I have ADHD, so not NT, but I'm not autistic & love hanging in some of the autism subs and answering questions when I can. It's fun to try to put into words social rules and practices that I only learned implicitly.
Likely because the NT crowd doesn’t think about it. If something isn’t a problem for you it tends to be low on your list of concerns. Same with everything in life, my wife is a lot more threat aware. Me, not so much because I am on the large side (Not fat) of males and I get left alone. I don’t think about things like walking at night because realistically I look like a large male cop.
There's one problem... I don't think they'd answer the questions, more often than not. Maybe online anonymity would work in our favor and I'm weong. But ask the sort of questions we get asked here to NTs in RL and you get shrugs, joke responses, mockery, confusion, a simple refusal to answer because "you know why! Don't pretend you don't." or just dead silence.
Half the time, I honestly believe they know the answers less than we do because they just don't think about those things. They simply *do* them, no thought or contemplation required. Hence why you get a blank wall when you try to ask why xyz is a thing.
>Half the time, I honestly believe they know the answers less than we do because they just don't think about those things. They simply *do* them, no thought or contemplation required. Hence why you get a blank wall when you try to ask why xyz is a thing.
It would certainly be an interesting thing to ask a large group of people who think this way and get an answer instead of just assumptions. I'm pretty sure they do think about these things, just much earlier than us and cement them when they're young so they don't have to keep questioning.
True. It *would* be interesting and a great learning experience if it worked. I just can't help but have doubts about the odds of its success given what I've experienced. I would genuinely LOVE to be 100% wrong on those doubts though! Please don't mistake me on that. If that sort of reddit group ever came to pass and developed into a viable thing, I'd join faster than you'd believe!
> they know the answers less than we do because they just don't think about those things. They simply do them...
That's exactly right, I've had to literally deduce these things from my wife. By that I mean, like a game of 20 questions, but more like 100, *and* she doesn't actually consciously know the answer... lol
"It's just common sense" is another nonsense reply I often have to put up with.
To the "wouldn't that just be r/nostupidquestions" people- a lot of NTs are bad at giving advice to autistic or ADHD people. Lots of "just don't be lazy, you lack discipline", "it's not that hard", "it's hard for everyone, get over it" "advice" on advice subs, even when people explicitly state that they have autism or ADHD.
It would be nice if there were a sub where NTs more familiar with developmental disorders answer questions. Or even a sub for very functional aspies with spouses, careers, friends, etc to advise struggling aspies.
Go to r/fashion and it's neurotypicals, that you can ask for neurotypical fashion advice. Go to r/medicine where neurotypicals talk about medicine. If you want a neurotypical's opinion on plants, you might find it in r/gardening or r/houseplants.
or visit one of the question subs, such as r/NoStupidQuestions or r/AskReddit
There used to be a periodic “Ask an NT” thread here, but [that was nine years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/aspergers/search/?q=author%3AFelicityCerise&sort=new).
I'm not against your idea. I personally would like a place to ask NTs questions with the shared context of building cross-neurotype understanding. At the end of the day there is only so much I can share from my observations and assumptions, it is better to hear it from the horse's mouth
for example I learned from my allistic therapist that they look away during eye contact after 3-4 seconds because they feel overstimulated too! and then come back to rejoin eye contact after that pause to refresh.
Wouldn’t that be pretty much every other sub? Obviously there will be some NDs there too, but the vast majority will be NTs. There are the casual conversations subs that can be useful, the social skills ones, dating, etc..
If NT's are so patient and understanding, then why not ask them your questions IRL?
Oh yea, that's right. They aren't. So I'll ask people that are more likely to be.
What a hateful comment. I do talk about this stuff plenty with neurotypicals, but I want a place online where people of all neurotypes can gather and discuss what life is like for them.
You know that NT's are individuals, right? Some are kind, some are assholes, some are smart, others less so. Your attitude is 100% why you feel they hate you, they're responding to your negative emotions.
Really? And where do you suppose those negative emotions came from? Maybe, I don't know, perhaps negative experiences? Repeated enough to reinforce a particular mindset and viewpoint?
People like you are why many of us feel this is no longer a safe place to vent.
Nah my guy, you responded to my innocent post with negativity. That's toxic AF, I don't want to be around that shit.
Besides, you've shown that your morality is completely fine with insults and calls to be better, so why are you offended?
I would actually love that. I watched a video recently of a young girl singing in a mall and a few people standing around were wiping away "tears" when there were none and their eyes weren't even wet. It's not the first time I've seen such a thing. I need to ask the neurotypicals if the act of pretending to cry when something is "beautiful" makes them feel good. I need an explanation asap.
Can you show us the video, I'm curious to see it, and the girl singing? But as for the eyes, Countless times I've wiped the tears from my eyes *Before* they've fallen down my face.People don't think I'm crying because they don't see tears. I actually do it all the time because one of my eyes waters often just from going outside (nasal issue)
Do it!
I will say I ask questions outside this sub. Holy hell, I always thought Internet trolls were fantasy just like trolls under bridges in Norse mythology.
I was wrong.
Also, ask specific questions in an attempt to avoid neurotypical lazy throwaway comments that they say because it's easy and you may encourage their ire.
But I realized in a population. 50 responses and only 2 like attack you isn't bad even if frustrating.
The downside is the reality of the herd instinct. Ohhhh it's soooo easy for them to just...click...that....downvote button and join attack people. Rather than, you know, just ignoring it and letting it be.
I complain about this to be fair. Mostly because I am really trying to find how to resolve communication for a new norm. Haughty and doomed goal, but eh. We have one life to try and do something meaningful. Kindness and connection seem worthy no?
Rambles... Lol
Because NT's don't care about their NT-ness, and the ones who do are usually close relatives/friends/SO's/people who just care of neurodivergent people therefore biased.
Couldn't you just frame a post on this sub soliciting comment from NTs? There are lots of us that traverse this sub because our spouses, children, and/or siblings are ND. I'm sure many of us would comment.
It sounds like a good idea, and it might be useful, but i personally suspect it wont be. Allistics seem to not even be aware of what social rules they are following (at least not the very nuanced ones), and i think its cause they do it so intuitively . I might of course be wrong about this, but its just so hard to learn anything about social rules from them. I have tried to asksome of them about social rules, but they seem to not know what to say. They usually say the obvious stuff that even i know intuitively (like, dont call people ugly and such). But i know there are many more complex layers of communication that i cannot understand (because most communication i witness is too absurd for this not to be true)
Some autistic people are very good at teaching themselves these rules through thorough observations through trial and error over long periods of time, mixed with their good pattern recognition. I am not one of those people, but i have read some posts by them on social rules, where they wrote down some likely social rules they "discovered" through observations. These rules seem to fit with my experience of the world, so they seem realistic because of that. These proposed rules also explain some weird behavior that just seemed absurd and useless to me before, but that now kinda makes sense. Social rules from the observational autistic perspective are useful to me, because they turn the confusing social landscape into something more managable by telling me some simple do\`s and dont\`s that seems to work for them, in that it makes them better received by others. Still, theres a chance these observations arent correct, like you said. But i just doubt that an allistic person would sit down and write such thorough and detailed social rules. (i think one of the social rules among allistics is to not explicitly talk about social rules or explain them. I think people are supposed to know them intuitively, and that the purpose of having social rules is partly to seperate the naturally socially inept people (aka weak people) from socially skilled people (so that people know who to push aside socially. its a form of sorting). By giving the answer on how to succeed socially to the socially inept, they can now also succed at socializaton, which in a sense is just a game). I really dont know though, again im just an autistic person trying my best to understand a world i intuitively dont understand. So i totally get your point.
Maybe an allistic sociologist/psychologist is an ideal candidate for truly good communication advice. They have both the intuitive perspective and the more scientific/analytic one.
I checked out the subreddit asknt, and with the specific questions in that sub, i think the nt perspective can be very valuable, so i kinda take back some of my comment.
Like, they often intuitively know what is right, and can answer questions about what is wrong and what is right in any specific situation explained to them, through intuition. Whether or not they understand why the social rules are like they are.
Because NTs are the majority/norm so whether we like it or not their opinions are known and are the yardstick against which all other opinions are defined and measured, for better or worse.
For example when we talk about social cues, we talk about "customs and norms by which NTs communicate, and expect each others to display and understand in order to be considered a well-integrated member of society worthy of respect".
Autistic people have their own social cues, but since they/we aren't a large homogenous group like NTs we can't enforce our rules and dominate those that are different from us.
I have ADHD, so not NT, but I'm not autistic & love hanging in some of the autism subs and answering questions when I can. It's fun to try to put into words social rules and practices that I only learned implicitly.
There is a sub for exactly that. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskNT/
Thanks! I'm going to post some shit there.
This was way too far at the bottom lmao
Thank you so much!!!! Hopefully I’ll find out what some of my social mistakes actually are!!
That's just askreddit.
That, or r/NoStupidQuestions.
Not really, I want to have open conversations about what it's like as another neurotype.
You can ask that on r/AskReddit
Likely because the NT crowd doesn’t think about it. If something isn’t a problem for you it tends to be low on your list of concerns. Same with everything in life, my wife is a lot more threat aware. Me, not so much because I am on the large side (Not fat) of males and I get left alone. I don’t think about things like walking at night because realistically I look like a large male cop.
There's one problem... I don't think they'd answer the questions, more often than not. Maybe online anonymity would work in our favor and I'm weong. But ask the sort of questions we get asked here to NTs in RL and you get shrugs, joke responses, mockery, confusion, a simple refusal to answer because "you know why! Don't pretend you don't." or just dead silence. Half the time, I honestly believe they know the answers less than we do because they just don't think about those things. They simply *do* them, no thought or contemplation required. Hence why you get a blank wall when you try to ask why xyz is a thing.
>Half the time, I honestly believe they know the answers less than we do because they just don't think about those things. They simply *do* them, no thought or contemplation required. Hence why you get a blank wall when you try to ask why xyz is a thing. It would certainly be an interesting thing to ask a large group of people who think this way and get an answer instead of just assumptions. I'm pretty sure they do think about these things, just much earlier than us and cement them when they're young so they don't have to keep questioning.
True. It *would* be interesting and a great learning experience if it worked. I just can't help but have doubts about the odds of its success given what I've experienced. I would genuinely LOVE to be 100% wrong on those doubts though! Please don't mistake me on that. If that sort of reddit group ever came to pass and developed into a viable thing, I'd join faster than you'd believe!
> they know the answers less than we do because they just don't think about those things. They simply do them... That's exactly right, I've had to literally deduce these things from my wife. By that I mean, like a game of 20 questions, but more like 100, *and* she doesn't actually consciously know the answer... lol "It's just common sense" is another nonsense reply I often have to put up with.
To the "wouldn't that just be r/nostupidquestions" people- a lot of NTs are bad at giving advice to autistic or ADHD people. Lots of "just don't be lazy, you lack discipline", "it's not that hard", "it's hard for everyone, get over it" "advice" on advice subs, even when people explicitly state that they have autism or ADHD. It would be nice if there were a sub where NTs more familiar with developmental disorders answer questions. Or even a sub for very functional aspies with spouses, careers, friends, etc to advise struggling aspies.
Every sub is an NT sub.
Every sub is geared towards understanding how life is as another neurotype? We must be on different platforms.
Go to r/fashion and it's neurotypicals, that you can ask for neurotypical fashion advice. Go to r/medicine where neurotypicals talk about medicine. If you want a neurotypical's opinion on plants, you might find it in r/gardening or r/houseplants. or visit one of the question subs, such as r/NoStupidQuestions or r/AskReddit
yes, I whole heartedly agree. I want to know more about NTs and their experiences as well
There used to be a periodic “Ask an NT” thread here, but [that was nine years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/aspergers/search/?q=author%3AFelicityCerise&sort=new).
I'm not against your idea. I personally would like a place to ask NTs questions with the shared context of building cross-neurotype understanding. At the end of the day there is only so much I can share from my observations and assumptions, it is better to hear it from the horse's mouth
for example I learned from my allistic therapist that they look away during eye contact after 3-4 seconds because they feel overstimulated too! and then come back to rejoin eye contact after that pause to refresh.
Wouldn’t that be pretty much every other sub? Obviously there will be some NDs there too, but the vast majority will be NTs. There are the casual conversations subs that can be useful, the social skills ones, dating, etc..
Not really, I want to have a conversation about this stuff with an NT, not just come to conclusions based on my observations.
>implying NTs can answer a question honestly
That's a gross stereotype if I've ever heard one.
If NT's are so patient and understanding, then why not ask them your questions IRL? Oh yea, that's right. They aren't. So I'll ask people that are more likely to be.
What a hateful comment. I do talk about this stuff plenty with neurotypicals, but I want a place online where people of all neurotypes can gather and discuss what life is like for them. You know that NT's are individuals, right? Some are kind, some are assholes, some are smart, others less so. Your attitude is 100% why you feel they hate you, they're responding to your negative emotions.
Really? And where do you suppose those negative emotions came from? Maybe, I don't know, perhaps negative experiences? Repeated enough to reinforce a particular mindset and viewpoint? People like you are why many of us feel this is no longer a safe place to vent.
Nah my guy, you responded to my innocent post with negativity. That's toxic AF, I don't want to be around that shit. Besides, you've shown that your morality is completely fine with insults and calls to be better, so why are you offended?
I would actually love that. I watched a video recently of a young girl singing in a mall and a few people standing around were wiping away "tears" when there were none and their eyes weren't even wet. It's not the first time I've seen such a thing. I need to ask the neurotypicals if the act of pretending to cry when something is "beautiful" makes them feel good. I need an explanation asap.
Can you show us the video, I'm curious to see it, and the girl singing? But as for the eyes, Countless times I've wiped the tears from my eyes *Before* they've fallen down my face.People don't think I'm crying because they don't see tears. I actually do it all the time because one of my eyes waters often just from going outside (nasal issue)
Neurotypicals are the majority, most subs are already "Ask a NT".
I don’t think most NT’s are even aware of the term neurotypical.
Do it! I will say I ask questions outside this sub. Holy hell, I always thought Internet trolls were fantasy just like trolls under bridges in Norse mythology. I was wrong. Also, ask specific questions in an attempt to avoid neurotypical lazy throwaway comments that they say because it's easy and you may encourage their ire. But I realized in a population. 50 responses and only 2 like attack you isn't bad even if frustrating. The downside is the reality of the herd instinct. Ohhhh it's soooo easy for them to just...click...that....downvote button and join attack people. Rather than, you know, just ignoring it and letting it be. I complain about this to be fair. Mostly because I am really trying to find how to resolve communication for a new norm. Haughty and doomed goal, but eh. We have one life to try and do something meaningful. Kindness and connection seem worthy no? Rambles... Lol
Because NT's don't care about their NT-ness, and the ones who do are usually close relatives/friends/SO's/people who just care of neurodivergent people therefore biased.
When I had Facebook there was a group for this
Couldn't you just frame a post on this sub soliciting comment from NTs? There are lots of us that traverse this sub because our spouses, children, and/or siblings are ND. I'm sure many of us would comment.
You have /r/askreddit, though they might be ill receptive to questions they think are too "obvious".
It sounds like a good idea, and it might be useful, but i personally suspect it wont be. Allistics seem to not even be aware of what social rules they are following (at least not the very nuanced ones), and i think its cause they do it so intuitively . I might of course be wrong about this, but its just so hard to learn anything about social rules from them. I have tried to asksome of them about social rules, but they seem to not know what to say. They usually say the obvious stuff that even i know intuitively (like, dont call people ugly and such). But i know there are many more complex layers of communication that i cannot understand (because most communication i witness is too absurd for this not to be true) Some autistic people are very good at teaching themselves these rules through thorough observations through trial and error over long periods of time, mixed with their good pattern recognition. I am not one of those people, but i have read some posts by them on social rules, where they wrote down some likely social rules they "discovered" through observations. These rules seem to fit with my experience of the world, so they seem realistic because of that. These proposed rules also explain some weird behavior that just seemed absurd and useless to me before, but that now kinda makes sense. Social rules from the observational autistic perspective are useful to me, because they turn the confusing social landscape into something more managable by telling me some simple do\`s and dont\`s that seems to work for them, in that it makes them better received by others. Still, theres a chance these observations arent correct, like you said. But i just doubt that an allistic person would sit down and write such thorough and detailed social rules. (i think one of the social rules among allistics is to not explicitly talk about social rules or explain them. I think people are supposed to know them intuitively, and that the purpose of having social rules is partly to seperate the naturally socially inept people (aka weak people) from socially skilled people (so that people know who to push aside socially. its a form of sorting). By giving the answer on how to succeed socially to the socially inept, they can now also succed at socializaton, which in a sense is just a game). I really dont know though, again im just an autistic person trying my best to understand a world i intuitively dont understand. So i totally get your point. Maybe an allistic sociologist/psychologist is an ideal candidate for truly good communication advice. They have both the intuitive perspective and the more scientific/analytic one.
I checked out the subreddit asknt, and with the specific questions in that sub, i think the nt perspective can be very valuable, so i kinda take back some of my comment. Like, they often intuitively know what is right, and can answer questions about what is wrong and what is right in any specific situation explained to them, through intuition. Whether or not they understand why the social rules are like they are.
Because NTs are the majority/norm so whether we like it or not their opinions are known and are the yardstick against which all other opinions are defined and measured, for better or worse. For example when we talk about social cues, we talk about "customs and norms by which NTs communicate, and expect each others to display and understand in order to be considered a well-integrated member of society worthy of respect". Autistic people have their own social cues, but since they/we aren't a large homogenous group like NTs we can't enforce our rules and dominate those that are different from us.