Question for those against the DSM v merging of the autism s

Post Reply New Topic

"Likes" are a driving force of social-emotional reciprocity?

A person that receives a like on face book is likely to receive an intrinsic positive reward of compliment and is more likely to reciprocate that action with the individual that provided the compliment of the like. The previous comment made me wonder if some people on the spectrum may not be as interested in this reciprocation of likes than others not on the spectrum.

I think it is an integral part of a social bonding process, that motivates people to interact with each other online.

Interesting. I do click "like" on things I like, but it's not because I expect anything. It's mostly because it's youtube and I don't do youtube comments if I can at all avoid it.

Also, I guess the thanks button on the ADD forum I read.

I interact to argue (which often doesn't bring positives as far as I can tell, but that doesn't inhibit me in any way -- it doesn't bother me, but it seems to bother others a lot).

I think I have a problem.

I don't hit the like button often. I do on Facebook sometimes when I really really like something and it's to let the person know I like it or that I agree. I feel awkward liking something that is bad news because I am afraid I am saying "Oh good this happened to you" or saying it's a good thing something terrible happened when someone posts a link to a news article about something terrible. I fear liking it would mean I enjoyed the incident and thought it was cool. Id someone were to post something like "My son burned his hand on the stove, had to take a trip to the ER" and I 'like' it, they may think I liked how he burned his hand and had to go to the ER.
I also will not 'like' something I don't agree with either.

I have seen people like their own status or their own links they post or photos. I have seen people liking random things and then it means nothing to me. Some people like to play with the 'like' button. I knew someone on facebook who 'liked' everything and I didn't take her 'likes' seriously because of it. She would 'like' bad and good things so I figured she likes hitting that button. She would even 'like' posts that were flammatory towards her. I have seen her own FB friends attack her on her wall and I would block her friends because I didn't like seeing the drama on my feed wall. When I told her to just block those jerks, she liked my responses and didn't take my advice and I was like "
WTF" and wondered why does she let her "friends" attack her and keep them as her FB friends. She would fight with them too.

I am much more often likely to interact if I disagree with an opinion, but it seems to be what motivates me and sustains my interaction. I have an extremely difficult time at getting mad at people, when I am looking at words on a screen. The research says that social emotional contagion is shared on the internet, but it doesn't seem to impact me much. Yep, I think I have a problem too.. I haven't recognized you as sharing much anger with people either. I suppose that is a positive aspect of your communication to at least some people. I find that the problem with not sharing anger is that it can be harder to share joy as well. I didn't always have this problem in real life, but it is almost too long for me to remember what that was like.

I think that facebook can be a hard place for many people on the spectrum, even if it is suppose to be a safe place for people on the spectrum. The third party moderation seems to be helpful on sites like this.

[sarcasm]Right, you can't possibly find a diagnosis of autism empowering.[/sarcasm]

Your elitism is showing. I don't have to think I'm better than those 'other' autistics to be proud of who I am.

I find that people like to assign emotional states to me in some interactions, and I wonder if they are projecting the emotions they feel onto me or if they are simply misinterpreting what I have written as emotional.

I think I've done so at least twice myself in response to your posts, Verdandi. First time in a discussion about racism, next on the topic of identifying oneself with one's diagnosis (but that time, I wasn't actually seeking to disagree with you per se). I think it may be due to my being more emotional whereas you are perhaps more rational? At any rate, it was more misinterpretation than it was projection.

On the topic of likes and Facebook... Most I can say it just confuses me. The entire thing. I've never been able to get into Facebook or other social networking sites, though I know there are a lot of WP members who use them. I've always been slow on trends, but I simply don't see how something like Facebook can be of use to me. And, perhaps more relevant to the topic you and aghogday are discussing here, the entire form of communication employed on a site like Facebook, seems like a whole new language + set of social rules to me. I find it difficult to limit my responses/comments to small messages of one sentence. I always end up typing huge wads of text, because that's what I do on message boards and in e-mails. I never have much to say on social networking sites, because I don't see the point in reporting about things I feel are private. I have no social circle of friends or acquaintances, so the four (!) times that I attempted maintaining an FB-account, I ended up with 5 or so 'friends'. Everybody else seems to be over the moon about the possibilities that FB opens up for them, and I don't see an application for any of them in my life.

It may be misinterpretation more than projection, although I find it is often used when I am in disagreement. There are times here I felt like other posters were literally having a conversation with themselves over what they thought I was thinking and feeling instead of what I posted, and I tend to leave such discussions if at all possible simply because it is difficult to impossible for me to communicate with someone who is communicating with an effigy of myself that they created (whether they did so intentionally or not), and anything I say is simply interpreted to fit their effigy-view of me.

I don't believe that feeling or conveying fewer emotions necessarily means one is more rational. I think some emotional reactions are profoundly rational (utter terror motivating one to run away from a hungry and hostile bear is an extremely rational reaction in my opinion). I strive to be reasonable and rational but I cannot guarantee that I am in every instance. I think some unemotional or less emotional responses can be quite irrational (for example, the notion that being outwardly emotional means that one can also be objective - pure bollocks in my opinion. Another that happens frequently here but not just here is the idea that people targeted by slurs should just let those slurs slide because reacting to them is supposedly "oversensitivity." I think this stance is also irrational).

I did pick two things I try not to do as examples of irrational behavior based on the idea of being less emotional, but as I said, I cannot guarantee that I do not post irrational-yet-less-emotional posts myself.



I gave twitter a go but find it impossible to keep up, and my "tweets" tend to encompass multiple tweets as one is rarely sufficient to communicate my point. I have a Facebook account but I never use it for anything. I did use it once to unlock special items in Dragon Age 2, but that was about it. I have used livejournal and I found it compatible with how I communicate, but I go through phases with it. I tried tumblr but I couldn't keep up with it and I got annoyed seeing the same post quoted dozens of times in my timeline.

Forums and e-mail are my two easiest means of online communication. After that it's chat.

Also, was that the thread wherein I linked to a post about why bringing up fictional colored people in relation to real people of color was problematic?

For what it's worth, I usually don't keep track of disagreements from thread to thread and while I think we have had some interesting exchanges, I generally enjoy reading your posts. There are some posters with whom I've had disagreements of a particular nature that makes me wary of interactions with them, but there's literally one person on this forum who meets that category, and said person rarely posts.

I think it is more likely a misinterpretation of what is written as emotional. But also can be used as a form of personal attack, in a disagreement, to attempt to bring emotion into the discussion to diffuse the points being made.

I don't often have people assigning emotion to me here, but it has happened in other online environments, where the person discussing issues also has control of the discussion environment. I recently had someone suggest I communicated like a computer, which is likely an accurate assessment. It was a person asserting rights for people with Autism, that suggested I start communicating in a more emotional manner to make me seem human.

Irony is about the only thing that makes me crack a smile these days, and I found that comment most ironic. If I could communicate in more emotional terms, I would not have the social communication problems I have. I do not have the ability to communicate the way people do on face book.

People that write long emotional things in Christmas Cards, and say long prayers before a meal, baffle me, and awe me at the same time, but I would imagine they have a lot of friends on facebook..

@Verdandi: yes, it was that thread. Thanks for the compliment; I kind of look up to you around here... so that means a lot to me.

Malcolm Gladwell said that society is structured so that we need to fail. Therefore, the only way that we can be successful is to make a difference or take a risk.

I think that scientists are trying to change this is because "a certain government/scientific faction" (my term) is worried about people with AS taking over the world. Already there have been people who are suspected to have AS, like Bill Gates, Satoshi Tajiri, Tony Attwood, and various others. Extremely successful people, but why does this matter to us?

My response to this thread is simple: why don't we all try to take over the world?

The government has absolutely no say in the decision, it's a private organization called American Psychiatric Association and a panel of their 1,000 doctors voting on the new standardized manual the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.