Annoying people unintentionally

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Recently I have found myself annoying people and making people irritable towards me for no particular reason or for reasons I cannot seem to understand. This mainly happens on the internet when commenting on other things people have said but it has always been occurring in real life as well. Whatever I seem to say it seems to provoke a hostile reaction from other people and I do not know why. It could be because I am saying this that appear as if I am trying to gain an upper-hand on someone when I am not and then when I try to do the opposite it appears that I am being patronizing. Perhaps it is because I am unable to find a middle-ground between the two but, regardless, it is becoming rather irritating because no matter how polite I seem to be, it always seem to be misconstrued as being offensive by other people and this leads to me becoming alienated from people I have no problem with. Does anyone else suffer from this because it would be of great consolation to find that other people seem to attract unnecessary hostility for what they say even though they themselves feel they are being completely reasonable? Sorry to go on a massive rant, it is just rather annoying. It is like I am speaking in another language! Arghhhhh!! !

This is very common for people on the spectrum! It's because we often have poor ToM, which causes difficulty with knowing how others will respond to our actions or the things we say.

I've had this happen many times.

I think everyone annoys people unintentionally.

I noticed looking at your history that you recently participated in an immigration discussion. WIthout having read it, I think such discussions make you look bad no matter what you say. That is my experience

Last edited by Stannis on 06 Apr 2014, 12:07 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Haha, yes I suppose you are right to some degree- that if you get involved in discussions about issues about which people are rather emotional, you are bound to get some hostile responses but lately I seem to have attracted hostility from people even in regards to rather frivolous and trivial discussions because I may corrected them about something small and it escalates. You are correct though, I may have to say clear of such issues for the meanwhile.

Ah that's good to know, though sorry for stating the complete obvious I shall have to research Theory of Mind a bit more since I do not know much about it. Although saying that by researching it from an intellectual perspective, it will probably appear to be even worse. Ah, well I am glad to know you have had a similar experience It is usually when I correct someone for something very trivial and frivolous and I think that they will be happy that I have educated them but in the end people just get angry.

Maybe all these other poeple have ODD.

This happens to all the time in real life Good to know i'm not alone. It seems like to me that if I say something nice they complain about how I said it ( thank you monotone voice) And if I say something constructive/"mean" they complain about what I said. I'm literally on WP right now because my little bro started crying when I told him he had done better at wii bowling the last time we played which btw was 5 mins. before this time and that he should try to do what he did then to which responded I DON'T Caaare I'm just bowling! your Mean! so for complimenting his previous bowling technique I get yelled at and have to retreat to my room due to the noise of his crying (thank you hypersensitive ears) Sorry I needed to rant as well LOL

This happens to all the time in real life Good to know i'm not alone. It seems like to me that if I say something nice they complain about how I said it ( thank you monotone voice) And if I say something constructive/"mean" they complain about what I said. I'm literally on WP right now because my little bro started crying when I told him he had done better at wii bowling the last time we played which btw was 5 mins. before this time and that he should try to do what he did then to which responded I DON'T Caaare I'm just bowling! your Mean! so for complimenting his previous bowling technique I get yelled at and have to retreat to my room due to the noise of his crying (thank you hypersensitive ears) Sorry I needed to rant as well LOL

Before I started posting on forums, I spent a lot of time lurking. I was able to figure out which people were well liked and I used them as a template on how to post. Like "how would Justin, Mike, Nick post about this?" So it's really more a matter of me mimicking people who have good theory of mind, rather than me having good ToM myself.

Haha, it appears that 99% of people commenting on the internet could be diagnosed with such a condition.

I thought that was reason for WP, so we could all post here and annoy each other ...

I have annoyed people unintentionally. Me not getting stuff or me being slow at understanding does it or me not being aware of something and it has to be spelled out to me. Asking too many questions also does it but then again me not getting stuff also annoys people so I can't win. I can tell by their attitude or how they treat me I am annoying them. I annoyed people a lot more growing up but I am not in school anymore and I don't participate in conversations so I have no way of annoying them now unless me being quiet also annoys them

You can't really stop annoying people, no one can. Someone is going to get annoyed with something you do.


As for discussions, I try and stay out of controversial topics because you are bound to offend someone and this happens to everyone. It's politics and lot of people feel attacked when others have a different view than theirs or don't agree with them. Even if I do participate, I know I may offend someone because they may not agree with what I wrote and that is normal. I don't think it's really an ASD thing because I see the same sort of thing in NTs too. Even parenting topics get heated too. That is why I am not big on parenting forums. I always see it as a risk if I post on one because I don't know if I will offend or not.

You're really starting to get on my nerves

Did my reply post twice I didn't mean to do that I somehow do that a lot idk why

Looks like I've done it again.
I didn't mean it that way. Sorry!

I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone in this.

My solution is to never go back and read any responses after I post, so if I annoy anyone, I don't have to know about it.