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[olivermoss]

* I thought I had found a decent Stranger Things discord only to wake up to a pile of 'a venn diagram of queer people and autistic people is a circle'.

Seriously, WTF fandom? I probably don't have the slightest idea how fandom even defines autism. It's all just become such a thing. Not to sound Super Old, but I swear off the rails discourse didn't use to be this bad or common. I've been through many variation of fandom nuttery, but these past two years things have just become a situation.

* I kinda want to start a DW comm, partially so I can store links like the video walk through of Eddie's trailer or this Jamie and Joseph interview where they wave goodbye to the audience in a very creative way. But if I run another mostly-dead DW comm I may fall into a coma. But I just really don't want to start a server with this fandom being... this feral.

* I am finally back to writing my longfic. My sunburn kept making me feel very hot and sick in the evening and I just couldn't. Seriously, I wasn't even outside until 3 PM, how did I even do that to my.... I am very pale and late-day PNW sun is extremely high UV. I know this, but... it just feels counter-intuitive at times and I was dumb. Anyway, time to get back on track.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

...wtf. Yeah, sure, there's a decent amount of overlap between being queer in some way and being neurodivergent. Fine. But... wtf, I am so sick of that kind of reductive "these are basically synonyms now!" thing. Hate it.

I really do feel like fandom nuttery has gotten markedly worse the last few years, and it's just... bonkers.

DW has a lower general level of nonsense, but I know how dead comms are, too. Bleh.

Hooray at being back to writing!

Sunburn is the worst. I've had two really horrid sunburns this year, and I should absolutely know better, and yet.

[alexseanchai]

there's a higher proportion of people who are both queer and autistic than one would expect if one multiplied the proportion of the general population who are autistic by the proportion of the general population who are queer—a popular hypothesis is this is because once autistic people figure out some social norms are bullshit, concluding other social norms are bullshit tends to follow; phrasing it the other way around, allistic people are less willing than autistic people are to explore the possibility of being queer when social norms make doing so disadvantageous—but the Venn diagram is nowhere near a circle, wtf, did we learn nothing about being derogatory toward one disliked group by associating them with another disliked group from the "trans is a mental illness" bullshit

[olivermoss]

I have no idea how this happened. I assume some weird woobification of faves plays into it. I've seen a LOT of 'it's autistic to be trans' or 'it's autistic to be gay' in the past years in a few fandoms.

I used to work in special needs childcare, mostly with autistic kids. So my brain does the following loop a lot: This is not my place to speak out and be opinionated, and my info is likely out of date anyway... but holy shit a lot of people who are self-diagnosed because they do [completely normal thing] while stressed who are very willing to speak with authority and say some weird-ass shit... and maybe this wouldn't be so bad if I did push back more... but it's not my place

Also I am still recovering from Season 2 of Umbrella Academy when people were upset at the autistic boy being non-verbal because 'autistic people being unable to speak is a harmful stereotype'. The sheer amount of self diagnosed people who don't even know there are non-verbal autistics out there and that the ones who are in online communities do not fully represent the spectrum drives me nuts.

Whatever definition they are using is just divorced from reality.

[olivermoss]

Also, just how they see everything as a sign of being ND is just... *head explode*

Whatever definition they are using just has no relation to reality.

I guess I'll just flail about Stranger Things here. I am usually very 'be the change you want to see' but I just can't with all this. I know there are people out there, but I just don't have a way to find them without a lot of drama.

[alexseanchai]

I mean TV does have a distinct problem with refusing to admit characters are autistic unless they're nonverbal, but the solution to that is partly to write autistic characters who can speak at least intermittently and don't pull the "I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested" alongside the nonverbal autistic characters, and partly to make a point of treating the nonverbal autistic characters like they're at least as human as all the other characters, surely

[olivermoss]

I want to say that it's a fuzzy line sometimes because a writer might be basing a character on a friend and not realize what they are writing. But I think, for the most part, the canons I'm into don't really have that going on much. There is one character I think might be, but ironically fandom never talks about him as possibly autistic.

I'll take your word that it happens, I am only in a few, niche canons. It would be nice to see canon autistic verbal characters on TV played by autistic actors. And also for people claiming that identity to not add to the erasure of some people on the spectrum. But, again, their definition is off in space if they even have one.

...not sure if 'claiming that identity' was the right way to phrase that, but brain tired. Erasure of parts of the spectrum is obviously a sore point with me for personal reasons.

Alas!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> But I just really don't want to start a server with this fandom being... this feral. <<

My sympathies. I find that fandom has adopted mundane inanities to an extent that makes it barely worth the bother. It makes me wonder where all the real freaks are nowadays.

[colls]

I keep trying to keep DW alive because I haven't really felt connected in other platforms in the same way. I find discord to be hard to navigate - how do you even find places?

And I don't engage much on twitter because there will be some subset of a venn diagram like you mention I'm not familiar with and my head will explode. I do engage some, but it's mostly surface stuff and feels shallow.

Anyway, meh.... I feel the same.

Good luck on the longfic!!

Re: Alas!

[olivermoss]

I don't know how much of it is social media being set up to reward extremism or just the stress of the past few years, but it's scary out there. It's nice if you can find a cozy discord, but one has to exist first.

[olivermoss]

It is hard to find discord, especially good ones. They is no directory. I'm in about a dozen but they are mostly dead or there just to ping for gaming related events. Discord has a lot of functionality, but building a good one long term is hard.

I've seen people starting dozens of them on the Stranger Things tag on tumblr, but most of them are run by kinnies or shifters.

Re: Alas!

[ysabetwordsmith]

It is definitely not just social media, although that certainly doesn't help.

The bigger fandom has gotten, the less tolerant and more bitchy it has become. Picking on people in costumes started about 20 years ago. Kicking people out of cons over complaints goes back about 10, and almost immediately spawned the kind of problems I predicted from the first proposals. Dogpiling in social media is only a little more recent.

It's far from the safe and welcoming space that it used to be. If I wanted to deal with other people's obnoxious social demands, I'd hang out with mundanes, who are much easier to find. Mundanes in costumes? Not worth the trouble.

The best approach I've found is to set up my own little corner of cyberspace and try to attract like-minded people who find bitchiness as tiresome as I do. I can't fix the world, but I can provide a refuge.

[mistressofmuses]

Right??

As someone who does have a probable ADHD diagnosis, it drives me a little nuts for it to be this kind of... trendy thing to have/diagnose yourself and others with? Not because I'm like... ashamed or something, and not even because I'm opposed to self-diagnosis (when appropriate), but just because like ALL mental health things, so much of it is a matter of degrees.
So many "these are all ND traits" lists are written like horoscopes, where literally anyone can see themselves in that list of traits. "OMG, sometimes *I* feel overwhelmed in stressful situations, too!" "OMG, sometimes *I* find repetitive noises annoying, too!" "OMG, sometimes *I'd* rather do something I enjoy than work tasks, too!"

Like... yeah, when those are EXTREMES, they can all fall under ADHD/Autism/etc... but also plenty of those things are just... average human things. Do those things cause an absolutely outrageous sense of distress and struggle to the point it disrupts your life? Or are they mildly negative experiences that you're able to move past?

I get it. "Be the change" is well and good, but sometimes you also have to weigh the risk vs. reward, and whether it's worth the frustration of dealing with All That Drama. Maybe someone else will curate a decent space.

[olivermoss]

Seeing people treat totally normal things as symptoms creates such messed up world views. I feel like the seeing characters playing with their rings as 'definitely stimming' and couldn't be anything else is partially to blame for the self-diagnosis epidemic. Then they want to see more character as 'like them' and having a special bond with them the world can't understand and it becomes a self feeding loop.

I don't know if you saw those viral 'living with tourettes' videos that were so often... plainly not that...

I feel this video is a good insight into how a lot of very online people see neurodiversity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ChB-f24P4 It's about the Tik Tok Tourette's trend, but it's similarly out of touch, used for clout and in-group bonding. I mean, honestly? The discords I table flipped on over this? If I didn't care, I could just claim to be 'part of the ND crew' and have a strong in-group identity. I'd have lots of sympathy for all my problems because it's suddenly shared oppression at the hands of the evil neuroblands.

More social times, more people reading my fics, etc, if I just joined the trend! I've faced peer pressure to identify that way both online and even offline. I can see how people can fall into this rabbit hole.

[mistressofmuses]

It really does give a skewed view of the world! Pathologizing ordinary feelings and experiences just... isn't healthy. (Even with something like neurodivergence, which isn't *pathology*, exactly, but I think you know what I mean, haha.)
Within fandom it definitely feels like this perpetual cycle of "this trait means this character MUST BE xyz thing, and if you disagree YOU ARE WRONG" and "because we have now ALL agreed this character IS xyz thing, and I identify with them, I too am xyz thing."

Oh jeez, I remember when that was a thing. I mostly avoid tiktok, but some of those trends break containment. But hoo boy, that reaction video is something. (It's a good video, but holy HELL the videos being reacted to!)

It is very much the same thing - utilizing or claiming the "quirky" or "cute" or "tee hee relatable/silly/entertaining" bits of a diagnosis without any of the genuine negatives that come along with it. (Or claiming the negatives as a method of clout-chasing, to be the one with the Worst Experiences Ever, despite all those bad things mostly being pretty vague.)
Like yes, among all the nonsense ADHD stuff there ARE certainly mentions of real symptoms, including ones that I experience, and no, I do not think that having some form of neurodivergence means you should be condemned to neverending misery or anything.

But paradoxically, the trendy diagnosis thing makes it harder to deal with having that "hey, this is purely crisis-management, so I can't really wade into it, but in my professional opinion you have ADHD" diagnosis.
Because, my horrid, frustrating, nonsensical struggles with executive function aren't cute. The fact that I have to make lists for tasks I have done literally every work day for *four years* or else I will utterly forget to do them is ANNOYING AS FUCK. It's not a cutesy ~quirk~.

It sucks to know that yeah, it's an opportunity to build an instant in-group... but not one that I want to be a part of. :/ I understand why people give in to that pressure, too. But it sucks.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, terminology with this stuff is tricky. I don't want to use words like pathology or identity, but words are messy.

It's like they've decided they can be Random Penguin of Doom and if the world doesn't like it or they have any social or emotional challenges they get to call it oppression.

Yeah, it's deeply insulting and demeaning to people who actually have these situations. It trivializes the problem and makes it harder for people actually with it to be taken seriously.

I am obviously very resistant to the peer pressure for reasons, but man, it's easy to see how it scoops people up. It's like being invited into the clan. But I have the perspective of a person who spent ten years helping to care for an autistic child who has since been put in an institution and his family have erased his existence and wont tell me where he is. Ten years of my life. I may have issues around all this, but I earned those issues. My resistance to all this is so strong I don't know how to gauge when it's even like for other people.

[mistressofmuses]

Neurodivergency ISN'T a pathology, yet it feels like behaviors ARE being pathologized. It's weird. Language is weird.

Yeah, some of it seems to be almost a desire to be able to label themselves as victims. Or a way to reframe existing issues (that really may have individual solutions) as a structural hurdle that can't be overcome, so they can't be held responsible. Ableism IS a very serious issue, and yes, sometimes workplaces are ridiculously and upsettingly unwilling to allow for honestly simple and reasonable accommodations. But that doesn't apply to *everything*. Again with the "language is messy" thing - I'm not sure I'm quite stating my point well.

It's SO insulting to watch people fake and lie about shit. There's an intensely annoying person that I know irl (we have so many mutual acquaintances it's hard to completely avoid her, though she's mostly online these days.) She's a very chronic liar and exaggerator, to a point that's just frankly ridiculous to watch. But for the last year she's claimed to be autistic, and for the last six months has claimed to have debilitating ADHD. Her "proof" of both was that she's "always" stimmed by constantly signing the alphabet in ASL. Just constantly, 100% of the time, according to her, she HAS to be signing continuously, and everyone who has *ever* known her knows she does that, and has for the last thirty-plus years.
An ex-roommate of hers who'd known her for a couple decades mentioned that she'd never noticed this person doing this (and neither had any of the rest of us who've known her, nor had she ever mentioned this before) and she said that well, CLEARLY she'd just been FORCED to mask the behavior around us, so WE needed to examine why we'd made her FEEL SO UNSAFE.
Extremely frustrating and insulting.

I can absolutely see why it draws people in. And like a lot of in-group stuff, it CAN also legitimately convince people that they DO have the issues in question, by making the criteria so vague it of course can apply, and then rewarding certain behaviors with attention and sympathy and things. It can be subtle enough that no one even FEELS like they're faking or exaggerating - they 100% feel like all of this is true and does apply to them.

That is horrific that a kid you spent a decade of your life with was taken from you, and you haven't been allowed to know where he is. That's horrible, and I'm so sorry that happened. You've absolutely earned the right to have issues with anything relating to this topic.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, you's right. It's as if they are pathologizing the behaviors that again, are either normal or could have other causes.

There are so many people appropriating ableism that... it's hard to deal with because I don't want to do or say anything that could hurt or be alienating to someone who is neurodivergant. It's like the dudebro side of the internet went hard on crypto and web3 for community and chunks of the transformative side fell for weird circle jerks about being poor little woobies.

Dealing with people like that IRL is really frustrating. I'm sorry you have to deal with that. Through having been involved in anime cons I've seen a lot of disability faking. Being someone who knows basic things like that cerebral palsy isn't progressive was maddening at times because it makes the BS so obvious... and sometimes they just pivot to muscular dystrophy like that makes any sense. It's like nah, you just want us to treat you like our pet woobie. (I've done classroom integration for CP kids and also had a friend for years with CP. No expert, but I know enough.)

I also knew someone who claimed to not be able to speak normally and we all have to learn his specific language. People got annoyed with me when I stopped 'Speaking Mikey' to him spoke to him like a normal adult. Then, at a con, he came up to me and needed help, so he talked normally because it was easier. A mutual walked up behind him while we had this perfectly normal, adult conversation with completely normal vocal intonations. The look on her face as she realized I was right. After that everyone stopped indulging his weird attention seeking BS.

Obviously, I need to be careful because there are people with real disabilities out there and I don't have a magic ability to tell, but I goddam expect people who claim to have CP to know what it is, for people with ASD to know what the hell is it, and so on.

Yeah, honestly having done special needs childcare was fucking hard on me and I've never fully unpacked it. I have no contact with any of the kids I used to look after, because that is part and parcel of doing nanny / mother's helper jobs.

[mistressofmuses]

It's extremely frustrating. Because yes, absolutely - I very much never want to do or say something that hurts someone. I try very hard to be mindful, and accommodating when I can. BUT. Sometimes, like with the tiktok videos being discussed, with the very specific examples of people who are clearly and obviously faking for whatever kind of cred or attention or sympathy... I'm certainly not trying to gatekeep disability, and I'm not the neurodivergence police or anything, but that makes the cases where someone IS lying that much more frustrating to deal with, because it does end up hurting people who actually need accommodations or do experience these issues.
(Like people's poorly behaved fake service dogs made it harder for Alex when he had to rely on a service dog in public.)

The very same most infuriating person I know, who is now claiming to be autistic/ADHD, claimed about seven or eight years ago that she had cerebral palsy, and that she would be confined to a wheelchair within months. Then it was multiple sclerosis. That was less than a year before she claimed she had terminal brain cancer that she'd simply been hiding from everyone for years "so she wouldn't worry them" but she only had two to six months left to live, so she finally had to tell us. It's a pattern, and an infuriating one when there are a LOT of people who don't seem to see it or are extremely willing to excuse it.

Ugh, I bet you've seen plenty within con stuff. Unfortunately there's a very non-zero overlap between egregious attention-seeking and geek types. Something to mark them as "special" in a geek-focused space? I can absolutely see people going to obnoxious lengths for that, particularly if they think it will get them so-called perks like handicap seating or to skip lines.
I know there is ALSO a lot of overlap between disabled people (whether physically, and/or dealing with chronic health conditions, or neurodivergence, etc.) and geek circles/interests. I know a lot of people who fall into all of those categories! I would absolutely never want to make anything less accessible for them, or for them to face harassment because someone doesn't think they "deserve" to be accommodated or that their disability isn't real or anything.
I just hate that there are fakers who will try to take advantage of that because they see it as an easy way to become the center of attention and sympathy.

Fucking HELL that guy sounds just fucking bonkers. I'm a bit delighted that the truth was revealed so decisively to the people who'd been indulging it before. That's the kind of reveal you wish EVERYONE in these situations would experience, damn.

Special needs childcare, especially long-term, has got do a huge number on you. I know it's fairly standard to no longer have contact after your job with them is done, but that's... really hard. Part of that job necessitates forming a bond and emotional connection, especially to do it well for the kids, and then just... severing that connection is really rough.

[olivermoss]

That's a good point, fandom spaces have a higher-than-average amount both of boundary-less attention seekers and also people with real disabilities. I don't want to be the disability police and it better to err on the side of trusting people so you aren't horrible to a disabled person.

And yeah, the faker group and the actually disabled group have non-zero overlap.

But also she had cerebral palsy, and that she would be confined to a wheelchair within months... That's not how it works, that's not how anything works. Can't these people read a fucking wikipedia article? I swear to fuck some people pick Cerebral Palsy because it sounds more... vibes... than like muscular dystrophy or ALS. It sounds more 'victorian waif' than another illnesses.

[mistressofmuses]

It's always better to err on the side of trusting people. Dealing with disability shit (or neurodivergence, etc.) can be enough of an extra helping of shit without anyone else making it harder.
Still, those boundary-less attention seekers absolutely prey on that, and I hate that they often get exactly what they want. But I'd rather let through a faking asshole than block out someone who needs help or accommodation.
99% of the time, you truly can't tell. It's that bare handful of times when you KNOW that a person is lying, either because you know them, or you know that the thing they're pretending to have does not work the way they claim, etc... it's extremely frustrating.

Right? In the decade+ that she has been pretending to have various horrible illnesses or terminal diseases, you'd think she'd learn to google the symptoms or at least skim the wiki page. (And I'm sure she was faking before that; that's just how long I've known her.)
You're right - I think cerebral palsy is one of the much more frequently-lied-about ones because it does sound very Victorian "consumption" or whatever. It sounds serious, but not ugly, and maybe a touch exotic, as compared to others. Ugh.