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Constantly being told there's something wrong with you, only to see clearly those around you, has a profoundly awful impact. Eventually it's replaced by more accurate internal modeling.
Worse yet, there's likely much less wrong with you than there is with those who feel they need to label you as somehow "less" to feel like "more" themselves.
It is quite funny and IMO in good taste (which is hard to do when diagnosing 9,625 out of every 10,000 as deficient). It probably works well as an in-joke for people who prefer critical thinking to social proof.
But it isn't really appropriate to fight fire with fire when it comes to calling people disordered and the people who need to hear the message won't understand it because they key off social proof. In fact, they may literally not understand the gentle ribbing and might respond poorly.
3/5 stars.
That, IMHO, is what makes it so delicious.
Autistic and neuroatypical are not better critical thinkers. Fairly often they just ... dont understand certain things.
And wont accept clear straightforward plain language explanation of what others want, because in their heads they should not.
From experience this feels to me like a very NT thing to say (apologies if you're not NT, no context to determine either way) - it comes across as written: "Why can't you just do what I ask you".
Often it feels atypical people require a logical understanding from first principles of why something should be done.
Then, once they have that they need to come to the same conclusion of what the course of action is.
If they're aligned, awesome.
If not, then the work is to try to make them understand why, given the current constraints and cultural context, their optimal approach is suboptimal in this situation.
Something as simple as "yes your idea is great, it will work better then theirs, but sometimes others need to fail so that they can learn from their failure" - exact quote.
I'm speaking to a very limited subset here based on quite a bit of exposure in many contexts.
"Neuroatypical" shows up in many, many ways.
And wont accept clear straightforward plain language explanation of what others want, because in their heads they should not.
https://sherlocksflataffect.tumblr.com/post/121295972384/psa...
https://neuroqueer.com/neurodiversity-terms-and-definitions/
I don't display the obvious traits, like stimming.
And then there's autistic burn out, where you can't concentrate on things anymore.
I found the Austistamatic YouTube channel quite helpful fwiw.
Obviously. It would come off as sarcastic humor if so many of the basic facts were correct. Neurotypical people are only just above 80% of the population, so the author is in more common company than they believe.
seriously (just a little): the world, the life, is way more various then all their philosopy.. live and let live is a good starting point for anything..
It demonstrates the author's point from back in the 1990s so well, but also makes its own biting social commentary on how often authoritative-sounding language gets weaponized by a majority to dismiss and mock that which they fail to understand.
Impressive level of historical continuity. The dryness nearly threw me.
The scenario which drives me insane is; someone tells me some popular mainstream narrative about why we should do something in a particular way. Essentially just parroting expert consensus on a similar topic. I tell them exactly why this approach wouldn't work in that particular case and they concede to all my points. They fully agree and don't push back on anything.
But then a few minutes later, they're still pushing for the exact same mainstream expert consensus approach and ignoring all my earlier points which they had literally just agreed to. WTF.
The impression I get is that they liked how my arguments sounded superficially and felt that other people in the meeting also agreed but they didn't actually understand any of it! It's like they only absorbed it in a very superficial way; just enough to allow them to rephrase it or to add a few supporting points but somehow they really didn't actually understand the essence of the argument.
This kind of situation reminds me of the wordcel vs shape rotator discussion from a few years back. NT people are like wordcels.
I think in your scenario that’s applying both ways.
“Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity.”
But then the author says:
“My brain is a jewel. I am in awe of the mind that I have.”
Lost all respect instantly.
How so? Why? What drove this comment? Zero karma account; did you create it just to shit on this person?
You "instantly losing respect" because an autistic person dares value her own mind when others pathologize is part of the point of why it was posted. The satire wasn't there to seek approval in 1998 in the first place, amazingly.
Just imagine there’s a cult that tells everyone that you and people like you are a mistake that should have been killed or “fixed” in the womb.
I maintain respect for the author, they have a good attitude in a grim reality.
This kind of framing-inversion might work as a coping mechanism to get you through some dark times as a spergy adolescent. But eventually you have to reconcile yourself to the reality of autism: it really is a neuro-developmental disorder and you actually do have deficits in social understanding, which you might be able to improve with deliberate effort. You have a lot stacked against you, but if you're well into adulthood and still stewing in this self-defeating resentment, that is a moral failing.
The linked article is old so it pre-dates the "neurodivergence" idea, but the comments here are using it uncritically. "Neurodivergence" de facto just means "autistic and/or ADHD", usually with a particular kind of autistic taking a dominant role in discussions and advocacy. It has always been a political coalition (quite an esoteric one).
But when you take ADHD on its own terms, the social-model extremism of "neurodiversity" advocates is particularly silly and harmful. ADHD people are perfectly happy with the disability-model; there clearly is something wrong with our brains, it's measurable with brain scans, and the symptoms can be improved with drugs. Don't tell me that ADHD is some equally-valid "attention orientation" or whatever social-model pretzel phrase you might come up with.
As for autism: try telling someone with severe autism, someone who can't speak or clothe or feed themselves that what they are living with is just another perfectly valid neurotype. Try telling it to their caretakers. It's a risible luxury-belief enjoyed by autistics only slightly on the spectrum, and indulged by people who don't know better.
You do realise they’re not saying that in earnest, right? The point is to demonstrate the absurdity of it.
> But eventually you have to reconcile yourself to the reality of autism: it really is a neuro-developmental disorder and you actually do have deficits in social understanding, which you might be able to improve with deliberate effort.
The reality is that what you just wrote is just as true in the non-autistic → autistic direction (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1362361320919286). Blaming one side for this bidirectional mismatch is not a universal truth.
https://neuroqueer.com/throw-away-the-masters-tools/
“If we start from the assumption that neurotypicals are ‘normal,’ and Autistics are ‘disordered,’ then poor connections between neurotypicals and Autistics inevitably get blamed on some ‘defect’ or ‘deficit’ in Autistics. If an Autistic can’t understand a neurotypical, it’s because Autistics have empathy deficits and impaired communication skills; if a neurotypical can’t understand an Autistic, it’s because Autistics have empathy deficits and poor communication skills. All the frictions and failures of connection between the two groups, and all the difficulties Autistics run into in neurotypical society, all get blamed on Autism. But when our vision is no longer clouded by the illusion of ‘normal,’ we can recognize this double standard for what it is, recognize it as just another manifestation of the sort of privilege and power that dominant majorities so often wield over minorities of any sort.”
> As for autism: try telling someone with severe autism, someone who can't speak or clothe or feed themselves that what they are living with is just another perfectly valid neurotype.
As for womanhood: try telling someone with severe endometriosis or menstrual pain that what they are living with is just another perfectly valid gender.
The bigger issue is that the various illnesses under the "neurodivergent" umbrella have wide differences in impact. So you might get people who function in society and others who can't do anything. The former of which wants to make it some quirky personality trait. They both still have the condition though...
> Even though the condition is defined in the context of reduced functioning in society.
Diagnostic criteria are not a definition. Even the organisation that publishes the DSM acknowledges it: https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20250876
> Mental disorders are clearly not “natural kind” categories that can be defined using polythetic symptom checklists, which assume that a symptom can only be “present” or “absent” (9). In fact, it is debatable whether any medical conditions have this property. […] Thus, clinicians use the DSM framework not as the final word on psychiatric nosology but rather as one tool among others for treatment selection and communication with patients and families (11, 12).
In fact, in the case of autism, and if autism is conceptualised as a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference, the criteria logically can’t be the definition since they reference “current functioning”, which could go one way or the other for the same person depending on their circumstances.
If you were immensely intelligent to the point that most of the population found your ground breaking insight boring. Would you think you were deficient? Or different? What would others think of you? If they don't appreciate your immense intelligence they'd just think you're boring because you talk about random maths nonsense.
Is the $SPORT fan that insists on discussing sport, in a group where no one else likes sport 'deficient'? What about the non $SPORT fan in a group of fans who insist on discussing the latest game?
I mean, quite apart from the fact that you can be so profoundly autistic that you are vulnerable and cognitively limited, and so profoundly ADHD that you are incapable of keeping yourself safe.
I am as yet formally undiagnosed ADHD; it is obvious, so obvious to me that either I am in later life finally unable to blunder through with the ADHD patterns that are evident throughout my life, or I have early onset dementia (which is how severe it often feels).
It is in no way society's fault that I am impaired. I have no special talents from my condition that other people with better time management could not also have acquired (and often do, better than me).
There may be a benefit to society from my profound inability to manage time leading to me productively hyperfocussing on something that society wants, but this comes at a cost to my health.
So I don't really care for the idea that these traits might "select"; it is a disorder.
Hyperfocus for example can be highly beneficial if you manage to point it in the right direction, and in general neurodivergence tends to specialise either into explorers or exploiters, that is, those who are good at exploring the space of possible solutions, and those who are good at applying a specific solution to solve the problem at hand. Such skills can be problematic in isolation (as you've described), but in combination can be very powerful and could've therefore been instrumental to our past success as a species.
I understand this is not much comfort for an individual who is struggling, but I second the GP in saying that many modern societies are not setup to provide the best environment for the neurodivergent among us to thrive, to the detriment of everyone.
Sure, there are autistic and ADHD traits that are primarily a problem because of the structure of our modern society.
But just you try being severely ADHD, and ending up with your yogurt going bad on the counter and growing mold because your clutter blindness made you not notice it was there for 3 weeks. Or you start reading a good book, and 10 hours later you realize that you haven't had anything to eat all day, and neither has your cat. Or you just literally cannot force yourself to do basic household chores, and because you're undiagnosed you don't know why, and your roommates/significant other just decide you're lazy and selfish and kick you out.
There are plenty of neurodivergent traits that have never been net-positive, regardless if they have some specific evolutionary reason for existing. (We don't even know that they do; they may just come along for the ride with the other traits. We don't yet understand the neurophysiology of these conditions well enough to say to what extent they're just knock-on effects of something deeper.)
Well, it is a mistake. It is a deviation from the normal path. But so what? "Correct" and "mistake" are not antonyms. Without any mistakes, there would no be life in the world as we know. This is not a moral codemnation of any individual.
> I and my experience of life is not inferior, and may be superior, to the NT experience of life.
I am not quite able to put in words right now, but the sentiment expressed here seems like a perfect illustration of what happens when we let society become hyper-atomized and the fetishization of the individual.
If you say it is a mistake, then you must know what the goal is.
What happens when the traditional source gets contaminated?
The outsider then has an advantage.
Yes tribal dynamics require people to act like sheep, but that can lead to getting stuck in local maxima, and not having any diversity.
This is a non sequitur. Why do you assume variation is a “mistake”? And how do you define “normal”?
I don't have a problem with people looking inwards, but surely to maintain any kind of rationality you need to balance it by also reminding yourself to look outwards.
If I got diagnosed 10 or 20 years earlier, I wouldn't have dropped out of university and my life would have been profoundly different and better.
Extreme ADHD is a constantly shifting quest for volatile stimulation. This results in poor diet (extreme sugar cravings all the time), short term memory loss, failure to achieve basic tasks, obsessive behaviors, poor social framing, and more. For these extreme cases medication provides clarity that allows for more rational control of basic cognitive decisions.
Obviously, this is a sample of 1 so take it with a grain of salt. I am just naturally stubborn which helped me learn to deal with these problems on my own.
I'm myself bipolar (diagnosed) and very likely autistic (undiagnosed) and having a base understanding on the why and how my brain works has been a significant improvement.
Is this actually happening widely, or just in some spaces and it blows it out of proportions?
> constantly seeking to remind both yourself and society of your neurodivergency and any shortcomings you have with that seems almost like a crab bucket mentality
Is this what's happening or what you believe is happening? To me, it however looks like much more people are getting the help and support they need for this, compared to when I was a teenager. To me it's not learned helplessness or what it is you're trying to describe, but learning how to navigate society, and society being more aware of other's struggles. In the same vein that learning about structural racism isn't about disparaging people, but lifting everyone.
"Shortcomings" may even be the wrong word, as for many it's just different, not worse or better. Hence educating people like you is good.
Some is being different to various degrees(with having more problems to adjust to modern life without medication), the other is having a mental illness where most cannot perceive reality undistorted anymore.
In practice, understanding one's neurotype can provide the foundation necessary towards addressing friction, dealing with environments developed exclusively for a radically different baseline, and getting the support and care necessary to have a reasonable quality of life.
The alternatives often lead to massive dysfunction, especially since it compounds with systemic gaslighting and being told that the hell you're experiencing is normal and that it's a character flaw to have any difficulties or differences.
The satire of ISNT frames the very real negative framing that was already deeply pervasive 28 years ago.
Whether you are neurodivergent, LGBTQ, or you get around on a bicycle, they treat you with the same derision and lack of sincere curiosity. Lindsay Gibson has written about these sorts of folks.
And looking outwards is exactly what it does since it references societal neuronormativity. It’s not about the “shortcomings you have”.
It does if you require to be treated specially.
> Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one. […] NTs are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. When in groups NTs are socially and behaviorally rigid, and frequently insist upon the performance of dysfunctional, destructive, and even impossible rituals as a way of maintaining group identity.