this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
920 points (97.2% liked)
Greentext
4600 readers
2140 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
I also stopped playing 'the game' long ago and no longer put up with shitty people, but I can only do that because I'm on SSDI and don't have to interact with people in an employment setting.
Anon here is learning the hard way that basically, to advance in almost any modern, monetarily lucrative career, and most non lucrative ones, welp, you have to play this stupid social jockeying game because that is subconsciously how most others determine your worth as an employee, as a coworker.
You can do the 'explain why thats funny' angle, but that just makes ... you look like an asshole, a killjoy ... to the people whose jobs are their lives, their selves.
It has been working for me, and I've been getting promoted. I also tell the truth to executive leadership against advice. I just don't have the bandwidth to fully mask and complete the job I'm paid to do. I mask the essentials, but I'm not playing games. We have work to do.
Well damn, I am genuinely shocked that is working for you, but also very glad to hear that at least its working out well for you!
I had a job like that once.
Thank you! It took a long time, and there have been challenges, but things are moving in the right direction.
=D
SSDI?
Google says social security disability insurance
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."
Violence.
Violence is the best way to force anything. As soon as one’s strategy has devolved to forcing people into things, it’s best to just be authentic about it and own the violence.
Please don’t assume my sensitivities. And then proceed to push again.
I just say it’s either funny or it isn’t.
Humor is an authentication mechanism. It’s either funny or it isn’t, and that binary signal is the whole point of humor. It’s an indicator people are on the same page or they aren’t.
I’m not kidding. Humor is a test. You don’t ask “why wasn’t that password the right one?”. The password was either a match or it wasn’t.
Once you understand the social function of humor, the question “why is that funny?” becomes bunk.
"I'm sorry, please carry on with your racist jokes"
No need for sarcasm, deadpan works fine
TBH that’s a great advice for anyone dealing with assholes, autistic or otherwise.
we'd get along well
“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?
I guess you never heard of the potato famine then, which was a type of genocide visited upon the Irish by the British. Hence the 'sudden'jump from potatoes to bombing hospitals.
That's the source of potato jokes people crack about the Irish.
I’ve heard of it. It happened in the 1800’s on another continent. Can you explain what it has to do with eating potatoes?
It is the link between irish people and potatoes.
The joke wasn’t about potatoes it was about the link between irish people and potatoes.
Irish cuisine has a lot of potato dishes. Because they were cultivating potatoes.
Because the british bought all out their food sources, subjecting them to a famine where they had to grow potatoes to survive.
No, the famine happened after. You’ve got it backwards.
The famine was started because of a widespread potato blight. It’s not called the Potato Famine because that’s all they could eat; it’s called that because that’s what they couldn’t eat.
"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.
If you say so!
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.
Potatoes aren’t even native to Ireland.
Not necessarily, and if they have, they might not know the ingredients. Even hummus, many people don't know what it is made from. If someone is making a joke about genocide and forced to quickly switch gears to a culinary discussion, I doubt they'd play it off so well. They might, but I doubt it.
People pretty generally know that the Irish cook with potatoes, as a result of the Potato Famine and the resulting Irish diaspora. People are extremely likely to have interacted with people whose name and descent are Irish.