social networking for aspies

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I use twitter for the purpose of keeping up with comic book creators I know. It is not really friendships but more so I can keep up to date with what is going on.

I use facebook because my family lives in Canada and I live in Americanow. This let's them know what is going on in my life without me having to contact everyone.

I am one of the founders of the National Autism Network and we just launched a social network specific for the entire autism community. One of the features is that it would allow you to search for other individuals by geography. We're working on adding new search filters that would allow you to search for others by interest, school, employer, etc... I welcome everyone to come and check it out.

I gave up on Facebook.

I now have a Twitter account that I use to follow and get funny and entertaining updates from comedians and performers, but I do not post to it.

I have a facebook account but I all but stopped using it for the last 2-3 years, mostly because the content there had become incredibly stupid and uninteresting. The few really interesting posts that made it to my news feed were drowned in an endless flow of useless gossip, advertising, people bragging about their holidays, party photos and internet memes. Now I have drastically cleaned up my news feed by unfollowing many people with uninteresting activity, getting rid of the most intrusive commercial pages, and using that incredibly useful extension, and I find facebook pleasant and interesting to use again. I don't communicate with so many people but I can get interesting inputs by following them and I regularly share things I deem interesting or important and on whom I would like to get some comments.

Basically, I find typical Facebook activity very alike to typical NT "communication" : an important part of it is just making noises, exchanging social signals and playing elaborate power and manipulation games, and it is a struggle to have a real intelligent communication in the middle of that. But the difference is that with a bit of effort, you can tweak Facebook to make it more interesting and drastically improve the signal to noise ratio.

About other networks :
- Google + : I love the look and feel and the way it works much more than Facebook. Unfortunately nobody uses it except a few of my most geeky contacts.
- Twitter : I never really understood how communication works there. The signal to noise ratio seems quite high and I am possibly missing something here, but it looks like that place has its own social norms and implicit codes and I've not tried to learn them yet. I also have the unpleasant impression that Twitter is a permanent contest for fame (with everyone wanting to have as many followers as possible) and that the people who achieve prominence are often pompous, vain and full of themselves.
- This is not (only) a social network but one thing I am really in love with those days is Quora. It is basically a questions/answers web site a bit like Yahoo Answers, but the regulation mechanisms work surprisingly well, some people there are real experts in their fields, and you can end up learning a surprising amount of knowledge about almost anything just by following the right topics and persons. You can also contribute and feel your contribution is really appreciated by other members. I really recommend you to have a look at it if you don't know.

No, it is too boring

Oh God, I hate the memes.

Quora is not without its trolls. I cancelled my account because I usually posted there when manic and people thought I was an easy target, even though I stopped posting there out of boredom. Not wanting to have to deal with it and be less embarrassed by it when I became famous (sometimes I'm delusional) I deleted it.

If I want to learn about something Google is my best friend or you know, Amazon.

I have a large family who have good will toward me but from whom I have been alienated for years.

The simple truth is that I don't know how to be with them and they don't know what to make of me, so the special occasions that brought us together tended to be exhausting and stressful for me and confusing for them.

Since my discovery of autism and diagnosis, these difficulties make more sense and I have tried to reach out to them. I find Facebook very useful for this.

I can "like" a cousins picture of their children and they understand that this is a gesture of affection. I may not see that person this year, but she knows I mean her well and that makes a nice difference for both of us, compared to the decades of little or no communication that came before.

So I use Facebook in this way. I also share pictures of my family and things that are particularly interesting to me, so they get a sense of what is on my mind and what is going on in our lives.

But I have a lifelong habit of trying to conceal my oddness and this constrains me from posting much. I can't imagine using twitter. It seems like a vehicle for self promotion for the sort of people who are good at that kind of thing.

I love Tumblr. It seems to be designed for nerds/Aspies.

I use FB to keep up with what's happening with existing friends, mostly those I made some years ago through another internet forum. The group has had some get-togethers and I have met a number of them in person over the years, but I haven't ever made any new friends through FB, and I almost never post on it myself. I find as time has gone by I have become more and more selective about whose posts I allow to show on my newsfeed, and have also changed settings so that there are only a handful whose notifications I receive.

It seems odd to me that so many people who I am relatively good friends with would rather message me through FB than send me an email or a text. Personally, I'd just as soon funnel *less* personal info through there than *more*.

No, and when I did I just posted astronomy news and cringed when relatives messaged me asking how I was doing.

I have a Facebook account and a Twitter account but I don't really go on them unless I have to or feel the urge to, which is very rarely.
I do however have a Tumblr, it isn't as social (or at least, it doesn't seem to be) as the other ones.

I tend to do that kind of things too when I am too tired to try to express my emotions in an accurate and appropriate way. Sometimes I wish people, things and events had "like" and "dislike" buttons in real life. Or that they would be a way to telepathically make my emotions clear to other people. I am completely verbal and enjoy intelligent conversation on topics I like, but it is a huge effort for me to find a way to formulate my emotions in a way that is both correct for me and acceptable to other people. As much as I love words, I completely understand the point of AAC and I think I have an understanding of why many autistic people are non verbal. Sometimes having to use words is just too much effort or downright impossible.

I find the gifs sensory overwhelming. I was going to start a blog there but it just doesn't seem like a serious enough place.

Exactly.

I have a love/hate relationship with FB. More specifically, the NT games people play IRL are consistently played out on FB, and that can be very discouraging. But I keep my account and just limit the time I spend on it to keep myself from getting too upset because, overall, the positives outweigh the negatives.

I have Google+, Instagram and Pinterest accounts, but am not very active on them.

Just started using Twitter, which is interesting and obviously very different from FB. I'm not sure if I will stick with it or not. Still "feeling it out."

Last edited by capri0112 on 22 Feb 2014, 12:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

I use Facebook for the same reasons, and I find it bizarre when people who don't even live in my state or share any of my contacts send me a request. So far, I've always declined. I wonder how they found me and what they could want?

I never really got into social networking much. I do have a Twitter and Facebook account, but it's not like I use them much. I only use them to talk with a maximum of six people.