WTF!!? PLEASE Help Me Understand!! !!

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Today I was reading this story on TMZ (yes, I was painfully bored) about Shanna Moakler not being surprised by Jamie Lynn Spears being pregnant. I guess she blogged about how high the statistics are on teen pregnancy. TMZ made the comment that perhaps Shanna should be a high school health teacher if she knows so much. Others joined on the flame bandwagon in their comments.

What I want to know is why people act like this. Why are people so threatened by anyone who knows some facts, statistics or information? Or those, for that matter, who want to know more? And they really are. I belong to a medical forum where a friend of mine was banned because he knew too much from having worked in the medical service for many years. He was able to answer questions that doctors had not replied to thoroughly and offer valuable information to people who needed it. Admin didn't care for this. Similarly, I was unceremoniously blocked and banned from a support forum I belonged to for asking too many questions! Funny thing is, they were damn good questions and a lot of other members would say so in response to the threads. You should have read the flame letter I got, telling me I should seek professional help and a round of other unnecessary insults thinly veiled in mock concern for my "anxiety". It wasn't anxiety, it was curiosity, and I tend to ask questions that haven't yet been asked and are good things to know answers to. I'm of the mind that people SHOULD ask questions. I've since been reinstated to that group, under a different username. As long as I don't ask questions and try not to answer too many, things have been fine. I think the dialogue would be a lot more interesting if people were allowed to bring up more useful topics.

I'm 100% sure this is a neurotypical thing, a very normal societal thing that people just inherently know. Asking questions is bad, having answers unless you have a long set of letters after your name makes you some pathetic wannabe who deserves a good flaming and subsequent banning (regardless of how useful and correct the information is) and so forth. Is it a modesty thing? Jealousy?

I really, really want to know and understand, so if someone could please provide me with some insight, I would greatly appreciate it.

I wish I could, but I ask myself this every day.

Why do people not ask questions? QUESTION EVERYTHING. I mean everything.

If it's something the media have told me, I never cease to ask questions. Why are they saying this? Whose agenda are they pushing? What information aren't they telling me? Is this propaganda or truth?

Every time I try to explain things to people they usually just shut me down. Not interested, scared to hear the truth, or I guess they just feel terrified because they feel so helpless to do anything about whatever it is (whether through the effort it takes to change, or just by things being apparently out of control) so would rather just deny it and ignore it.


We're trained to just go with what we're told by our nanny govts. Don't question anything. 1984.



In the meantime, those of us breaking free just go around banging our heads against walls trying to get through to the others.

Ever read 'This Perfect Day' by Ira Levin? Might be of interest, great novel!!



I think we'd get on well.

I had a similar experience on another forum when i "unfortunately" knew more than a nearly graduated medical student about sugar metabolism. The students posts replying to mine were some of the worst, most insulting, most hostile, that i've ever experienced on a forum. Another member of the site, a nurse/vet (?), joined in to support the medical student. I was essentially told to shut up and stop disseminating incorrect information which could put someones life in danger.They kept saying they knew the truth cos were "qualified".
After an awful 3 days, ( in which i said i was not aiming to attack student or anyone, just wanting correct info to get to person asking question), the original poster came back on to say that they had seen a doctor ( a fully qualified one) to discuss the issue , .... and that i was right, and that I had been right from the start. She also sent me a pm to say so, which i appreciated cos had been a truly HORRIBLE experience.
What seemed to matter more than my 15 years of interest in and study of nutrition was a person's "almost having" an official certificate saying they were "qualified" to pronounce on the subject. I never received an apology for the verbal abuse.

About asking questions, yes, also been there done that. My questions, trying to understand stuff that other people seemed to know all about , (seemed to, because almost noone else seemed to need to ask about it, or at least not for so long !) put a lot of people's backs up, apparently seemed hostile and frightening because people kept just trying to make me shut up. As if i was about to spoil, damage, wreck, something, by asking questions.

I had put "maybe aspergers" on my profile on the site, and some way into one long thread where i was asking questions which were pissing a lot of people off someone suggested that perhaps my difficulty with the subject was connected to my aspergers. Sighs of relief all round. ( or almost)

Monty posted a thread with an article about "fluid intelligence" in aspies, which is completely against grain of usual ideas re autism. Apparently the fluid kind of intelligence, eductive, able to draw inferences, recognise patterns, find solutions to new problems, is on the increase in the 50 years that it has been measured separately from the crystallised kind.
I wonder whether the price to pay for it is "out of body" problems. Whether proprioceptive systems poor development in so many of us is linked cos there's more space as a result in the brain for this kind of thinking. If don't "feed" the "body intelligence", instead get more and more of this "fluid" stuff. Don't know.

Anyway meant to say that WP is the first site i've been on where can ask questions till cows come home, and know lots, without upsetting people.
In fact it is on so called NT sites that get people who react like the "classic" autist is supposed to react to changes in routine etc, if challenge their bodies of knowledge. And get scared by new ideas. And repeat their credos like mantras to stave of fear.
And are calm only so long as protected by their incredibly complex routines and rituals of regular society. All that megalithic structure holding them together. Including clocks. Uniforms. What awful ideas.
I've been wondering who is actually "autistic" around here. IF, IF, autism means the things i hear so often, about dependency on routine, ritual, unchanging environments, on fixed structures. The collections of objects and data. See them collecting out there . Like ants.
What's wrong with our collections is that they aren't pre-packed in the shops.
We make them up ourselves.

A Questionable Topic.

I remember as a child being told that children do not ask questions, and that they should be seen and not heard.

No Aspies in my family. Everyone was NT, including by Tourette's brother and my dyslexic sister. My alcoholic father and depressed mother.

And they all wondered what was wrong with me, just because I asked questions.

I did not listen to any of them. I was different, born different, and people who are different pay the price. We are banned, shunned, kicked off the island, fired, ostracized, expelled, terminated, deported, jailed, bullied, forgotten, burned at the stake, hidden from view, even cured or forcibly converted. If these do not work, then we are eliminated, either singly or as a group (genocide).

I would not change it for the world!

Better to be a question mark than a period. Better to be a comma, an exclamation mark. Periods are necessary. Just use them sparingly!! ! (sartresue)

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way! (Juan Ramon Jiminez quoted in Paulo Friere's book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed")

One of the reasons I am ostracized is because I question things. Lately, so as not to get isolated even more, I never question anything aloud. I keep quiet and then research things on the internet.

Questioning is bad because it leads to reasoned knowledge (aka the truth). Truth is bad because it leads to insight. Insight is bad because it wakes up the sheep.

Whatever is bad for the interests of the powers that be becomes "socially inappropriate".

I was once banned from an abuse survivors' Psychology website forum for raising the question of whether it's true that parents always do their best and forgiving is in our best interest. As simple as that. No reasons given, no informing letter. Just disconnected. Forgiving the mean and powerful is not in our best interest, it's in the best interest of the mean and powerful. I was able to continue reading on the forum for a while, and people were wondering where Greentea, the insightful, had disappeared. The moderators told them that I had decided to leave the forum to pursue other interests.

I think pack/hive cultures are more about (overtly)maintaining and grooming the pecking order than possibly upsetting notions like truth. If they want to move up the pecking order they do it in ways other than questioning authorities or seeming like an authority oneself. That stuff gets you seen as a challenger, a threat to the pack's main interest.

Truth is also relative for a lot of people, so ones own 'truth' can and does vary from other people's. What is true for me is not necessarily true for other people.

That's exactly it.

Knowledge is the most powerful tool of all.

And those who ask questions tend to have it in bucketloads.

Far more than any of your average sheeple, in any case.



That makes it dangerous. And us dangerous.

Creative Language topic!!

Lekiwi, I love the word sheeple!! I stand humbled by your creative language. Wow.

Thank you

Haha, thank you! (I'm a journalist and writer, guess it's in the job description... )

I love your quotes, specially those in the post a few above this one. Keep them coming too!! Spread the love!!

(And keep asking questions - don't go along with the sheeple of the world hehe!).

Do you think it may be a matter of degree? Does the PO on the other message boards think you are getting off topic, or are asking so many questions that it appears to be either questioning their authority on the subject or a kind of "spamming"?
I think that asking tons of questions may be an AS thing. I also think it's a good thing, but it can be tiring. Both of my boys have AS. My older boy is always thinking in tangents and WOULD have lots of questions about everything, I'm sure, but is never too far from his computer and just looks everything up before he even asks anything.
I strongly suspect that my husband has AS. His normal way of conversing is to ask questions--so many that I have to tell him that I am no longer on duty and can't come up with any more information for him.

In any case, it is the people who always ask questions who come up with the answers to things people always wanted to know. Keep questioning!

it doesn't change much for adults. I questioned things in meetings (which nowadays are merely personal forums to dispense orders to the masses..., and eventually talked myself out of a job. Fortunately, I came back as a contractor...