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me_irl

10h 59m ago by lemmy.today/u/sanitation in me_irl from lemmy.today

My papa

Builds and collects model planes

organizes fishing lures based on effectiveness, has extensive notes on how to catch fish

will leave the room if it gets too loud

frustrated easily in social situations

finds Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang theory so relatable

texture issues and will only eat from 4 restaurants only burgers or fried fish

"What the hell is autism? Sounds like being a brat!"

The main reason I was diagnosed late in my 30s is that both my parents are autistic but think that (and this is a quote from them) "autistic kids are retarded, and you aren't so you can't be autistic".

Growing in a small rural town comes with a lot of good things but also a lot of prejudices that can make your life tough if you aren't "like the rest of the kids".

“autistic kids are retarded, and you aren’t so you can’t be autistic”.

Growing in a small rural town comes with a lot of good things but also a lot of prejudices that can make your life tough if you aren’t “like the rest of the kids”.

This is why I waffle about banning "social media" for kids under a certain age. If the parents and the communities they allow say that it's not possible for a kid to be a certain way then there's no way for a kid to independently check. I don't have any idea on how to balance that against the algorithm.

I don't have any idea on how to balance that against the algorithm.

Just ban the algorithms on social media and you solve a good portion of the issues they cause.

Just ban the algorithms on social media and you solve a good portion of the issues they cause.

There's no way to enforce that, and you have to have seen some bs before to recognize it again. Plus, if you're the only kid that never sees stuff the algorithm provides then you're right back to being surrounded by people with different knowledge sets.

You could force every social media to get their code audited regularly (once a year maybe?) to prove they are not using an algorithm on them. And the penalty for being caught using one or by refusing to be audrted is a 10% yearly revenue increasing by +10% every time they get caught using it or they refuse to be audited.

audited regularly

You won't overturn hundreds of thousands of years of human nature and ungodly profits this way. People already have the ability to vote with their wallets and they don't for the most part. We do have at least one example of someone who tries, but I wonder how much of that page is still true today: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

I was surprised to find the old Edward Bernays books online. I guess they're just that old now. From the first book Propaganda:

In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.

Stallman's notions probably aren't going to manifest themselves in the middle of nowhere without internet. Bernays' probably will.

You could force every social media to get their code audited regularly

Halting Problem goes brrrrrrrrrrrr...

This is unenforceable. The absolute best case is requiring something trivial, like serving content by recency. And even that can be gamed, aside from defeating the base offering of social media (connecting you to people and topics that interest you)

I grew up in a small town. You can get by if they accept you as sort of a mascot/walking encyclopaedia. That's how I once got the entirety of Year 6 to come and defend me against the depredations of evil highschoolers.

That's possible when people in your town see knowledge as something positive. I was (still am) socially awkward so the mascot strategy never worked. I tried the encyclopaedia one but turns out bigotted farmers are not fond of people who know things. The only way to stop being bullied was leaving the town when I was 18 to move to a big city.

Yep, I definitely got lucky. And people certainly do not appreciate actual knowledge that defies their pre-existing beliefs.

It wasn't all great.

But my particular type of weirdness, combined with a tendency to ignore or not recognise what would normally be humiliation, got me enough laughs that I could spout all sorts of facts about astronomy or whatever without being threatening to the ones that knew me best.

Are you me? Moved from 3500 pop bumfuck Wisconsin to 3.5m pop Los Angeles at 18. Greatest decision I've ever made, although staying out ended up a harder challenge than I expected due to the aforementioned lack of and hostility toward knowledge and behavioral health care.

+1

i like the sentiment, but i hate the imagery.

a dad wanting to have his alone time with his hobby that is miniature trains is the thing that is supposed to indicate autism?

i don't like this because it stregthens ideas about which hobbies are "normal" and which hobbies are "weird" and only bearable for autistic people (i am exaggerating, of course).

wanting to have alone time is a completely normal thing for neurotypical people, and the dad even expresses it verbally, explicitly.

Its just the stereotypical trains = autism trope. As our understanding of autism is expanded, the joke stars feeling dated.

Guys is it autistic to have hobbies

There's a difference between a hobby and an autistic special interest.

...why is this cut off?

No idea. This one comes up in the image results for the artist's name, and it's directly from the artist's store. Laziness wins every time, I guess

Isn't this joke stolen from some comedian? I remember seeing the skit used as a cutaway gag on some video recently.