3 ms·

I agree we should be able to make jokes about deeper life issues, humor is a coping mechanism for many. But it's more nuanced than that. Like in the article wh

I agree we should be able to make jokes about deeper life issues, humor is a coping mechanism for many. But it's more nuanced than that. Like in the article when a woman jokes "I'm so OCD" when arranging pens by color whilst in the presence of someone whose life is basically directed by the condition (and thus causes a lot of suffering), it can be very offensive, and the comment could be taken as demeaning. I had similar feelings when r/WSB used the term autism as a joke to describe themselves. They were focusing on one or two stereotypical traits of the condition to make jokes about while ignoring all the other traits/struggles/behaviors that people with the actual condition struggle with every day of their lives. These supposedly lighthearted jokes can attack a persons sense of self-worth, leading to (even more) depression, anxiety, suicide

coldtea 6y ago
As someone with the autism struggles, I get where you're coming from. I think the world is the world though, and it's best for people with the issue to be more thick-skinned than to expect (or regulate) others to change such behavior. By overprotecting ourselves and expecting others to be kind all the time, we create a self-fulfilling prophesy of more depression, anxiety etc when the world doesn't give us that. And by regulating this (or legislating this), we create an even more toxic environment where everyone is faux-polite, and anxious of saying the wrong thing or making the wrong joke.
- vbsteven 6y ago
  Agreed that we should not be too overprotective in this, the world is the world as you said and per the serenity prayer we should have the courage to accept the things we cannot change, but being thick-skinned is not an easy skill for many people with ASD and its comorbidities. One of the behaviors used for diagnosing ASD is a lack of social awareness, people with what used to be called Aspergers have a really hard time detecting sarcasm and humor and often take things more seriously than they are intended. The HN audience is special, it has (in my opinion) an increased incidence for conditions like ASD/ADHD/OCD/gifted, in part that makes us good at what we do. But I also feel that this incidence is biased towards the higher functioning/higher intelligence side of the spectrum. Not every person diagnosed with ASD has the same cognitive skills to reason about and contextualize something they read or hear. And even people on the higher functioning side have days where this is hard or even impossible. I've had days where the walls were closing in on me, totally consumed by my issues and not seeing a way out. If in a moment like that I read someone joking lightheartedly that they "are so autistic" because of one stereotypical trait they zoom in on, I feel like someone is mocking me personally, I feel like a failure for who I am, and that can lead to a depression episode lasting for days or weeks. An environment where everyone is on their toes and faux-polite all the time is not a solution. I think it mostly comes down to increasing awareness about these conditions, what they are and how they affect people so we as a society can all live together in harmony. Which is what this article is trying to do for OCD, which is also why I have spent the last 60 minutes trying to write a 4 paragraph HN comment on a post that is not even on the frontpage anymore. I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore, my attention is shot, my emotions all over the place, I think I need a walk outside.
  - skissane 6y ago
    I understand where you are coming from. But I worry that a lot of people in the "ASD community" – this might not be true of you personally – seem to me to believe in a sort of hard boundary between ASD and non-ASD, ignoring the concept of BAP (subclinical ASD). An oversimplified one-dimensional model might look like this: you have the "neurotypical" at one end, and ASD at the other, and BAP is somewhere in the middle. A lot of people who joke about being "so autistic" may well actually have BAP, and BAP is adjacent to ASD and has an unclear boundary with it. The boundary between the two is in part determined by non-intrinsic factors such as cultural differences between diagnosing clinicians, patient/client differences in cultural awareness of ASD which influence the likelihood of seeking out a diagnosis, and differences in the supportiveness of the person's environment. (Some "borderline" cases may in a supportive life situation have insufficient clinical dysfunction to justify putting them on the ASD side of the BAP-ASD line, but if their life had turned out a bit differently and they'd found themselves in a less supportive environment they might have ended up on the other side of it, even though the extent to which they innately have core autistic traits might be exactly the same in the two cases.) (That model is oversimplified for two reasons: ASD has a lot of overlap with other psychiatric/neurodevelopmental conditions, and ASD itself is not a one-dimensional construct.)
    - vbsteven 6y ago
      I'm going to look into BAP as I had not heard from it before but the concept feels very familiar: I have always tried to explain ASD not as a one-dimensional spectrum but as a set of spectra (oversimplified: one spectrum for each trait) that when combined form a picture that describes a persons autistic behavior. A comparable visualization I like is how Leafly (the marijuana strain website) describes each strain as a set of traits with percentages and then shows each trait score as a horizontal bar. I have similar worries about the idea of a hard boundary between ASD/non-ASD, mostly because I believe that the concepts of "neurotypical" and "neurodiversity" are social constructs we have created because the majority of people behave in a similar way, and everyone who does not is an outlier. We gave the majority behavior a name "neurotypical" and that created an "us vs them" polarization. Hence why I'm an advocate of raising awareness about mental health conditions with the ultimate goal of getting rid of this polarization. You seem to have similar goals in mind when I read your comments about BAP.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  Exactly, the problem with being blind is that you can't see, not that people use the word jokingly, or as an accusation. Even if we completely stop doing those things, and keep coming up with new euphemisms for blindness ("differently sighted" anyone?) the main issue will remain: some individuals are not able to see.
pid_0 6y ago
People who say “I’m so ocd” aren’t making a joke though. They think that is what ocd actually is, quirky and cute. WSB is using the term autist ironically and it’s completely self aware.

coldtea 6y ago

As someone with the autism struggles, I get where you're coming from. I think the world is the world though, and it's best for people with the issue to be more thick-skinned than to expect (or regulate) others to change such behavior. By overprotecting ourselves and expecting others to be kind all the time, we create a self-fulfilling prophesy of more depression, anxiety etc when the world doesn't give us that. And by regulating this (or legislating this), we create an even more toxic environment where everyone is faux-polite, and anxious of saying the wrong thing or making the wrong joke.

vbsteven 6y ago
Agreed that we should not be too overprotective in this, the world is the world as you said and per the serenity prayer we should have the courage to accept the things we cannot change, but being thick-skinned is not an easy skill for many people with ASD and its comorbidities. One of the behaviors used for diagnosing ASD is a lack of social awareness, people with what used to be called Aspergers have a really hard time detecting sarcasm and humor and often take things more seriously than they are intended. The HN audience is special, it has (in my opinion) an increased incidence for conditions like ASD/ADHD/OCD/gifted, in part that makes us good at what we do. But I also feel that this incidence is biased towards the higher functioning/higher intelligence side of the spectrum. Not every person diagnosed with ASD has the same cognitive skills to reason about and contextualize something they read or hear. And even people on the higher functioning side have days where this is hard or even impossible. I've had days where the walls were closing in on me, totally consumed by my issues and not seeing a way out. If in a moment like that I read someone joking lightheartedly that they "are so autistic" because of one stereotypical trait they zoom in on, I feel like someone is mocking me personally, I feel like a failure for who I am, and that can lead to a depression episode lasting for days or weeks. An environment where everyone is on their toes and faux-polite all the time is not a solution. I think it mostly comes down to increasing awareness about these conditions, what they are and how they affect people so we as a society can all live together in harmony. Which is what this article is trying to do for OCD, which is also why I have spent the last 60 minutes trying to write a 4 paragraph HN comment on a post that is not even on the frontpage anymore. I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore, my attention is shot, my emotions all over the place, I think I need a walk outside.
- skissane 6y ago
  I understand where you are coming from. But I worry that a lot of people in the "ASD community" – this might not be true of you personally – seem to me to believe in a sort of hard boundary between ASD and non-ASD, ignoring the concept of BAP (subclinical ASD). An oversimplified one-dimensional model might look like this: you have the "neurotypical" at one end, and ASD at the other, and BAP is somewhere in the middle. A lot of people who joke about being "so autistic" may well actually have BAP, and BAP is adjacent to ASD and has an unclear boundary with it. The boundary between the two is in part determined by non-intrinsic factors such as cultural differences between diagnosing clinicians, patient/client differences in cultural awareness of ASD which influence the likelihood of seeking out a diagnosis, and differences in the supportiveness of the person's environment. (Some "borderline" cases may in a supportive life situation have insufficient clinical dysfunction to justify putting them on the ASD side of the BAP-ASD line, but if their life had turned out a bit differently and they'd found themselves in a less supportive environment they might have ended up on the other side of it, even though the extent to which they innately have core autistic traits might be exactly the same in the two cases.) (That model is oversimplified for two reasons: ASD has a lot of overlap with other psychiatric/neurodevelopmental conditions, and ASD itself is not a one-dimensional construct.)
  - vbsteven 6y ago
    I'm going to look into BAP as I had not heard from it before but the concept feels very familiar: I have always tried to explain ASD not as a one-dimensional spectrum but as a set of spectra (oversimplified: one spectrum for each trait) that when combined form a picture that describes a persons autistic behavior. A comparable visualization I like is how Leafly (the marijuana strain website) describes each strain as a set of traits with percentages and then shows each trait score as a horizontal bar. I have similar worries about the idea of a hard boundary between ASD/non-ASD, mostly because I believe that the concepts of "neurotypical" and "neurodiversity" are social constructs we have created because the majority of people behave in a similar way, and everyone who does not is an outlier. We gave the majority behavior a name "neurotypical" and that created an "us vs them" polarization. Hence why I'm an advocate of raising awareness about mental health conditions with the ultimate goal of getting rid of this polarization. You seem to have similar goals in mind when I read your comments about BAP.
Grustaf 6y ago
Exactly, the problem with being blind is that you can't see, not that people use the word jokingly, or as an accusation. Even if we completely stop doing those things, and keep coming up with new euphemisms for blindness ("differently sighted" anyone?) the main issue will remain: some individuals are not able to see.

pid_0 6y ago

People who say “I’m so ocd” aren’t making a joke though. They think that is what ocd actually is, quirky and cute. WSB is using the term autist ironically and it’s completely self aware.