Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2025-06-09 05:51 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2025-06-09 05:51 pm
[ SECRET POST #6730 ]
⌈ Secret Post #6730 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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[Bowsette /Super Mario]
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #963..
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-06-10 10:30 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-06-10 01:29 pm (UTC)(link)Your example there isn't stupidity or autism, though. Whatever additional meaning there is to that phrase is obscure enough that a cursory Google search doesn't reveal it. All that comes up is the literal meaning, including a Twitter account and subreddit that exist to tell you, literally, whether you can pet the dog in a particular game. As far as I can tell, the additional meaning is some sort of in-joke, which no one, whether smart or dumb or neurodivergent or neurotypical, is going to understand without talking to a member of the group that uses it that way.
And I think this reveals something about how neurodivergence is conceptualized online. The internet is still fundamentally text-based and disembodied, and it's filled with tons of different communities that have all developed their own norms and communication patterns. The two phenomena combined make it really easy, arguably easier than it is in real life, for two people to completely misunderstand each other, and to "not get" what the other is saying or doing. On top of that, the structure of the modern internet, dominated by monetization and social media and algorithmic feeds, encourages very weird, kind of antisocial behavior: seeking outrage, magnifying slights (whether real or perceived), and forming mobs; treating others transactionally; maintaining only surface-level or parasocial relationships; dropping "friends" unceremoniously; developing ever more niche categories of self-identification in order to set oneself apart... It can be totally crazy-making and anxiety-inducing, and if someone is spending most of their time in this space, their social reality is going to feel very unstable, somewhat false, possibly overwhelming. My feeling is that at least some people are mistaking what is in fact a perfectly normal reaction to a dysfunctional environment as evidence of neurodivergence, and you can really see this when people describe what they think a neurotypical person is: someone who never misunderstands social cues or in-jokes, never feels uncomfortable or anxious or distracted or self-conscious, never experiences imposter syndrome, never feels different from those around them, never has to act differently from their "true self" in certain social settings, never develops an intense interest, etc. It's not a person who truly exists.
I don't think it's the case that no one online is autistic or neurodivergent. But I do think a lot of people are far more "typical" than they think, and might discover that if they spent less time online. Of course, the difficulty there is that social skills are skills, which can degrade over time, and the process of re-learning meatspace skills might just make someone more convinced that they're ND (and I suspect this sort of thing is what many people are really talking about when they mention "masking:" the process of developing social skills and learning what "face" to wear in different settings. They don't understand that this is something everyone has to do. Your average NT person is covering up certain parts of themselves while at work, say, and presenting a different persona from what their loved ones see at home. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" refers to all human beings). But it also might allow them to see that the internet is a bit mad.
nayrt
(Anonymous) 2025-06-10 04:21 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-06-10 05:56 pm (UTC)(link)>>My feeling is that at least some people are mistaking what is in fact a perfectly normal reaction to a dysfunctional environment as evidence of neurodivergence, and you can really see this when people describe what they think a neurotypical person is: someone who never misunderstands social cues or in-jokes, never feels uncomfortable or anxious or distracted or self-conscious, never experiences imposter syndrome, never feels different from those around them, never has to act differently from their "true self" in certain social settings, never develops an intense interest, etc. It's not a person who truly exists.
I've seen a lot of variations on this, from different groups who want to shoehorn every aspect of their identity into one label (or a pastiche of them) to explain "everything" about why they struggle, socially. And society aids and abets this delusion at every turn - the belief that only people who share one, particular minority trait ever feel like outcasts, or experience self-consciousness, loneliness, rejection, anxiety, distress, etc. When the truth is, I can't SEE your pain, and you can't SEE mine, but that doesn't mean we don't all know what pain is.
Solipsism, in the form of people being hyper-aware of their own inner life but blind to the fact that other people are just as real and just as deep as they are, has gotten completely out of control.
Part of what I miss about the internet back when you had people pouring their hearts out on LiveJournal without friends-locks was that it felt like their honesty and willingness to really talk about what they were feeling and experiencing was reversing that. People were seeing for themselves that their dark secrets were human traits, and a complete stranger could put words to them with uncanny accuracy. FandomSecrets isn't that, but in some ways, it seems like one of the last relics of a space where that sense of "unknown person, you know me," was commonplace.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2025-06-11 05:29 am (UTC)(link)