Edit: A few people have interpreted the title as serious, so I wanna clarify that it was meant as a sarcastic joke about how little sense the neurotypical world makes to me, but it is still legitimately me asking for help understanding said neurotypical world.
Was having a conversation with a friend today about why I seem unapproachable to people online. Apparently it’s for 2 reasons.
One is that I say “K.” all the time, as a short way of saying okay. She pointed out that most people find this rude and offensive. This kinda baffled me, because like why? She explained that like, if somebody were to give a long emotional speech and I just responded “K.” that would be offensive. That confounds me. So it’s rude in one context, and neurotypicals have decided to be offended by it in all contexts? But the reason it’s rude is what confuses me more. Apparently it’s considered lazy because you could have just typed out the word, but like, that applies to all text speech and nobody’s mad about people shortening those words.
But it got more confusing when she explained the second reason, which is that I end all of my sentences with proper punctuation, which she said “makes people feel like I’m done with the conversation and not interested.” But just a second ago improper grammar was rude, and now proper grammar is rude instead.
It baffles me. You can’t just use proper or improper grammar. Use too much improper grammar and you’re lazy and rude. Use too little and you’re also rude. But you can’t just use any improper grammar, you have to use the very specific subset of improper grammar that’s been deemed acceptable and not lazy (even though it’s exactly as lazy as what they do consider lazy.)
To be clear, I’m not bitter, and I’m definitely gonna adjust my behavior to hopefully seem a little less rude to people. I think that’s just a nice thing to do. I just find the neurotypical mind utterly fascinating. I don’t think they even realize how many contradictions exist in the social rules they all so easily accept.
Apologies for my post and respect for your appropriate response. Someone pissed in my Cheerios this morning.
Your post title grabbed my attention because I recently started watching Survivor for the first time (social event not really my pick). Anyway it’s fascinating to watch their behavior. These people are constantly talking about “reading” people. They’re always trying to inject meaning and intent where there is none. They are not as smart as they think they are, and they struggle with communication just as much as we do.
One thing I’ve noticed is NTs are constantly lying to each other then trying to “read between the lines.” Not so much malicious intent as keeping your cards close to your chest sort of thing. When someone comes up and just says what they mean, their minds explode. Many of them read into what you’re saying the worst possible interpretation. I’m still trying to figure this out.
I’ve seen a similar thing in court, where you think you’re trying to document facts and distill away all the emotion and speculation. WRONG! It seems to work like Survivor where 1 + 1 = 3.