Are we worth the trouble?

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I've been reading some guide to Asperger's sort of books. They're very good and very informative, with lots of tips on helping Aspies. i.e. talk clearly, pause often, don't expect eye contact...etc. Honestly there are a lot of tips and that's a lot to remember and put into practice. Now I can't help but wonder, why would people bother to do those and put up with us? It's much easier to call us stupid and ignore us. I can understand parents try to help and understand their children. But once they grow up, they'll find the general public are not their parents and special ed teachers and expect "normal" behaviors. Parents don't have much choice, but friends, employers and romantic interests don't have to put up with us at all. I guess my question is what's so great about aspies for people to want to tolerance their differences, what can you gain from having an aspie friend?

I've had friends who truly like me and we had lots of fun together, but nearly each one of them is rather odd themselves. The only NT people in my life are relative through marriage. I strongly suspect they are only nice to me because they have to. Are all those autism awareness things helpful at all? I can't even convince our family doctor about our kids' diagnosis so far.

No. we need to be gassed. The sooner the better

You are taking this way too narrowly.

What's so great about ANYBODY else?

What's great about workaholics, smokers, people persons, those who literally melt away in their devotion to family, breeding, relationships, social stuff?

Personally i'd say, well, what can i gain from having a friend who is hanging in front of a TV watching football? Nothing. So i won't be their friend. Or a person who is below average intelligence? A person who needs to babble about their stupid brats all the time? Those who have no clue about anything except their immediate private sector?

All those superficial plebs are not worth my attention, let alone my friendship.



Everybody is odd in some ways. Replace 'odd' by 'unique, amazing, fascinating, exceptional' to describe those friends and give the NT's a closer look to see how their facade crumbles.

It's pissing me off each time that NTs are defined by their free will to make decisions, e.g., family vs. single lifestyle, while we will be judged according to our respective abilities.

Stop to belittle yourself and others on the spectrum.

Neutrality is one thing. We can be a lot more objective than NTs can hope to be in a hundred lifetimes.

Honesty is another.

Aspie friends can be relied on to tell you what they observe, without too much colouring by emotions, by cultural norms and by outright lies. In the same way that you would rather use a universal indicator to tell the pH of a solution rather than dumping acid/alkali inside it and measuring if the temperature goes up, we're can provide a reliable form of feedback that no NT can give.

Also, we are superior to NTs in online communication methods. They're so used to using body language and implications that when they're thrown into an online medium they screw up pretty badly at times since they cannot send the nonverbal messages they're used to sending. We send nearly the entirety of the message in literal form, and are thus very much more adept when the non-literal forms of communication are unavailable.

The third one is that we tend to have some narrow technical specialisations. Some of us are savant-level, others are more normal, but still, Aspies seem to specialise very often. Within those specialisations, our abilities are often above that of our peers.

Tl;dr version:

1. We are better at honest feedback on opinion-related stuff.
2. We are better at long-distance and internet communication.
3. We are better within our areas of interest.

aspie or NT, I enjoy any fresh perspective that is enlightening, so I don't really divide the world in that way. I would say though that if I were an NT, an AS person is not worth the trouble as far as a relationship goes, but would seek out AS friends and wouldn't mind adopting an AS child.

=)

A fresh perspective? A friend for life? Someone you can trust at all times? The lost goes on and on.

*Farts at Surfman*

... whaddya mean, not that kind of gas?

That's the reason why I think employers have no idea what they're missing out on.

It is easier to say we're stupid and ignore us, but because we're not emotionless robots what people think we are, not all of us want to spend the rest of our lives being shunned and ignored.

Having a friend with asperger's might make him be your friend forever so.. isn't that kinda worth it?
asperger's are really honest and loyal to people close to them, that's an advantage you need to make use of.

Not everyone takes kindly to disability unfortunately. We live in a society that is ultra conformist.

I've had someone argue against that on this very forum. But the stereotype is partially true: I think I'm a little more honest than the average person.

I'm very loyal, but I wouldn't consider myself honest. Well, I think I'm like the average person with honesty actually - I can be very selective when it comes to honesty, and 9 times out of 10 I pick the right times.