 😆
Like all of life’s lessons, I’m still building on this, so I would appreciate any input or additions. Am I wrong? Did I make an illogical connections? Am I missing anything?
Also, has anyone else been through something similar?
Ok, re-read that while thinking about how NTs say that we miss the point/social cues and need people to explicitly tell us things. That’s how they are!! They get the point/cues because they are jumping to conclusions. Of course, this approach causes them to make faulty conclusions, which is why they have misunderstandings. Like 90% of NT tv is them figuring out a misunderstanding that would have been completely avoided if they just spoke directly instead of giving hints/jumping to conclusions.
I hope this will help somewhat…
When an NT interacts with another person, I have to try and make sense of what they say and do. For the most part, this’ll instinctively be done by imagining that they’re basically like me. This leads to some hilariously wrong judgments, because the line of thinking goes something like—if my imaginary version of myself were doing or saying this thing, what would have to be going on in my/their head for their words/actions to make sense?
People tend to have pretty poor imaginations, so it’s pretty easy for someone to get to, what they’re saying/doing must be malicious. I think this is also what people mean when they say “projection,” that projection isn’t always intended as an attack, but it is almost always a failure of imagination.
It’s said, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them.” What’s fascinating is that this needs to be said; it should be obvious. But this is basically my point: in my experience, people don’t have a great conception of the reality of others, and laziness makes people fall back on just imagining (their concept of) themselves but for being a woman, being black, being ND, being trans…
But remember, for the NT, this is all done automatically, this is just the baseline NT social perception. Or at least my understanding of it. So for example, when you ask someone, are you competing in a beauty contest? who cares what people think? many an NT will take that as an accusation of frivolity; after all, why is that the thing you focused on? What’s going on in your head, or rather, what would have to be going on in my head for me to ask someone that? I must not like them very much, so they must not like me very much. And so on and so forth.
I’m (probably) NT and I find this incredibly tedious, I can’t imagine what it’s like for NDs.
Oh my god! This is Theory of the Mind! What you’re referring to as the ‘conception of the reality of others’ is I think what is called Theory of the Mind!
I was chasing the idea down through google-available scholarly journals the other day. The theory of the mind is the ability for a person to understand others don’t share the same experience of reality as themselves. This is something that people develop around three or four years old. I was reading about how the possession of language affects the development and retention of this ability that humans are supposed to achieve.
It’s easier for me to describe my understanding of Theory of the Mind by explaining the way it’s tested for in children.
The test proctor shows the child where they hide an object in a room, then leaves the room. While the proctor is outside, another person comes into the room and moves the object from where it is hidden to some other place, the child is watching them do this. The proctor returns to the room to retrieve the object and someone asks the child where the proctor will look. Children who haven’t reached the mental development / maturity where they recognize others aren’t simply copies of themselves will answer that the proctor will look where the child saw it moved. Children who have obtained a ‘theory of the mind’ will know the proctor didn’t see the object moved and will look first for it where the child saw the proctor hide it.
I was ruminating on this and thinking how Theory of the Mind is the missing piece to so much of the culture war bullshit conservatives obsess over;
Because laziness is the only reason they would beg on the street ‘obviously’ laziness is the only reason a person would beg!
Nobody has a mind that doesn’t work exactly like theirs and since they can’t imagine craving suicide this person’s reasons are obviously fabrications!
They don’t understand that different people have different reasons and desires and haven’t lived exactly the same life as them.
Yes!! Adding to this, when someone accuses me of nefarious intent out of nowhere, I take it as a note of that’s would that person would intend if the roles were reverse. For example, if someone accuses me of cheating or wanting to cheat, note taken: this person is likely to cheat.
I do this all the time. I think our fundamental understanding of the world is what is different. For example, it’s not like I have never cared what people thought about what I was wearing. Of course I’ve asked for that same support. However, if they asked me if I was in a popularity contest like on TV, I’d respond with something like, “Yeah, I want them to like me so they’re nice to me,” or, “No, but I want to make sure I don’t stick out or piss someone off. What if there’s some rule about wearing a shirt with text on it, I don’t know about it, then everyone treats me like I’m some asshole that purposefully has no regard for standards to piss everyone off? It’s happened before.”
I think this is what they call cognitive empathy: having an idea of being in the situation. This is not to be confused with emotional empathy, which is feeling what someone else is feeling.
I seriously told a racist white person once, “Okay. Imagine a white person, but with black skin…or say you woke up tomorrow with black skin. Nothing about you has changed at all, except now you have black skin.” I could tell that got to their core.
That’s almost certainly true, and it’s worth considering—given how much social strife there is, I’m not sure if the NT mind is actually more socially apt. In some sense, I imagine the biggest actual problem of neurodivergence is NTs being assholes about it, and really, how much social aptitude does that demonstrate?
But the thing I was trying to convey about NTs is that we tend to take all this for granted, that for most interactions we don’t have to think about it or plan it out. If thinking does happen, it’s usually after the fact—what did this person really mean when they said that? We tend to get too caught up in the moment to introspect about social interactions as they’re happening, so instinct takes over. What I was talking about, with the half-assed role-switching, is what I believe to be going on with those instincts.
It may well have, but for the most part what’s cognitively going on here is horribly inadequate. There is no “me but for being a woman,” because being a man has contextualized my whole life up to this point. Every experience I’ve ever had has been influenced by my gender.
This tends to become more obvious with contrast, which is why people who easily blend into their community—be it the straight white Christian rural republican or the straight white spiritual-but-not-religious urban democrat—tend not to notice. Most people I’ve known tend to believe that most everyone else has mostly similar experiences to their own, hence their incredible myopia about the fact that other people can have very different ways of understanding the world, and have come to very different conclusions about it.
Point being, “me but for being a woman” would be a totally different person in basically every way, so it’s a pointless thing to think about, and not a very good way of getting at the social intentions of others.
The big wrinkle in all this is, there are absolutely people out there who will lie to you and try to cheat you. Because of this, you can’t just take people at face value; social judgments are necessary. On the other hand, given the prevalence of lying and cheating, NT people aren’t very good at that either.
It’s super exhausting. Imagine a whole life of upsetting people and then finding out about it later. This happens everywhere. We have absolutely NO IDEA we’re doing anything upsetting, sometimes think we’re even helping out, then BAM! Someone is upset, being passive-aggressive, or cuts us off completely. The result is that every single interaction has to be completely thought out. The most minor things, such as, “Am I look at their face enough? Should I tell them that I can smell their fart? If I ask to go by the snack aisle, will that bother them? If I don’t ask and they find out later, will they take that personal? Should I offer to pay for dinner? I asked them a question and they didn’t directly answer it, so should I ask again or pretend I didn’t ask it? Should I show up 15 mins early, on time, or 30 mins late? Is wearing red going to be offensive? Should I ask them what’s bothering them or pretend they’re fine? Should I be honest when they ask me how my day is?..” ALL THE TIME. every. single. interaction.
I think that’s why a lot of us need so much alone time. It’s just time to live without worrying about upsetting someone.
This was what I meant in the bit you quoted: I can imagine any one of these scenarios, and I can imagine how one must feel in them. The thing I can’t imagine is that as a baseline experience.
I agree with you. My comment was meant as an addition to yours because you made some good points! I apologize if I seemed like I was arguing or disagreeing with you. I also apologize if this very comment seems like I’m arguing or disagreeing with you. Sometimes, I don’t know what is happening.
I feel like this comment pretty much sums up the whole issue lol.
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The thing is, acting is always overdone. NTs are like that, yes, but not as over the top as you see on tv and in theatre.
Right! I’ve said that so many times. And then I realized; that is how they are!
Right?!!! That’s really how they are! That’s not fake. They’re not trying. That’s not a mask. They’re really REALLY like that!
This is me rn