Actual autist here: Took me a loooong time to figure out a whole bunch of social concepts when it comes to what neurotypicals basically deem as small talk.
Firstly, you basically just have to accept that for most people, a level of classist, racist, other kinds of stereotypical insults are socially viewed as basically acceptable, even though its usually quite obvious they are, in fact, insults.
Then you have to understand the concept of proportionality in small talk. You have to reply with something that’s very obviously and directly relevant, and of the same magnitude.
(Jumping from an insult about dietary preferences to an insult about war crimes is not the same magnitude)
Encapsulating this entire social interaction is the setting: coworkers of mixed nationality likely and an after work dinner likely implies an expectation of basically corporate social etiquette, ie, back handed compliments to establish a social dominance hierarchy, where the name of the game us getting as close to breaching the invisible ‘wow what an asshole’ line without actually stepping over it.
To avoid looking meek, docile, awkward or antisocial, you have to figure out an appropriate small talk style reply, which actually requires a fairly detailed knowledge of the other persons you are conversing with. Their culture, personal history, personal beliefs, etc.
If you don’t do this at least semi-regularly, then you are a pushover who will be given higher workloads with no extra compensation and likely will not advance very far in your career, as you seem to be fine where you are.
So ok, if you know a bit about Israelis, you might attempt to insult back along the lines of dietary preferences.
But, its a faux pas to escalate even within this realm of responses: If you retort that you ‘prefer your potatoes with pork’, well, that’s probably going to be viewed as quite rude, as that’s still a higher magnitude, as it references something that is commonly known to be forbidden to most Israelis.
What might be a proportional response would be ‘Sorry, I’d make them (the potatoes) into latkes for you, but I don’t have any eggs’.
But that may still be deemed as overly offensive, depending on the temperament of the Israeli and the level to which the other coworkers feel the need to be defensive toward perceived anti-semitism.
So, as an autistic person, you have to consciously have all this knowledge and think through it all logically in real time, all while your actual emotion is anger because you don’t give a fuck that the potato comment was supposed to be a joke, because it was in actuality a racist insult that actually references a fucking famine and a dietary stereotype that exists largely due to imperialist exploitation of your ancestors.
In summary, yeah small talk is an absolute nightmare for autistic people who are in an aggressive, hostile social environment, which, at least in my experience, is almost all of them.
I’m autistic and I’ve learned to stop trying to play this game. Instead, I just make assholes like this explain their sideways ass comments in a straightforward fashion for the group. Forcing people to explain bigoted comments and not allowing the subject to change has now made everyone uncomfortable. Not so fucking funny anymore. I usually don’t have to do this more than once or twice within a specific group.
Also autistic here. Let’s say you reply with “So why is that funny” and that person or a third person says “Don’t be so sensetive”. What’s the best way to force the explanation?
“I guess I don’t know. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.” With a look on his face that clearly shows confusion at why you spent two whole responses about something as insignificant (in his mind) as potatoes. Everyone else probably has similar looks.
For small talk like that you get one response on the topic. If someone said I should order potatoes because I’m Irish I’d lean so far into it, adapt an obvious accent, and say “Oh I do loove me potatoes.” If I wanted to backhand him a little I’d tack on “Except during the famine when there were no potatoes. Those were daark days” to the first statement. There’s enough humor in the accent to cover the callout mass starvation he probably unwittingly referenced.
“oh, I thought it was about he Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole.”
Even worse, the famine was entirely caused by landlords and especially the English. It wasn’t a natural disaster, but a product of monoculture that was forced on the people through no fault of their own.
Most people are not aware, but potatoes are a reference to a holodomor-like government-induced famine that occurred in Ireland when the government of England made a policy of paying far over market rate for people to ship food out of Ireland.
This weakened the Irish food market, leading to a situation where many people subsisted on the one crop that they could grow on their own property (as collective farm output was put on ships to elsewhere), which was potatoes.
In that brittle situation, a fungus called a potato blight caused many people to starve to death because they were down to one last food source after the English mucking about.
It didn’t happen in a time of war so it wasn’t a war crime, but what the English government did to the Irish people was definitely genocidal.
I bid that non autistic people be named and categorized in a way that highlights their subtly hostile, backstabbing, cruel nature. You know, the common household “psychopath” who doesn’t actually meet the requirements for real psychopathy, but is still pathologically a dickish cynic playing a social game for minor wins in wealth and status, instead of simply being a friendly and polite contributor to society.
They named us.
Maybe we should name them.
Describe the traits that define them. Go into detail about what exactly is so wrong with them. Why they kill rally for warmongers. Why they sabotage eachother. Why they face obvious long term problems with such oblivious nonchalance.
Words aren’t bad in and of themselves, usually. For one, “psychopath” freely translates to “suffering soul” but you could also do “mind in disease”. Neither sound too insulting, per se, do they?
You’ll alway have euphemisms and if there’s a difference that can be noted, then usually the people’s who differ from the norm will be called something “bad”.
Take left-handed people. Sinister. That’s where the word comes from. “Sinister” as in the Latin word for “left”.
Why care about what words someone uses if you know you have better ones yourself? It’s the intent behind the words that most often matters. To neurotypicals, anyway.
Actual autist here: Took me a loooong time to figure out a whole bunch of social concepts when it comes to what neurotypicals basically deem as small talk.
Firstly, you basically just have to accept that for most people, a level of classist, racist, other kinds of stereotypical insults are socially viewed as basically acceptable, even though its usually quite obvious they are, in fact, insults.
Then you have to understand the concept of proportionality in small talk. You have to reply with something that’s very obviously and directly relevant, and of the same magnitude.
(Jumping from an insult about dietary preferences to an insult about war crimes is not the same magnitude)
Encapsulating this entire social interaction is the setting: coworkers of mixed nationality likely and an after work dinner likely implies an expectation of basically corporate social etiquette, ie, back handed compliments to establish a social dominance hierarchy, where the name of the game us getting as close to breaching the invisible ‘wow what an asshole’ line without actually stepping over it.
To avoid looking meek, docile, awkward or antisocial, you have to figure out an appropriate small talk style reply, which actually requires a fairly detailed knowledge of the other persons you are conversing with. Their culture, personal history, personal beliefs, etc.
If you don’t do this at least semi-regularly, then you are a pushover who will be given higher workloads with no extra compensation and likely will not advance very far in your career, as you seem to be fine where you are.
So ok, if you know a bit about Israelis, you might attempt to insult back along the lines of dietary preferences.
But, its a faux pas to escalate even within this realm of responses: If you retort that you ‘prefer your potatoes with pork’, well, that’s probably going to be viewed as quite rude, as that’s still a higher magnitude, as it references something that is commonly known to be forbidden to most Israelis.
What might be a proportional response would be ‘Sorry, I’d make them (the potatoes) into latkes for you, but I don’t have any eggs’.
But that may still be deemed as overly offensive, depending on the temperament of the Israeli and the level to which the other coworkers feel the need to be defensive toward perceived anti-semitism.
So, as an autistic person, you have to consciously have all this knowledge and think through it all logically in real time, all while your actual emotion is anger because you don’t give a fuck that the potato comment was supposed to be a joke, because it was in actuality a racist insult that actually references a fucking famine and a dietary stereotype that exists largely due to imperialist exploitation of your ancestors.
In summary, yeah small talk is an absolute nightmare for autistic people who are in an aggressive, hostile social environment, which, at least in my experience, is almost all of them.
I’m autistic and I’ve learned to stop trying to play this game. Instead, I just make assholes like this explain their sideways ass comments in a straightforward fashion for the group. Forcing people to explain bigoted comments and not allowing the subject to change has now made everyone uncomfortable. Not so fucking funny anymore. I usually don’t have to do this more than once or twice within a specific group.
Also autistic here. Let’s say you reply with “So why is that funny” and that person or a third person says “Don’t be so sensetive”. What’s the best way to force the explanation?
“Im not trying to be overly sensitive i genuinely just dont get the joke. Explain it to me. Make it funny.”
“Well, you know, Irish cuisine has a lot of potatoes in it.”
Joke fucking explained. How do you figure the guy’s going to be on the spot, exactly?
“Does it? What’s a good dish to try?”
“I guess I don’t know. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.” With a look on his face that clearly shows confusion at why you spent two whole responses about something as insignificant (in his mind) as potatoes. Everyone else probably has similar looks.
For small talk like that you get one response on the topic. If someone said I should order potatoes because I’m Irish I’d lean so far into it, adapt an obvious accent, and say “Oh I do loove me potatoes.” If I wanted to backhand him a little I’d tack on “Except during the famine when there were no potatoes. Those were daark days” to the first statement. There’s enough humor in the accent to cover the callout mass starvation he probably unwittingly referenced.
“shouldn’t you be bombing hospitals” is better.
Corned beef hash? Colcannon? Literal Irish potatoes?
Well played, though I doubt some Israeli making genocide jokes is going to be that familiar with Irish cuisine.
Everybody knows about Irish food, just like everybody’s heard of hummus
… Hummus is a popular staple of cuisine all over the eastern mediterranean and much of the middle east.
The word ‘hummus’ itself is from Arabic.
Hummus is not particularly unique to Israel.
You’ve apparently heard of hummus but you don’t know much about it.
The potato joke is also a joke about a genocide, though.
Like “How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?”
“None”
seriously.
insert potato joke
“why is that funny?”
let them try to explain
“oh, I thought it was about he Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole.”
see how awkward it can get.
Even worse, the famine was entirely caused by landlords and especially the English. It wasn’t a natural disaster, but a product of monoculture that was forced on the people through no fault of their own.
It was caused by the government of England subsidizing the export of food from Ireland.
I laughed
Most people are not aware, but potatoes are a reference to a holodomor-like government-induced famine that occurred in Ireland when the government of England made a policy of paying far over market rate for people to ship food out of Ireland.
This weakened the Irish food market, leading to a situation where many people subsisted on the one crop that they could grow on their own property (as collective farm output was put on ships to elsewhere), which was potatoes.
In that brittle situation, a fungus called a potato blight caused many people to starve to death because they were down to one last food source after the English mucking about.
It didn’t happen in a time of war so it wasn’t a war crime, but what the English government did to the Irish people was definitely genocidal.
I bid that non autistic people be named and categorized in a way that highlights their subtly hostile, backstabbing, cruel nature. You know, the common household “psychopath” who doesn’t actually meet the requirements for real psychopathy, but is still pathologically a dickish cynic playing a social game for minor wins in wealth and status, instead of simply being a friendly and polite contributor to society.
They named us.
Maybe we should name them.
Describe the traits that define them. Go into detail about what exactly is so wrong with them. Why they
killrally for warmongers. Why they sabotage eachother. Why they face obvious long term problems with such oblivious nonchalance.I propose we start Zionism for Autists.
I’m sure that’ll go well rofl.
Do you think allistic people are inherently incapable of doing this earnestly?
Words aren’t bad in and of themselves, usually. For one, “psychopath” freely translates to “suffering soul” but you could also do “mind in disease”. Neither sound too insulting, per se, do they?
You’ll alway have euphemisms and if there’s a difference that can be noted, then usually the people’s who differ from the norm will be called something “bad”.
Take left-handed people. Sinister. That’s where the word comes from. “Sinister” as in the Latin word for “left”.
Then we’ll just end up on the
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill
Why care about what words someone uses if you know you have better ones yourself? It’s the intent behind the words that most often matters. To neurotypicals, anyway.