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YO!

48 (19%)

I suspect I am, but am not diagnosed as such.

32 (12.6%)

NO!

164 (64.8%)

I've been diagnosed as such, but suspect I am not.

9 (3.6%)

Total Members Voted: 252

[Max White]

Good lesson. Entirely unapplicable to this situation, but good lesson. I'll document fucking everything.

Well it helps, most of the time. I got conscripted into helping the god damn accountants for a while there, and they don't have paper work, just budgets and bills, so there will be times when you can't force things into paper, but those times are strange, unsettling, and hopefully not very often.

[Nikov]

Yeah, problem is he and another student were conspiring to play it up while asking stuff like "Were you downloading porn or something back there?" I can usually tell when someone's shitting me, but they played it too deadpan on too dead-serious a matter.

And yes, my mind is -still- running on the subject.

[Leafsnail]

Another is good lesson is that, when someone says something like that, you say "Are you serious?"

Yeah.  Although normally if it's something serious you'd expect them to say "just kidding" or something before you have a chance to act on what they said, especially if you don't seem to have understood the joke.

So in Nikov's case the blame for the misunderstanding should really lie with the instructor (assuming the instructor was joking and not just being unnecessarily intimidating or something, in which case rather more blame may lie with them).

[Vector]

Yeah, problem is he and another student were conspiring to play it up while asking stuff like "Were you downloading porn or something back there?" I can usually tell when someone's shitting me, but they played it too deadpan on too dead-serious a matter.

And yes, my mind is -still- running on the subject.

Hurm.  If it were me, I would have just seriously answered their questions.  No, I was not downloading porn.  I was __________.

If they're serious, then you win.  If they're not serious, then they usually end up getting flustered at your super-serious answers, and will either say "Oh, I was kidding" or walk off confused.

[Doomchild-]

i thought a long time wether or not i should post here, but i guess i could share my story here.

2 years ago i got fired from my job, officially for medical reasons but actually because i didn't fit in and things went bad when i was forced to work together with someone else.

since i had trouble finding a new job the unemployment agency (or whatever you wanna call it) offered me a consultation with a doctor to see what possible jobs i could still qualify for now that i had the 'cannot perform x because medical reasons' stamp on my record. turns out the doctor was a psychiatrist who, after an hour long interview, said she strongly suspected i have a form of autism (asperger syndrome was never mentioned, also not solely because of social difficulties but mainly the way i reacted to certain questions or comments, if i recall correctly my reaction to her comment about my age and the possibility that i could have children was her biggest hint), because of that i was sent to the already overburdened 'special care' branch of the unemployment agency which took several months to actually happen. during this time my mother got tired of waiting and made an appointment with a different psychologist. he confirmed the previous psychologists suspicions and told me i most likely have asperger syndrome and sent me to a specialist for guidance. shortly after i got effectively transferred to the special guidance program of the uneplyment agency who sent me to yet another psychologist, after several test and questionaires for both me and my parents she came to the same conclusion.

i was 26 at the time and had been labeled all kinds of things over the years, lazy, asocial, distant, etc... "he can do be better if he wanted to" was the usual complaint. before this i hadn't even heard of asperger and went on my own little research spree after people failed to give me a satifying answer as to what asperger syndrome really is. i know more now, but still i fail to accurately explain to someone when they ask me what it.

basically it's austimse without the mental disability that's usually associated with the disorder. (most have an IQ under 70 and a lot of the 'typical autism' things people think about when they imagine an autist are actually caused or enhanced by the low IQ) other than that there's no real difference and asperger syndrome is just as varried as the autism spectrum.

just for the record, i in no way became autistic over time, i was born this way, only because my parents failed to see the signs and ignored warnings from others (including a friend who has an autistic child and whos brother is a psychiatrist) did it take this long for me to be diagnosed.

think that's enough for a first post

[Max White]

Welcome, Doomchild.
Bay12 is one of the more accepting communities you will find around, for the most part. Or at least we act like dicks the least. When you need to shout, just go ahead, were listening.

[sonerohi]

One of us, one of us, one of us.
You'll find we are pretty accepting. Most of us are pretty cool, myself especially, and we are here to chillax and talk.

[KaelGotDwarves]

I was going to wait to post this in another thread, but I'll probably keep it as a resource.

Before I lose it, I'm going to post it here.

Absolutely fascinating read on how to read people -body language/inner emotions/feelings towards you- and act/react accordingly.

[Vector]

Other than the "roffle, women are magical creatures who understand body language and multitask" of that, I'm quite curious to see what it has to say.  Thank you =)

[KaelGotDwarves]

You're welcome. I'd definitely take the "LOL STUDIES SHOW WOMEN ARE MAGIC!" and various other examples with a grain of salt, but the ideas presented are quite solid.

EDIT: I mean, it's the freaking Toastmasters. There are people that charge hundreds of dollars per person to spout this kind of information in business settings.

There is some stuff I knew before but the applications are bloody magic:

Eckhard Hess, the former head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago and pioneer of the studies of pupillometry, found that pupil size is affected by one's general state of arousal. In general, pupil size increases when people view something that stimulates them. Hess found that the pupils of both heterosexual men and women dilate when viewing pin-ups of the opposite sex and constrict when viewing same-sex pin-ups. Similar findings have also been obtained when people were asked to look at pleasant or unpleasant pictures including foods, political figures, a disabled child or war scenes, or when listening to music. Hess also found that increases in pupil size are positively correlated with mental activity associated with problem solving, reaching maximum dilation as a person arrives at the solution.

We applied this research to the business world and demonstrated how people rate models in photographs as more attractive if the photo has been altered to make the pupil area larger. This was an effective way to increase the sales of any product that used a close-up of the face, such as women's cosmetics, hair products and clothing. Using brochures in a direct mail campaign, we were able to help increase the direct catalogue sales of Revlon lipsticks by 45% by enlarging the pupil size of the models in the photographs.

So if you look into the eyes of someone that likes you, their pupils will be dilated. If their pupils are tiny and you're not standing in the sun, they don't like your face at all. Oddly enough I first heard that tidbit of dating advice at a psychology class at BYU.

Mormon marriage factory that is.

[sonerohi]

What Kael linked to makes me terrified. They are watching me.

[KaelGotDwarves]

You shouldn't be worried. It says on the link -or just look around- that most people have lost the ability to read body language well. We all rely on words to communicate now, although a lot of the stuff mentioned in the link is processed subconsciously in our brains.

But when words fail to convey meaning and emotions, which it does, you still have body language to help out. That's why I thought it'd be useful to post here.

[Siquo]

We used to play that game in grade school. Tell someone the name of a girl in class, and see if their pupils dilated. If they did, he was secretly in love with her.

But yeah, that was my point earlier: A lot of people have trouble reading body language (it's not an Asperger-only-trait), but everyone with sufficient cpu-cycles to spare can learn to do it rationally, using these kinds of sources.

Sending the right language is a lot harder, though. I'm a pretty astute reader nowadays but can still appear "odd" because my body sends different signals than it ought to.

((That link... The first line already... Since when are Italians (and to a much lesser extend: Greeks) not "Westerners"?))

[sonerohi]

I thought that, generally speaking, Westerners was North and South America, and all of the countries in Europe were classified as Europeans..?

[Siquo]

Yay for wiki definitions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_culture