So. . . . what are Aspie get-togethers like? Because

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I can imagine they are a lot like my family get-togethers. Lots of nervous shuffling. Awkward attempts at chit-chat. Until . . . someone mentions an interest aaaand BOOOM! BIG INTENSE DISCUSSION ENSUES. We have the time of our lives.

Then we show an extremely long slide show where we share very detailed and obscure memories (NTs fall asleep here), argue about the exact pronunciation of a place name, point out the errors of this costume or that museum, and we go late into the night and leave awkwardly.

So? Seriously? What's it like? I can see doing this with family. I can't imagine doing it with strangers.

QK

Who are you and what are you doing with my family?

I have 2 AS friends and we hang out regularly.
We all have the same interests so we get along well.

It really depends....we used to have some awesome cookouts and lots of the Houston Aspies would show up and it was were very relaxing and cathartic..and fun.
They got to mix with our other neur-diverse friends who are not part of the aspie "scene"
We are actually having an aspie get-together at my venue tomorrow...

I imagine they're really awkward, but I've never been to one (I'm not really an Aspie...). They must work better than I picture otherwise they wouldn't happen.

I imagine as all the people there have poor social skills, many people are too shy to make conversation, and others make annoying/unwanted conversation... I always think when people talk about a community of autistic people that they'd all drive each other mad in reality as people on the spectrum aren't all the same and have different symptoms and there might be people who love to make lots of noise and others who hate noise and are really irritated by those people and so on....

They're normal. You go in and we all look like regular people and it doesn't look like we have AS. You might see a very few rocking and that's about it. The ones I have been too had stim toys and when we stim with them, it looks normal. One of the groups I go to does show and tell. I am known as the Benny and Joon girl. I haven't seen any odd behavior there.

The autism group I go to have reminded me of the House of Commons: at least one or two people per table at a time going on and on about their subject of choice, until someone impatiently manages to find an obscure bridge to their topic of choice. I'm usually relegated to a lot of listening. Everyone at my groups are very engaged with each other. They're all great, though, and it's not at all like the group from the film version of 'Mozart and the Whale.' We're all deceptively normal-ish, until you stand back and notice something is in fact a little different from what you'd expect, but it's in an underlying way. Most of all, it's really busy! But then, we get tired and things abruptly and suddenly wind down/end, we say good night and go home. You notice many subtle spins on the typical meet-up theme...

I've been to an AS group meeting before but have since fallen out with the two main personalities of the group (politics). When I was going though, it seemed normal enough, there was this NT one time waiting for a blind date and he asked to sit with the group 'coz they looked like the coolest group in the room', I wasn't there when this happened but it was nice to hear about.

I think, how it looks depends on a few factors, the time it has existed, the personalities of the people involved and the level of social skills that are possesed. A balanced group is good in my opinion, where there are many different parts of the spectrum represented.

I am in a group of 4 friends, 3 of which are aspies including me. And our conversations are pretty normal, ecxept for one of the boys who says nothing but quotes songs and stuff. We all get on really well too. It's not awkward, but it depends if you're already friends or not.

Stims huh? Good idea, I've got stuff that can apply for that category for next time a fair concentration of spectrum people converges.

......Suddenly I feel very canine.

spokane_girl, Do they have flashy lights and whatnot?

interesting. It'd probably be the opposite of my family reunion though.