Mental Health Autism

[MEJHarrison]

I'm not very social, but I feel a major part of that is due to my hearing loss (born with it) makes it incredible stressful to try and talk with someone in a noisy environment like a coffee shop, bar, restaurant, concert, party, etc. Hearing aids can only do so much on those situations

The hearing loss would be an additional challenge for sure. But even without that, those are some difficult situations. I went to a co-workers retirement party last week. There was only about 15-20 people, but it was all I could do to follow a conversation. People on one side were talking about one thing. People on the other side were having a different conversation. People further away were laughing. There was all the noise from the restaurant and other diners. Super distracting. Plus I ended up sitting with the 2 people in the room I didn't know. So that was super awkward. And they were talking about boring stuff. Fortunately, one of the guys was the type who could just talk for hours as long as you laugh at the right time, so that made the night easier. I could just pretend to be interested even though I was only catching 30% of the conversation.

I wouldn't have gone in the first place, but I really loved working with this lady and since I've not been able to see her at work for the past year, I wanted to say goodbye. There's probably 5 people that would have gotten me out of the house and she's one of them. But it sure was nice when the evening ended.

This Wednesday our team is having our first happy hour since this started. So I'm preparing myself to get through that already.

I'm not social in real life, but I feel more comfortable in a place like this. I prefer written communication since it lets me think things through better and double check what I'm saying before I say it. There are enough people here to make things interesting, but there's not so many that I forget who is who. The other site is cool for tech news, but it was too crowded for my liking.

 

[B S Magnet]

The hearing loss would be an additional challenge for sure. But even without that, those are some difficult situations. I went to a co-workers retirement party last week. There was only about 15-20 people, but it was all I could do to follow a conversation. People on one side were talking about one thing. People on the other side were having a different conversation. People further away were laughing. There was all the noise from the restaurant and other diners. Super distracting. Plus I ended up sitting with the 2 people in the room I didn't know. So that was super awkward. And they were talking about boring stuff. Fortunately, one of the guys was the type who could just talk for hours as long as you laugh at the right time, so that made the night easier. I could just pretend to be interested even though I was only catching 30% of the conversation.

I wouldn't have gone in the first place, but I really loved working with this lady and since I've not been able to see her at work for the past year, I wanted to say goodbye. There's probably 5 people that would have gotten me out of the house and she's one of them. But it sure was nice when the evening ended.

This Wednesday our team is having our first happy hour since this started. So I'm preparing myself to get through that already.

I'm not social in real life, but I feel more comfortable in a place like this. I prefer written communication since it lets me think things through better and double check what I'm saying before I say it. There are enough people here to make things interesting, but there's not so many that I forget who is who. The other site is cool for tech news, but it was too crowded for my liking.

You sound a lot like me.

I don’t do well when the groups of people exceed maybe three or four (or up to maybe a half-dozen if I already know everyone comfortably well in that group already). Larger gatherings, crowded and enclosed venues, and the like become really tough for me. Worse is when there’s music playing underneath the din of conversational noise: I will fixate on what little of the rhythm and/or bassline I can make out because I want to identify it (and if it’s a song I’ve heard before, then I will always get it correct). But it also means I’m not paying attention to the conversation I’m supposed to be a part of at that moment.

There are many reasons why I got into deejaying music for venues a long time ago. One of the less apparent reasons is because I can focus on what I’m doing, I can observe the space (and respond to it with what I play next), and most importantly, I need not do much speaking as my ears are only listening to the music being aired and the music in my headphones.

As with you, I prefer to communicate by writing because I can be precise; my preferred fallback is when I’m face-to-face with someone with whom I already know how to communicate well (like an old friend or longtime acquaintance).

 

[MEJHarrison]

I don’t do well when the groups of people exceed maybe three or four (or up to maybe a half-dozen if I already know everyone comfortably well in that group already). Larger gatherings, crowded and enclosed venues, and the like become really tough for me.

Fortunately, the meeting tomorrow will be with my team. So less than a dozen. And I've worked with all but 3 of them before. But even the strangers I've been working with online for months, so that's going to be fine.

It's going to be outdoors in a crowded food truck area. It shouldn't be too bad. But all the same, I'm looking forward to being done with it. And if they choose to sit in the sun, I'll be done really quick. 30 minutes is more than enough for me to get a little sunburn. A full hour in the sun would bake me.

The strange thing is that while I hate being around people, I don't mind big crowds of people. I could walk a crowded mall for hours, I enjoy walking around downtown Portland, I love airports, Vegas is like candy for my brain. As long as I'm not expected to speak to anyone, I don't mind big crowds at all.

 

[B S Magnet]

The strange thing is that while I hate being around people, I don't mind big crowds of people. I could walk a crowded mall for hours, I enjoy walking around downtown Portland, I love airports, Vegas is like candy for my brain. As long as I'm not expected to speak to anyone, I don't mind big crowds at all.

I’m fine with being in the movement of big crowds in public spaces, because I’m not so overwhelmed by the noise in a non-contained space. Plus, I usually have the means to move to another space on either foot or pedal to experience a different timbre of sound, motion, and airborne scents. When it becomes an issue is when I’m unable to move about when I need to, such as a high-density gathering where few people can actually move about.

I can think of two discrete outdoor moments over the last decade where the crowd was tight, but in one, the January 2017 women’s march, the experience was overwhelming and stressful because not only was movement molasses-slow and a bit cold, but being adjacent to white cis TERFs (cis rights activists) with protest signs calling for the extermination and invalidation of trans women didn’t help at all. In another event, MP Jack Layton’s public memorial in August 2011, the crowd was packed on a hot, late summertime day, but everyone was pretty good about giving one another the grieving space they needed within that pretty packed public realm.

 

[User.45]

I’m fine with being in the movement of big crowds in public spaces, because I’m not so overwhelmed by the noise in a non-contained space. Plus, I usually have the means to move to another space on either foot or pedal to experience a different timbre of sound, motion, and airborne scents. When it becomes an issue is when I’m unable to move about when I need to, such as a high-density gathering where few people can actually move about.

I can think of two discrete outdoor moments over the last decade where the crowd was tight, but in one, the January 2017 women’s march, the experience was overwhelming and stressful because not only was movement molasses-slow and a bit cold, but being adjacent to white cis TERFs (cis rights activists) with protest signs calling for the extermination and invalidation of trans women didn’t help at all. In another event, MP Jack Layton’s public memorial in August 2011, the crowd was packed on a hot, late summertime day, but everyone was pretty good about giving one another the grieving space they needed within that pretty packed public realm.

TIL: TERF.

 

[B S Magnet]

TIL: TERF.

Yah, they’re a whole thing. Very karen-led.

 

[MEJHarrison]

Yah, they’re a whole thing. Very karen-led.

Seriously? a cis rights group? Reminds me of the episode of Parks and Rec with the male rights activists. “Men have had a very rough go of it for [confused pause] just recently [pauses again]. And it ends now!”

 

[B S Magnet]

Seriously? a cis rights group? Reminds me of the episode of Parks and Rec with the male rights activists. “Men have had a very rough go of it for [confused pause] just recently [pauses again]. And it ends now!”

Dead serious, I’m afraid.

TERFs, much like MRAs, are cis rights activists (CRAs). Both employ classically fascistic tactics with their ongoing campaigns against the marginalized people they target and vilify.

 

[SuperMatt]

Dead serious, I’m afraid.

TERFs, much like MRAs, are cis rights activists (CRAs). Both employ classically fascistic tactics with their ongoing campaigns against the marginalized people they target and vilify.

I think T-Shrimp is a member.

 

[B S Magnet]

I think T-Shrimp is a member.

tshrimp is an MRA, without question.

 

[User.45]

tshrimp is an MRA, without question.

and a white supremacist...:
"BLM is a borderline terrorist organization" - Tshrimp
"I'd consider the KKK a terrorist organization if they had close to the bodycount of BLM" - Also Tshrimp
"Diversity = absence of white people" - Of course it's Tshrimp; liked by Seddy and September's Rain

 

[Renzatic]

"I'd consider the KKK a terrorist organization if they had close to the bodycount of BLM"

...what the fuck?

I want to say more, but there's really nothing that can be said in response to that. It's just mind boggling to me that anyone could say something like that, and keep a straight face.

 

[DT]

"I'd consider the KKK a terrorist organization if they had close to the bodycount of BLM" - Also Tshrimp

I'm assuming his pre-edit/in-head version also included, "... which is my I'm keeping my membership."

 

[Renzatic]

I'm assuming his pre-edit/in-head version also included, "... which is my I'm keeping my membership."

"Comeon, guys. The Klan ain't all that bad. There hasn't been a lynching around here in, like, weeks."

 

[DT]

Do you think they have like formal membership drives? Dues? If you show up and you're a white racist asshole with a hood, is that the entire requirement?

Hahaha, this reminds me of the goddam fantastic scene in Django unchained ...

"I can't see fucking shit out of this thing!"

WARNING, SPOILERS

But honestly, if you haven't seen this movie, just fuck right off.

 

[User.45]

...what the fuck?

I want to say more, but there's really nothing that can be said in response to that. It's just mind boggling to me that anyone could say something like that, and keep a straight face.

He later elaborated that the bodycount of KKK has not been the same since the 70s...
He's an actual white supremacist.

 

[Renzatic]

Do you think they have like formal membership drives? Dues? If you show up and you're a white racist asshole with a hood, is that the entire requirement?

From what I understand, it used to be somewhat organized and social back in the 40's and 50's, with picnics, parades, and fish fries.

 

[Renzatic]

He later elaborated that the bodycount of KKK has not been the same since the 70s...

And that's supposed to make them somehow more tolerable?

If you decide to take up the mantle of some previously notorious group, it doesn't matter how good your intentions for it may be, you're going to be immediately associated with the past of said group, no matter what you do.

 

[DT]

From what I understand, it used to be somewhat organized and social back in the 40's and 50's, with picnics, parades, and fish fries.

There was a fantastic article someone (maybe @JayMysteri0) posted about the KKK, a deep dive into the why/how/wheres of the group, traced it's history, it was both incredibly fascinating and horrific.

What the history of the Ku Klux Klan can teach us about the Capitol riot

“It’s not going to stop with this,” a historian who studies the Klan explains.

www.vox.com

 

[SuperMatt]

All the complaints the white supremacists have in 2020 about BLM were leveled at black people and MLK specifically in the 1960s.

Of course, they all claim to MLK, but if they complain about requests for reparations or systemic racism talk or whine about BLM being so violent, etc... have them read the interview below. Anybody attacking BLM with the usual attacks (not saying there’s no space for some reasoned criticism of some aspects of BLM) cannot possibly love MLK, and this article proves it. Imagine if BLM asked for billions of dollars be given specifically to black people today (as MLK does in the article). The “MLK lovers” would lose their minds and call it racism that we’d give something only to black people instead of to everybody... because of course any PAST discrimination never needs to be made up.

So remember folks, if they whine about BLM using lines like “mostly peaceful” with a picture of a fire at a protest, or call affirmative action the “real” racism, etc, etc.... they are enemies of MLK Jr... no matter how much they pay lip service to him.

Martin Luther King Jr.: Playboy Interview (1965) - Scraps from the loft

In January 1965, Playboy published Alex Haley’s interview with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., shortly after King received the Nobel Peace Prize.

scrapsfromtheloft.com

PS - Sorry it appears we’ve gone quite a bit off-topic here. Maybe I should clone this post onto another more appropriate thread....?