• sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    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.

    • superkret@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      (Jumping from an insult about dietary preferences to an insult about war crimes is not the same magnitude)

      The potato joke is also a joke about a genocide, though.

      Like “How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?”
      “None”

      • thermal_shock@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          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.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        This is true, (see my second to last paragraph) but … that is not as widely known.

        Most people just think ‘Idk, Irish people like potatoes’.

        Most people think it is just in the realm of dietary preferences and cuisine and don’t know why.

        Even though there is a fairly direct equivalence if you actually know the history of the stereotype, most people don’t.

        Thus you are perceived as overreacting if you jump right to genocide.

        To attempt an analogy:

        It’s like if a boomer tells a millennial or gen z to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and they point out that the original meaning of that phrase was meant to encapsulate the literal physical impossibility of doing so as analogous to making a decent living for yourself in an economy where very very few people have the means/opportunity/connections/dumb luck to earn more than basically a subsistence wage.

        The boomer just gets offended or bewildered because they didn’t know that, or they don’t believe it, and they’re too arrogant to admit they have no real, useful advice, and that all they have to offer is infantilization.

        Their ignorance (and inability to admit their knowledge is flawed) allows them to keep using an offensive phrase and not see this as offensive.

      • AItoothbrush@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        As someone who lived 5 years in ireland and saw the history its absolutely fucking horrible. If you think about it its kinda ironic. Uk occupies a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. Israel is occupying a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. By the way as a neurotypical who has autistic family members and friends, in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time but the genocide in gaza is a current event. Also the israel one is political. Third thing is most neurotypicals are pussies, if you spend time with neurodivergent people you realize that a lot of things they say are funny as fuck, even if its a bit raw sometimes.

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time but the genocide in gaza is a current event

          Yep, basically this. To most non Irish people or those who haven’t bothered to learn, its just a commonly socially acceptable racist joke.

          Third thing is most neurotypicals are pussies, if you spend time with neurodivergent people you realize that a lot of things they say are funny as fuck, even if its a bit raw sometimes.

          My experience is that almost all of them are selfish hypocritical bullies, though I do seem to have just had astounding low quality people around me for much of my life. I have had a few genuinely nice neurotypical friends, but they’re a small minority.

          (I actually just think David Bowie had the right idea being afraid of Americans. We’re boorish, ignorant cocksure, backstabbing assholes compared to everyone I’ve ever met or know from another country.)

          The vast majority of neurotypicals I’ve known who constantly give me shit and often don’t even realize they are doing so?

          They either have nervous breakdowns or become physically violent when I dish back 10% of what they’ve thrown at me by simply explaining their own hypocrisy to them.

          Doing so is funny to me because to me their hypocrisy is self-evident and thus they are just are absurd but it breaks the brains of people who seem to just say shit with very low self-awareness.

    • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • crashfrog@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        “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?

            • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              Well played, though I doubt some Israeli making genocide jokes is going to be that familiar with Irish cuisine.

                • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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                  3 months ago

                  … 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.

                  • crashfrog@sopuli.xyz
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                    3 months ago

                    Hummus is not particularly unique to Israel.

                    Potatoes aren’t even native to Ireland.

                • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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                  3 months ago

                  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.

                  • crashfrog@sopuli.xyz
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                    3 months ago

                    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.

          • jaycifer@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            “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.

        • Twiglet@feddit.uk
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          3 months ago

          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.

          • crashfrog@sopuli.xyz
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            3 months ago

            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?

            • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              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.

                • Kaity@leminal.space
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                  3 months ago

                  Because the british bought all out their food sources, subjecting them to a famine where they had to grow potatoes to survive.

                  • crashfrog@sopuli.xyz
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                    3 months ago

                    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.

      • Caveman@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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?

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          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.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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            3 months ago

            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.

    • Caveman@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Also autistic here, I feel calling people out works pretty well for me. No need for extended knowledge except about your own culture, just point out the offensive part and make them regret.

      Example: “Are you referencing the Irish potato famine?”

      It forces the person to either back out or admit that it was offensive. Third option could be “Don’t be so sensetive, it was a joke”. Then you can say that you don’t mind jokes but that you found that one offensive.

      With knowledge about the person’s culture you can always use it for a counter-attack with “I thought that Israelis would know that some jokes are off limits”.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        Honest question: Are neurodivergents functionally a protected class from discrimination in the US, the way religion, race, sexuality, gender are?

        The only even theorerical backing for that I can think of is the ADA, and I have never once heard of it or any other law being actually used by a neurodivergent against discrimination.

        • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Functionally? No. Legally? Yes.

          When I’m applying for jobs, I do check the box that says disabled, because according to the US gov’t, developmental disorders like autism spectrum disorder are considered disabilities. (Probably ADHD also, but that evaluation isn’t complete yet.) OTOH, it’s unlikely to help if i am subjected to some kind of workplace discipline that’s the direct result of being on the autism spectrum, or if I fuck something up because i have severe ADHD. The kind of accommodations that they would need to make are… Pretty limited, TBH.

    • Mossy Feathers (She/They)@pawb.social
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      3 months ago

      One thing specifically about Irish vs Israeli is that, if I’m not mistaken, Ireland and Israel are not on remotely good terms and haven’t been for a while. If the Israeli was a natural-born Israeli citizen they may have truly meant to piss Anon off.

    • Gadg8eer@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      That’s not “a nightmare for autistic people”. He had every right to be angry about a famine and this was all just “submit to my authority” bullshit. I don’t care who you are descended from, that is not logical nor fair nor reasonable in any social setting. I literally would have just decked him in the face and stormed out because that’s the only scenario where OP is making it clear that authority does not equal privilege. Respect your employees.

      • crashfrog@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        He had every right to be angry about a famine

        A famine in 1845? Caused by Irish reliance on monocrop agriculture?

        Why would any living person in 2024 have a right to be “angry” about a joke that barely refers to it?

        • Gadg8eer@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          A famine in 1845 that was caused by…

          “As someone who lived 5 years in ireland and saw the history its absolutely fucking horrible. If you think about it its kinda ironic. Uk occupies a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. Israel is occupying a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. By the way as a neurotypical who has autistic family members and friends, in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time but the genocide in gaza is a current event. Also the israel one is political. Third thing is most neurotypicals are pussies, if you spend time with neurodivergent people you realize that a lot of things they say are funny as fuck, even if its a bit raw sometimes.”

          That was by Altoothbrush in this topic, if you didn’t see it.

          I’m not Irish, nor do have an issue with Israelis. This whole issue just reeks of “casual dismissiveness” and I’m autistic myself so this hurts deep.

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • TheHarpyEagle@pawb.social
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        3 months ago

        instead of simply being a friendly and polite contributor to society.

        Do you think allistic people are inherently incapable of doing this earnestly?

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.