Aspergers and IRC

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I notice that alot of IRC users have aspergers. I always wonder why that is and what attracts aspies to it.

I was on that scene back in dial-up modem days.

My interlocutor or I could use a smilie, and no-one was in doubt as to what was being signalled.

I did not have to isolate a voice from a crowd.

I could compose my sentences to mean what I wanted them to mean.

I could participate in a group conversation without worrying about stepping over someone else's turn to talk, and with the ability to pick out threads as I liked.

I didn't have to contend with that anxious feeling that the other party was staring into my soul, like I can get with eye contact.

I could hook up with my interest groups.

I could engage in interesting conversation with people I might struggle to approach in real life, and disconnecting was always an available safety net.

Really, it makes all the sense in the world that I liked it.

TimS1980 has pretty much got it spot on.

I'd say its a very aspie-friendly mode of communication (provided you have the knowledge required to set it up, such as learning how IRC actually works, and finding suitable channels to join).

What's IRC?

Internet Relay Chat. A mode of text-based chat, via the Internet, that was popular back in the mid-to-late 1990's.

I used to use it too when I was 11, I still have real life friends from there. Long, long time ago. I used to go on #asperger, but not #autism because it was full of horrible mothers of autistic children. I remember one ironically called Guffaw who had me in tears as she was so mean. I think I had done something autistic and she really had a go at me for it.

I met an American from #asperger called Spinner, she was awesome. We used to send each other sweets. It was the time I was introduced to Combos and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

How would that be different to, say, text messages on a mobile phone, or Facebook Messenger, or Skype without the video turned on? As far as I can see it's all the same from a user point of view, one person types some words, the other person reads it and types something back. So why would Aspies be particularly attracted to this IRC version? Is it something to do with its retro nature, assuming it's still running these days?

It's the commands and complex nature of it.

Be happy you grew up around the time when chatting online was new and wasn't considered dangerous. I remember when I was in school back in the late 2000's and they told us not to chat online and stuff.

OK in that case it's not something that would attract me, though if I'd been using it for a long time I'd probably want to stick to it rather than use anything new. I may be an unusual Aspie in that I quite often prefer to avoid learning complex stuff, I tend to look for the easiest way to get me where I want to be. It's not that I particularly dislike complexity as such, it's probably just that I've had too many experiences of going down some fascinating tunnel of technical discovery only to surface one day to find the rest of my life in ruins because I've not done anything else but obsessively study and experiment with some or other technology. It's particularly upsetting to me if I realise that I could have got what I wanted much more easily.

It also tends to distance me from practically everybody else because it's so specialised, so that I end up wanting to tell people about my fascinating adventures that would take days to explain to them, and then they back off. I don't blame them because I too get very bored when a specialist starts bombarding me with obscure information so fast that I can't keep up. Of course with this IRC thing there's always somebody at the other end who understands it too, so it's not likely to leave a person friendless, though it does look like it would limit the social circle rather strictly. I don't think any of my current friends would be interested.

It was a bit wild west, in those earlier days, though.

I actually was groomed by a pedophile in an online "relationship" that spanned perhaps a couple of weeks before trailing off. I was perhaps 16 and now understand things I didn't then

I think it was super lucky we didn't end up agreeing to meet.

I also found it very easy to fall in with some unconventional ideas which I still judge as valid in the abstract, but fall well outside the cultural norms.

These days, shopping malls replace the gunslingers of old, online. It's the march of progress.

Honestly being online takes a huge load off of an aspie's shoulders. You don't have to worry about vague biological social queues. The topic of conversation is usually fairly obvious and there are defined rules for interaction. People on the spectrum can interact without as much of a chance of being misinterpreted or seen as the outsider.