Do You Find Yourself Being Ignored During Conversations?

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(Not sure if this should be written in the general section or the autism section so I just picked this one).

I find in a conversation when there are more people then a one to one in it, I can find what I say being ignored as if I have not said it, though one or two people I sometimes meet even do this with a one to one conversation... Haha. Silly people! Hehe.
But anyway... I get this both in real life and online. It is as if what I have said has been written in invisible ink, or it is as if I have said it without a voice.

Is there something I am missing? Some key element of a conversation? Maybe I have gone off on a tangent?

Yes. Extra-annoying when people are trying to solve a problem and I have the actual answer right here. I've figured out how I could commit the perfect non-detectable murder. Just say, "Hey, don't step in front of that bus-"

This has happened to me my entire life, I don't know if I'm not projecting loud enough, or interjecting at the wrong time, etc. It still happens, I used to take it personally but my first instinct these days is not to assume people are being rude on purpose, it must be something I'm doing wrong but I still can't figure it out.

Sometimes someone who is attentive in a group conversation will have heard me and speak up for me, ask my question or say my statement for me, or ask me what I said, which is polite and I appreciate it but can feel patronizing, my family will go out of their way to stop talking so I can talk which interrupts the flow of conversation and it feels like special attention which I don't like.

Not so much ignored as dismissed from the conversation:

1) Someone will state something they believe to be true, but isn't.

2) I will provide the correct and factual information.

3) The person will dismiss what I've said due to my age, sex, race, general appearance, or because they don't like me.

Later, when the person is proven wrong (either by circumstance or evidence), they will further ridicule me for "always having to be right", and may even try to sabotage my efforts.  It's always sad to see them leaving the office for the last time with their belongings in hand and shocked looks on their faces.

Most people don't like being proven wrong, it's not conducive to social cohesion in a conversation. Getting along is more important than being right, I learned this the hard way, I've been called pretentious and arrogant just for correcting people, when I'm not trying to show anyone up or be contrarian I'm just stating the facts. In Japan this would be committing meiwaku, tatemae is more important than honne. This is why some people pretend to be dumb.

It's a different story in the company of nerds though.

This was a big problem when I was younger and a major source of frustration in social events.

There are are a few things I do now to help:

1) I stop caring about fulfilling innate desires to speak my true perspective and interests.
2) I am silent if I am unsure about being able to be heard.
3) I keep with the current flow of conversation and try my best to empathize with group interests and views.
4) I speak boldly when I commit to speech, regulating a warm vocal tone and open facial expressions.

A lot of this has to do with realizing, from a logical perspective, that being "selfless" in conversation is the most selfish way to go about it. Why not do it intelligently if one can?

I do not like being proven wrong, or even found to be mistaken.  That's why I try to not put in my two cents if I am not certain of my facts.One of my former supervisors was a first-generation Chinese immigrant, and very much the way you described.  He once told the suits from upstairs that a certain thing could not be done.  Later, one of the suits asked me what I was working on, and I told him -- a device that did the very thing that the supervisor said could not be done.  I had no idea what the supervisor had said until later, when one of my co-workers took me aside and told me that I had just ruined my career.  Yes, I had demonstrated that a certain thing could actually be done (Yay, me!), but I also inadvertently caused the supervisor to "lose face" to the people he needed to impress.  My career at that company stalled, and I was given only the most menial of tasks until I resigned to work for a competitor.

Another time I put a suggestion into the Captain's Suggestion Box onboard my ship, only to be called out during muster -- not for submitting a bad idea (it was praised, actually), but for violating the Chain of Command and not giving everyone who stood between me and the Captain a chance to take some credit for my idea.  From then on, I had no more ideas until my next tour of duty.

So, yeah, I understand completely.  I still don't care, though.Nerdfests are my favorite social events!

IMHO this will start making sense to you if, and only if, you take game theory seriously.

My guess is - you're saying things that are game-theorhetically disadvantageous to the people who are saying, believing, etc. whatever they're saying or believe in the conversation, you're either saying something that undermines their case or seems orthogonal to their interests, thus they boycott your participation.

That's not a social skills problem, I think rather it's a 'hole' in our cognition about what people are, what the human considion is, what socializing is, etc. that got planted in many of us who grew up in the late 20th century under what I'd call 'late' secular humanism, ie. when it almost started taking on Scientology-like flavors in education.

'People are fundamentally good! If someone's rude to you bad on them - they just have hurt emotions or low self-esteem'.

BS.

We're social animals, socializing is actually a competitive rather than collaborative sport much of the time, and if you go out the front door looking to play collaboratively you find yourself getting stabbed in the back regularly. There's nowhere that it's worse than in the dating, mating, and status markets where people have something to 'lose'.

What that means then is you have to know the toolkits other people are using like:
1) Plausible deniability.
2) Selective attention / omission.
3) Interrupting.
4) Intimidation.
5) 'So what you're saying is' - ie. straw-manning.
6) Turning the tables if you corner then by then claiming that you believe what you're trying to correct out of them (ie. solipsistic reversal I'll call it).

In socializing part of the problem that I think many aspies don't understand, or we've had it in some Pavlovian manner trained out of us as we're in the deficit and need to make ourselves spotless, is that if you're playing Monopoly or some other board game with someone else and they have pockets full of $100's and $500's from another deck, are skilled at diverting other player's attention and turning a two house lot into three, if on getting accused of cheating they know exactly how to turn around and accuse the accuser of having possibly done some things while no one else was watching them (ie. counting the moments where that's plausible), and really keeping a deliberate record of ways they can lie, cheat, and steal - that's a bit of how the social environment tends to work and anyone who realizes that unvarnished honesty gets them clobbered either stops playing the honesty game and starts playing the optimum corruption game instead or they simply become much less trusting and do everything they can to cover their angles.

I'm reading a book right now that's a bit like a compendium on Rene Girard's work right now and I'd have to say - I really think Rene Girard is one of those authors that more aspies/auties should read because he seems to get the game theory of what we're dealing with as aspies quite well.

Absolutely. Almost every time I’m present for a conversation among two or more other people, the flow of conversation just naturally completely avoids me. I compare myself to a fake plant or other sort of decoration - I might get a little perfunctory notice at first if I’m lucky, but any more than five minutes or so and I may as well not even be there. Seriously, people will even tell secrets and very personal things and stuff to their best friends when I (and only I, there are not any other people around) am sitting right next to them, like they’ve completely forgotten that I exist.

techstepgenr8tion is on it.

Evolutionary game theory is also valuable in particular in analysis of group behavior. The balance of overt aggressors and covert diplomats in a competitive system is important to how one must behave in that environment (be the opposite of the dominant group aka be covert and retreat from direct engagement with aggressors. Mercilessly exploit diplomats' unwillingness to aggress directly. This is advantage). Lots of other things in that field.

Also knowing egalitarian vs. hierarchical mechanics is good. The path to social status is different in a corporate boardroom than it is in groups that are skeptical of ambition, like some collectivist cultures.

Also "Face Negotiation Theory." Face is a fascinating concept in general.

Very sad ....... hmmm.. lolz

Yeah ... well ... schadenfreude ... I've felt it, too.

Yes I have been. Often people would be discussing something and I'd put in a useful comment and nobody would hear what I said, then someone ELSE would say exactly what I said and everyone would be like "oh, yes, that's a good idea" or something, and I'd just be sitting there thinking "that was my idea but nobody heard me".

That’s my situation, too....

Been there recognized that sometimes they hardly even change my own wording . But it kinda makes me smile ,
Seems ironic . Have to be able to smile sometimes . Otherwise it would be just plain sad.

Last time I tried socialising outside of interacting with my stepfamily was via a mental health group at my local library. There was virtually no response to the little bit I did say. I was very much the odd one out.

Insult was added to injury when the man running the group, a self described radical social worker, insisted on suggesting I had my money on a string when I paid towards the refreshments. The woman who'd paid the same amount just before me didn't get such a comment. Needless to say I never went back.