Edit: A few people have interpreted the title as serious, so I wanna clarify that it was meant as a sarcastic joke about how little sense the neurotypical world makes to me, but it is still legitimately me asking for help understanding said neurotypical world.

Was having a conversation with a friend today about why I seem unapproachable to people online. Apparently it’s for 2 reasons.

One is that I say “K.” all the time, as a short way of saying okay. She pointed out that most people find this rude and offensive. This kinda baffled me, because like why? She explained that like, if somebody were to give a long emotional speech and I just responded “K.” that would be offensive. That confounds me. So it’s rude in one context, and neurotypicals have decided to be offended by it in all contexts? But the reason it’s rude is what confuses me more. Apparently it’s considered lazy because you could have just typed out the word, but like, that applies to all text speech and nobody’s mad about people shortening those words.

But it got more confusing when she explained the second reason, which is that I end all of my sentences with proper punctuation, which she said “makes people feel like I’m done with the conversation and not interested.” But just a second ago improper grammar was rude, and now proper grammar is rude instead.

It baffles me. You can’t just use proper or improper grammar. Use too much improper grammar and you’re lazy and rude. Use too little and you’re also rude. But you can’t just use any improper grammar, you have to use the very specific subset of improper grammar that’s been deemed acceptable and not lazy (even though it’s exactly as lazy as what they do consider lazy.)

To be clear, I’m not bitter, and I’m definitely gonna adjust my behavior to hopefully seem a little less rude to people. I think that’s just a nice thing to do. I just find the neurotypical mind utterly fascinating. I don’t think they even realize how many contradictions exist in the social rules they all so easily accept.

  • deweydecibel
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    28 months ago

    Use too much improper grammar and you’re lazy and rude. Use too little and you’re also rude.

    Genuinely not sure what you mean by this.

    It’s rude to use “too little” improper grammar?

    Where are you getting that from?

    But to your main point:

    Why are neurotypicals in charge of making up the social rules?

    Why are you under the assumption that the social rules are something they all got together and agreed upon?

    Social rules form over time in cultures, based on the interactions of individuals. It’s part of the social zeitgeist. Neurotypical people make up the majority, they do the most social interaction, so the overall “rules” are formed by them.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      fedilink
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      18 months ago

      As far as the first thing goes, I used to avoid using any text speech at all, only used proper punctuation, always made sure my grammar was right. People started to get really annoyed with me because of it, telling me I was being overly formal.
      As far as the second thing goes, that was a sarcastic joke about how the “rules” I’m told to follow are always full of contradictions, making them hard to follow. The joke being if autistics made the rules they’d be actual rules, and efficient ones. I’m well aware of why it’s not actually that way.