is it just me or is that ”boiling shit in a kettle” meme kinda sad? the origin is that the person being interviewed was a prison guard at some point and he said ”this youth” which makes me think the inmate in question wasnt older than maybe 22. him doing that with the kettle is obviously a stress response if not a psychosis thing. it just makes me a bit sad to see this trend because most people dont notice its a human being suffering due to being in a cage.

that story was NOT recent but it makes me think of the palestine protestors still in UK jail and those who went through hunger strikes and how they were treated while in custody.

having hyper empathy is tortuorus because i can imagine that prisoner whipping up shit in a kettle in my mind and feel sad for them

You don't have trap me in a fantasy liminal space, reality is my backrooms. Okay that was cheesy but you know what I mean. Yes, I know I'm doing the "Omg this is just like fictional thing!!!" Haha funny meme. But I have to say the reality under capitalism (especially as a neurodivergent person) feels like an uncanny horror dimension to me. Where I'm surrounded by surreal AI advertising, ugly missmatched unplanned cities, gardens and lawns that have been shaped to mimic nature but don't quite resemble it, people going through their fake motions living their fake lives that they insist I take part in, stay in character until I get the same stockholm syndrome they have and start to like it here.

Reality? Reality is our personal horror dimension that I've been trapped in all my life and you won't let me leave no matter how much I insist that none of this capitalist nightmare is healthy. Oof, once again I sound like a cheesy "this is society" meme but I have no other way to verbalising it outside of sounding like a jaded teen.

Anyway, internet horror movie was good even though I'm not usually a horror fan and found it a little "This is totally deep because psychology is involved and mentally ill people can't be saved from themselves" vibes. The actual liminal spaces and still lifes were cool as fuck. Reminded me of SCP.

i graduated high school and i notice that everybody keeps referring to interpersonal hatred as ”high school behaviour” but i think that this lasts forever and you have to actively work against being bullied like for the rest of your life. it happens in the workplace, in college, in nursing homes, on the internet etc. its inescapable. working against being rejected/harmed is as repetitive as bills are for most adults

i feel like we neurodivergents are especially burdened with having to be self aware and think about every social interaction. you have to be self aware if youre ugly and not post certain things and not talk to certain people and not do certain things.

its so exhausting and i barely feel like a human being anymore. so much of my energy goes towards getting smoothly through social interactions. i feel like ive lost contact with myself.

and now with the internet neurotypicals are even more furious about this. they have rules about what to post on tiktok and what to post on instagram and how to respond to comments and what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do what to do. the internet used to be a place where i could talk to people without social rules i didnt understand but now both here and IRL you have to deal with endless social rules that you get no relief from ever.

i watch commentary videos on youtube and crochet tutorials and sometimes i just have to stop because i randomly remember im neurodivergent and i dont exactly belong in any of this at all

There was a recent wrecker post that did this a lot. It comes across as reactionary to me but sometimes I see leftists doing it too. Nerd culture being associated with being childish/nostalgic and easily exploited by sanitised consumption, etc.

As an autistic person who sometimes gets hyperfixations that could be seen as childish, it feels gross to have people paint these hobbies as some kind of uniquely hyperconsumerist thing, because 90% of the time it's just because the hobby is seen as childish and/or neurodivergent coded.

For example: I was hyperfixated on gardening for a while. It was expensive, really hard to do ethically and the industry itself is massively corporate and responsible for some of the biggest environmental problems today. It's a nice little escapist hobby where you can turn your mind off while you pretend you aren't fucking up your local biome because Monsanto decided it would sell more soil wetter, plant disease cures and fertilizer ifs product kills the soils ability to self regulate. I tried to do it the organic permaculture way, ended up being too expensive and half of the products were not in fact as ethical as they pretended to be. Also I have a degree in Ecology, most gardners don't have that luxury and are not trained how to garden ethically. Never once have I ever seen anyone call gardening a vapid corporate hobby or expressed concern that I was using my fake little biome to escape from the real world. Never once have I been lumped in with the same people who invented DDT. Because it's a socially acceptable hobby for a well adjusted adult to have.

I can't say the same for when I had a Pokemon hyperfixation. It was a relatively cheap hobby, I mostly just played the games and the rom hacks were fun. But I stopped because who wants to be associated with grown ass adults waiting in line for cards and playing a childrens game! They must be mentally ill in some way, right? Now adults who still like a hobby they grew up with get put into the same camp as Harry Potter fans, who we have apparently now have decided are bad because Harry Potter is childish and whimsical, not because the writer is a racist transphobe.

Just something that mulls over in my head sometimes, because social dynamics that make no sense to me are another thing I like to fixate on and dissect for fun. I tend to see how the flow of popular narratives can manipulate people into adopting reactionary talking points. All you have to do is trojan something onto a socially acceptable target without outright saying the target and you have even leftists redirected to attack a target that the right want dead. People are funny.

Thanks for reading my weird rant. I could just be coming across as insecure and making myself an easy target for wreckers to get a rant from, but eh who cares if I get a reputation as someone easily baited by this subject. Someones gotta deconstruct this kind of thing so it might as well be me.

I've been diagnosed/medicated for ADHD for maybe about 6 months or so. It's been a journey marked by newtype sound moments where I recognized ADHD behaviors/traits in my child, myself, and one of my parents.

Now I feel like I'm having a similar experience, but with autistic behaviors/traits in my child, myself, and my other parent. Took a handful of self-assessment tests as suggested by my therapist, and I guess I'm second-guessing myself. The answers I had for a lot of the questions in my head had a lot of conditional "well, but, in this case/context" so I just impulse clicked on what felt right enough.

I guess the point I'm making is - people don't accidentally get 140+ on a RAADS-R test, right?

You could argue that my mind is always trying to find weaknesses, flaws, or potential dangers around me. I do have a baseline level of paranoia that is undeniably tied to my schizophrenia and frankly, I find that to be a beautiful quirk of my mind. However sometimes it can make me see problems where there are none, which at times can make me overly cautious.

But at its core I feel at ease that my mind is actively trying to protect me. Its not fear either since im usually solving a problem. There is a solution to these dangers or weaknesses.

Me and my mind are like buddies.

The most obvious answer is to leave, but my circumstances make that mentally difficult, if not materially so. Some background without revealing too much.

I come from a suburbanite labor aristocracker background in the burger reich. I'm well into adulthood and still living with my parents; not because I am unemployed or have a low paying job or poor benefits or working conditions (I still pay rent), but because so many of my spoons are drained by putting up with the ideology of my friends and family and the psychological harm it causes me. I feel too tired to put in the work for moving, and anxious about being asked to justify myself.

My friends are easily the more grating to put up with. This anecdote from a few months ago should give a baseline of the level of callousness I'm dealing with. I don't usually get shit from them like in that story, but so much of the time hanging out with them it's just this fucking cishet guy bullshit of being bigoted "as a joke", and sometimes even without that cover. Constant use of the R-slur to refer to people and things, and when I call them out on it it's just, like, your opinion, man. Constant "ironic" misogyny with "jokes" about how women belong in the kitchen or are dishwashers. They make a bunch of ironic "lol we're gay for each other" jokes (like Cumtown if it wasn't even remotely funny) while in all other contexts treating queerness as suspect. "[Thing I don't like] is gay" is extremely common.

Most of the times I've tried calling them out on it, they treat it like I'm fucking joking, and they love pretending to be woke as a bit. "You can't say [random word that kinda sorta barely sounds like a slur in a completely unrelated context] anymore!" "Did you just misgender me?! (laughter ensues)". Then, loyal blue dogs of the amerikkkan empire that they are, they dutifully decry whatever president Francisco Francorange did recently, patting themselves on the back for how noble and enlightened they are. Did I mention this is my friend group after cutting out the trumpanzees?

Then, there's my family. My parents are very naive about politics and history, and one of them has the overconfidence that can only be had by a boomer white cishet man "history buff" (never seen him with a book in his hands in my life) fed by a constant stream of "alternative" "progressive" news media. When I started cutting off the magats, my parents were incredibly surprised that I would make such a big deal about politics when they've only been friendly to me. I only managed to pull it off because the split was instigated by the blue magats. I dread to imagine how they'd react if I started reducing contact with my remaining friends, or even them. Extended family is even worse about this.

Besides being emotionally exhausting to put up with, it also keeps me much more trapped in big tech surveillance. My parents -- boomers who can't even be fucking asked to remember how to close unused apps on their phones no matter how many times I show them -- see no issue whatsoever with the tech surveillance gizmos they so happily let into their lives. Ring doorbell at the front door being an always watching eye that can be used by the cops? "Maybe the cops can be bad sometimes, but they're still good overall and I'm not concerned." Do they really need the goddamned Alexa to set timers and check the weather? (no, but they are not open to examining why it's bad). Pretty much the main reason I'm still on Discord is because it's where my friends spend their time. I estimate that staying in this situation is a bigger threat to my opsec than all the correlatable personal data I revealed in this post.

The trickiest part to navigate about this is that they're seemingly not even acting maliciously or cruelly to me, but hold so many dehumanizing views of others that I'll be made out to be the problem if I point it out and respond with any seriousness. I don't even hate being around them all the time, but I can only see spending time with them and pursuing hobbies with them as a social trap that will emotionally harm me more than whatever benefit I'd get from socializing. It increasingly feels like I'm swallowing a poison pill simply by spending time with them.

I was born and raised into a petty fuckwit strata that I had to sacrifice much of my humanity and personality to fit into (and not entirely unsuccessfully). Before I knew better, I had even wanted to. But this social circle has been so invalidating about so many things I value and feel over my life, and not even intentionally most of the time. Usually, it even comes from a place of (to them) kindness. But it is all so antithetical to what I value that I don't even have the drive to explore new interests, friendships, or aspects of myself, let alone any sort of political action.

If I sound bitter and resentful, that's because I am. My desire to genuinely love myself and others is withered like a tree doused with agent orange. I've also pushed down my (frankly pretty rabid) desire to lash out to the point that I waver between rolling over and recklessly burning every bridge.

This environment, with people who love their version of me but can't bother to want to understand me, is creating a chilling effect that's demobilizing me long before even considering state violence. I feel like I signed a Faustian bargain as a child that I was too ignorant to understand and, now that I want out, am magically prevented from breaking.

It's like I'm a fly caught in some liberal neurotypical psychic web. How the fuck do I navigate this shit?

I wonder if this is partially down to the autism, but I can get really lost in stuff like first person shooter games.

I have this issue more with 6th gen console era games and earlier. When I played Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, I often got lost. I think it's down to the more "primitive" graphics. Things look more "samey" (because there's literally less textures in these games.)

Oh my god Metal of Honor: Rising Sun was ass. Specifically the Guatemala level.

Do you like various shades of green and brown? Because lady do I have an Unreal Engine map for you to enjoy!

Everything looks identical. I fucking mean it. You're surrounded by the same exact low res 2D texture of 👋forest👋 plastered onto the walls surrounding the playable area.

There are no landmarks. There are multiple circular paths. The path forward is extremely difficult to pick out.

Fucking god awful, absolutely sucked any and all good will I had towards the game.

I do wonder if this is related to me also being absolutely TERRIBLE at looking for stuff. Especially if it's someone asking me to grab something I've never seen before.

I've hated being a Millennial ever since the stupid avocado toast days. I've been pretty vocal about my dislike of profiling generations, I know everyone is probably getting tired of me ranting about it. I see it as useful for knowing what environment people have likely grown up in and that's about it. It's very obviously often weaponised as a way to divide people and I've always tried to ignore the discourse (despite probably annoying you all by ranting about it constantly in a "Jesus Dort just get off the internet and go get some help" kind of way)

But now Millennials are getting older and it feel like we're only getting more and more hate. We're being remembered by everyone, young and old, as failures who accomplished nothing. Nothing we did mattered, and nothing we do now will ever be acknowledged as ours because in the eyes of society our time is over. It feels like the world is like "Oh thank god those losers don't matter any more, see how much better at life the next generation is? Zoomers are directing Hollywood hits at age 20!" like I want to be happy for them but at the same time I can't help but feel like when my generation did/does shit like that no one went/goes "Wow! Look at what Millennials accomplished!" I feel like the only time anyone ever spoke/speaks about us is to complain about how much we suck. Anything good we do/did gets ignored and only our flaws ever get acknowledged.

It really gets me down for some reason, maybe it's RSD, a mid-life crisis, maybe I'm just weak, who knows? I feel like we weren't given the chances others were and given yet we're judged for it like it was our fault.

Anyway this is the last I'll ever say about it because it's embarrassing to be whining like a victim in my 30s and this site isn't a mental health service. I just feel like I'm part of a generation whose life is over before it got a chance to begin and I never got a say in it. Like nothing I do now matters.

Posting this in the neurodiverse comm because I'm pretty sure my feelings are the result of... something, whether it's the aforementioned RSD from my AuDHD, some kind of trauma or just middle age around the corner making me existential, I don't know. Maybe all three.

Fully understand if mods decide to delete this for being too much

I'm going to keep this short:

As we all know, the new rule is being implemented.

It's going into effect during midnight and You. All. Know. What. This. Means.

Take care and make sure to respect the new rule and follow it thoroughly. I'm sure I don't have to tell you twice.

Remember, this is serious, folks!

Was at an event this past week and thought I was catching feelings for someone. It of course felt extremely nice in the moment but definitely lost a lot of its luster once I came back to earth and realized I was repeating a pattern. I think that since all of my past relationships have started with this sort of teenage love-adjacent feeling, I was under the impression that this is what love is. Starting to believe it may be slightly more boring (from a feelings standpoint), and I might just have to find someone else who gets that too.

I think sometimes I forget most of what I already know because sometimes I forget to write down what I’m feeling (I always convince myself that the feeling is unforgettable but still forget). Once I’ve grounded myself and confidently put names to the feelings, it’s easier to see that infatuation can sometimes be a disguise for an anxiety that is familiar. It does make me wonder if I am second guessing myself and self sabotaging in the end. Guess I’ll only ever know

The idea of being around a group of fellow autists just.... Sounds nice you know?

Probably down to that thing us humans do where likes attract. You see this phenomenon especially with trans women.

You sit a trans woman down in an empty room, check back an hour later, and you'll find three extra trans women who somehow popped into existence. They just congregate you know? Spontaneous generation!

Silly metaphor aside, interacting with fellow autists just.... Feels nice!

Because I’m always told that I have it all wrong 🤪

Apparently the neurotypical (who has been in relationship on and off with very few gaps their entire life) isn’t making this a priority because they don’t want to be alone. They’re also not doing it because it makes life easier AND they’re not doing it because they simply want it for themselves. The main point is that I’ll never “get it.”

Maybe this is a lesson learned that I should force myself to be in the next relationship if the opportunity ever comes around again, even if my partner can’t meet my needs. Perhaps it’s better to be lonely with someone than with no one at all idk

I realized something about myself. Any good firearms instructor will tell you to treat every gun like it's loaded. That it's dangerous and it could easily kill you or anyone else, and should be treated like such.

I've been treating talking to others the same way. Treat everyone like they will misconstrue what I say, automatically assume malice any time I miss a social cue, and ostracize me for any reason they can find. This is because I have been treated this way in the past.

And this is a miserable way to live.

I fricken love doing it. So satisfying!

This is primarily an autism focused question, although allistics please do chime in if you have something interesting to say!

I'm not referring to stuff like Therians or "not feeling human", although those are deeply fascinating topics. No I'm strictly referring to finding the task of imagining the human form (in say "daydream stories") to be unpleasant/uncomfortable.

When I was real young I was REALLY uncomfortable imagining the human form. No problems with animals and weird creatures thought up by toddler me, those didn't make me uncomfortable!

I brought this up with my IRL friend who's also autistic. He also experienced something similar!

Anyone else also do this? I kinda want to just..... Talk about it. It's interesting.

I have autism. I am not capable of maintaining my home, purchasing adequate groceries, cooking for myself, managing my finances, or navigating government services. Some of these things I can do a little of by myself, but not adequately or reliably.

Despite these challenges, I have no support system. No family doctor, no social worker, no family member to help me. No supports are available from the government. Local benevolent institutions offer services only in the form of day camps and other activities. Meal support options are offered only to the elderly.

If I want to have supports, I need to pay for them. And to pay for those services, I must work. I have a job, and I am very good at the technical side of what I do, but I am incapable of navigating the social aspects and am therefore constantly passed over for raises and hidden from view of customers. Because of my inability to identify the intentions of others, I am often exploited at work. Because of my lack of ability to manage my finances, I did not realize for a long time that I was not being paid for the overtime labour I was asked to perform.

Working reduces my ability to support myself in my basic needs, but I must do it in order to have a place to live and to pay for what meager supports I can afford. But I feel that the metaphorical battery is being drained marginally faster than it charges, and that I will imminently become unable to tolerate the conditions and will melt down at work, leading to the loss of my employment.

I am very tired. All I need is a supportive living arrangement wherein I can access meals when I am unable to make them for myself, and access to a sort of "embassy" that helps me navigate government services such as the medical and tax systems. When I read The Conquest Of Bread, I wept at the description of the communal kitchens. Such a thing would be life changing for me.

I have so much to give to the community, but all of it is stripped away by the efforts of existing under capitalism.

Are they using more direct language because they're so used being misunderstood they try to streamline their thoughts to limit the chance of miscommunication? Are they more careful about metaphors because they want to be sure of its meaning? Meaning that may have drifted from its original usage, like how Nimrod was known as a great hunter until Bug Bunny used it sarcastically and now it just mean moron.

Having another person who you can discuss "something autistic" and they natively understand it is very nice!

So I brought up the bit where I found the process of imagining the human form uncomfortable. And oh my god, he expressed doing the same thing! Maybe that's the reason the both of us gravitated towards anthropomorphic animals. (For me it's the Rats of NIMH, for him it's Warrior Cats).

Although unlike him, I don't really do character customization.

-My Call of Duty Ghosts character is the default supplied female character template but switched to male. Found the female grunts/panting sound effects uncomfortable (that's technically dysphoria isn't it?) so I uh.... "Gave him HRT" lol. I guess that technically makes him transmasc!

Meanwhile I did mess around quite heavily with the Create-a-Class system.

-Reddit's custom alien profile picture thing: Bearded male with a red and yellow color scheme. The mascot's "species" has an actual name, but I don't remember what it's called, and I mean? FUCK Reddit! I don't give enough of a shit to look that trivia up.

-The Nintendo Wii's "Mii" creator: Took the red clothed male template and messed with the mouth.

-Baldur's Gate 3: My sibling enjoys the game and I agreed to play a bit of splitscreen couch campaign co-op.

Now Baldur's Gate 3 has a phenomenally great character creator. You can get really in depth, even going so far as creating explicitly trans bodied characters. Very cool! Learned all this from a video essay or something.

So I went into the character creator, went "generate random", and just..... Went with it lol. Got a female character, which I think I head cannoned as transfem. It was a throwaway character, so who cares?

-Minecraft: Default skin. Granted I used cracked clients as I have a copy of both the PS3 and modern Bedrock versions of the game. I'm not forking more money over! And then the whole thing where you HAVE to have an account to boot the Java version of the game up in it's builtin demo mode. Why do I have to have to have an account just to play the demo? Why? I just want to test how well the game runs on a bit of hardware, but I can't be assed enough to remember what my existing account is- WOW this is getting ranty! Anyway....

If I did have a proper account I'd probably just have the default skin applied lol.

-Not a game, but my many online accounts: It's usually the (possibly CGI) photo of a cat grasping a roll of newspaper which came preloaded with Windows Vista.

That came because my oldest sibling's computer got defacto handed down to me, and she chose those picture. So that one wasn't even really my choice lmfao!

My Youtube alt @StanleytheCat-v8z, which is based off my author self insert character, has a picture of my grandparents' cat. I don't have any photos of THE Stanley the Cat (except for a small clip of video I made back as a kid, but he was far off and not facing the camera, and DVD camcorders have low resolution by modern standards). They're both, however, white tabby cats, so good enough eh?

Currently in a peer group thing. There's a cup of small paint brushes and I uh.... I'm brushing them against my skin.

Some of them are decently soft and..... Pleasurable to touch! (Not in a sexual way of course.)

And then some of them are hard. Picking at them is kinda fun.

The best brushes are those makeup ones for applying powders. Those are DELIGHTFULLY soft!