Eh Eye Ate Dub Yah ✡︎ 
#Autism #TruthDrops #Neurodivergence
Mar 31 at 1:01pmWeb
Show threadDavid McMullinApr 1
@admin (cc: @sknob )
I’m neurotypical as far as I know, but I’ve been thinking about something similar in terms of cultural expectations in different places. I’m from a part of the world (northeast U.S.) where people are known to be blunt and to the point, which can seem rude to others. The “rudeness” I think comes mostly from different expectations around how to take what others say.
Show threadDavid McMullinApr 1
@admin
(cc: @sknob )
The main difference is that where I’m from it’s always okay to treat someone as if they meant what they said. If they didn’t, that’s their problem and it was a risk they understood when they said it. This is a problem when, for example, someone with a different upbringing offers to help with something, then gets offended if you accept. (To them, you’re supposed to know they weren’t really offering and decline.)
Show threadEh Eye Ate Dub Yah ✡︎ Apr 2

@mcmullin

Dialect differences aside, the point still stands.

Most ND people I've met don't bother to attempt to "translate" what you said into what *WE* think you meant, because there is no way for us to know for sure what you meant.

An example. I was in Louisiana delivering a load a few decades back (I used to drive a truck for a living) and I'd asked one of the dock hands for some assistance with something small.

The man replied, and, yes, this is a direct quote, "I wouldn't care to."... but then, to my surprise, he came over and assisted.

I didn't understand until I asked him why he phrased it that way. Turns out, where he grew up, "I wouldn't care to." means what you or I would understand as "I wouldn't mind helping at all."

Dialect differences aren't the issue here, because both NT and ND persons who grew up in the same area would share that dialect.

This is not the same as what I'm pointing out.

I do, however, appreciate your point of view.

The point of my post was to point out that it's not that Autistics and Neuro Divergent persons don't want to bother to "translate" what you said into what you might have meant - it's that we take everything on face value because we recognize that the effort to keep track of every dialectual difference across the [insert language of your choice] speaking world (applies to English, Spanish, Portugese, Farsi, etc, etc, etc) is IMPOSSIBLE to keep track of for one person, and trying to "decode" what isn't immediately obvious from the face value of what is written/said is EXHAUSTING.

The reason most ND persons who write are so verbose is because we want to be sure our PRECISE meaning is conveyed. Unfortunately, most Neuro-Typical people pull a "TL;DR" and insert their own interpretations of what they think we said anyway.

Communication sucks, sometimes.

@sknob

Show threadDavid McMullinApr 2
@admin @sknob
Thanks for elaborating; I appreciate your perspective. My comment was not intended in any way to question your original point, just to share something that seemed maybe related from my point of view. The challenges of cross-cultural communication among neurotypical people are not the same as between neurotypical and neurodivergent people, I understand.