04 Mar 2012, 8:54 am
Here's a piece of advice for all those Aspies, who, like myself, were asked at one time or another (mostly in the 15-25 stage) to do something embarrassing with implied promises of coolness or acceptance etc from peers. I was almost always able to tell when any goading was just a set-up for using me as a clown, and the line I used was "well, I'll do it if you PAY me." Almost always, the reply was, "sure, I'll pay you to go in front of the crowd and sing this or wear this or say this etc..." and my response would be, "OK, I need $X up front, and I only take cash." They usually got my point after I insisted that I wouldn't do such-and-such action for free. 
This sort of ties in with a game I used to play with friends (NT), particularly when we were drinking at somebody's place. We'd talk about embarrassing things we'd do for money, and how much - frequently, it would result in discussions like "oohhh!! ! you'd accept $5000 do to THAT??! No way, I'd ask for AT LEAST $10,000!!" - sometimes, I was one of the people who would demand more money to do X hypothetical embarrassing action, which was a good sign. it always had us laughing really hard, and nobody was laughing AT someone else, we were all laughing WITH each other. 
