How Oblivious Are You?

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Not really a serious thread but I wondered what sort of things and what sort of situations are you oblivious to? Probably connected to your autism.

Personally I am oblivious to why anyone is annoyed with me. I can't remember what I said and did longer than a few days ago, so if someone is annoyed with me, I generally don't notice unless they say clearly: 'I am annoyed with you because you said XYZ on (date).' But of course people rarely do that so I'm usually in a haze of confusion.

Also oblivious to people's new clothes, hairstyles, what they are eating and drinking but of course those don't arise online

Who knows how much i'm oblivious to... I'm oblivious to it.

That said there have been multiple times when people have just exploded in anger at me - or so it seemed. Other people told me later that they could see I was annoying that person and I just wasn't picking up on it so to me it felt like just random anger.

When I was younger I never noticed when girls liked me. I just didn't get the signals even when they were quite obvious.

I don't think I notice generally when people like me. I tend to assume that they don't.

I can be fairly oblivious to whenever I am either being talked about or not talked about, say, in a workplace. I am constantly guessing about other people and what is going on in their minds, or what their intentions are, and a lot of the time I really don't know.

I'm often oblivious about when a stranger is actually trying to start a conversation with me, as opposed to asking a one-and-done question or just speaking to me out of politeness.

For example, years ago I frequently had breakfast at the same place. One employee would always ask what book I was reading if they took my order and I would always answer. It took months before it finally occurred to me to ask what she liked to read. Although her answer was "books that challenge my faith" so I kind of regretted asking.

I might have had waitresses flirt with me over the years, but I can't tell the difference between a waitress who is just very friendly and charismatic versus one who might actually be interested in me unless they actually slip me their phone number (which has never happened).

So much data flows into my brain from noticing things due to ASD plus iADHD that it can be hard to identify what data is important. I notice something that should be important, but I'm oblivious to the importance because it's a just another tree in the forest.

I'm oblivious to the world around me, like news and political events. I assume everyone wants individual freedoms and has a "live and let live" attitude, but I know that's not true. The reality of political discord really does my head in, and I hate hearing about conflict so I tune it all out. I haven't watched daily news or CNN since 9/11. I shut it off back then and made a conscious decision: no more radios in the house, no more listening to radio in the car, no more TV news or newspapers or headlines. That was pre-internet and I also fell under a trauma rock for the next decade for unrelated reasons, but I'm still happier without. I didn't even know about Covid until I read about it here. This is actually my only source of "news" even though I actively try to avoid the news thread itself.

Beyond that I'm oblivious to gender stuff. KitLily, you always seem to say things or point out what is socially "normal" for women even though you don't ascribe to it either, but at least you know about it. I don't. I mean, I know the big picture expectation of women according to the media but I don't know the finer subtext or specific manners / mannerisms that you've noticed or critiqued.

I don't notice when a person likes me, as others have said. I wouldn't have a clue. My partner literally asked me "Will you be my girl?", because I wouldn't know what was going on otherwise. I had told him I needed emotional things to be stated clearly. Even with bedroom stuff there was a lot of ... clarity and conversation in the beginning because otherwise, I didn't know what he wanted or how he felt just from reading body language or flirtation. He didn't want to come on too strong because of my trauma history, so he couldn't just initiate based on the normal signals.

I don't know when I'm being used or played by others, which is something that happened to me very recently. I take people at their word so if they are acting like a friend or inquiring about me I assume they're sincere. No matter how many years I spend in trauma therapy or how long I spend beating myself up about "getting it wrong", I get it wrong and get manipulated or deceived yet again.

It depends.

If I'm coping with crap, tired and all that -- I might as well wake up forgetting everything for a moment, unable to multitask or know beyond the tunnel vision of whatever thought or emotion.

And if I'm not? I can read and know a lot of things more than others usually do, real big picture things, predicting things even.


Otherwise, I don't actively seek out updates of things. I don't actively read things out either. I hate the former -- it robs me of choices.

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I'm a bit of a space cadet, especially when I've been on the vodka so half the time I find myself contradicting myself and generally lookig like a prat.