I don't understand this.

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We are labeled as 'having obsessive interests' when the same could be said about NT's. Half the world for instance is completely obsessed about football... some people pay ridiculous amounts of money to go and see a bunch of sweaty men kicking a ball around, and some even get into fights with other teams' fans!

It doesn't make sense to me. Why do NT's say that we're obsessed with our interests (mine are archeology, astronomy and egyptology, but I'm not OBSESSED with them.. I just do research and go to a group once a month and we talk about what we've found out) when they are too?

hey there fellow archaeologoigist, when I was 7 - 16 my interests were egyptology and ancient history but to sound arrogant I pretty much learnt everything so I do my minor in archaeology now, I love pocket watches for some strange reason just the notion of havving time in your pocket. My one I would call obsessio is dragons for some reason and phonoexes I collect sculptures and art of them, I do an old dabble in astology to hehe especially space themed things like black holes. after that its the good old computer which is my obsession above all I do everything and love my cmputer especially with its processing speed and its blue lights I always get tranfixed by blue leds bright but pretty.

over te computer and dragon collecting everything else fo me is a narrow interest. most tradional as forms have interest of the narrow variety, rather than obsessio obsesson is very short sighted to say and most ASpies including myself would say its a narrow interest of passion not an interest above those is my routine to be frank as my routine is by far more important

I to amquite peeved by these statements as they are ill and not really of any peticular insight whatsoever

tutukahmun will rest with Ysara

plus for some reason I love collecting minerals

Because their interests is socially acceptable and the majority share the same obsessions they have while ours is different and out of the norm like who the heck gets obsessed with a city or with a movie, who the heck gets obsessed over an object or a topic?


Football is more acceptable to be obsessed with because the majority are obsessed with it so an aspie could get away with that obsession. I think an aspie would obsess about football differently though like they would bother reading about the history of football and about their favorite team and know facts about it and maybe memorize the scores of the games and memorize the dates they went to them. NT's don't do that.

I've always thought it was weird that 'we' (Aspies) are said to 'lack empathy', yet the cruelty of NTs is on display everywhere. I guess NTs just don't care, or perhaps use their empathy in such a way to be particularly cruel.

Because certain obsessions are socially acceptable, others aren't.

Being obsessed with football is fine, being obsessed with wolverines or rare disorders is a terrible abnormality.

Screw NT society! (Ok, not all...)

That gives me an idea for a poll.

Because they're egocentric idiots.

As far as Asperger's is concerned, Tony Attwood is a new Ptolemy. In his own, NT-biased way, he describes an outward appearance fairly well, but does not seem to have talked to a real-live Aspie at all. What we need is a new Copernicus.

Wait, I've ranted about this before. See "Childlike in Nature?" (mine is the fifth post) http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt94355.html)

I do get obsessed with my interests. To the extent that I think about little else, and nearly all of my spare time is taken up by learning about these interests, and I link everything to these interests, and drive everyone mad or concern people by talking about my interests so much.
Others get so obsessed they totally neglect other aspects of their life. Eg. Children who do badly in school becuse the only thing they want to learn about is maths so they just do maths even when they're supposed to learn something else, or just don't pay attention unless it's maths.
Also, NTs with obsessions still talk about a variety of things and socialise but an Aspie or Autie may only talk about their special interest.

There is still an element of how 'normal' ones interests are though. Aspies tend to like more specific, unusual things. The specificity I think is particularly significant. Spokane_Girl talks about being obsessed with a film, an NT might be obsessed with a series of films, or films by a particular director, or just films in general.

I think although NTs can have obsessions, and Aspies may not always have obsessions, Aspies are far more likely to be obsessed with something than NTs. Not every Aspie will have every characteristic.

Spokane Girl - I think some NT sport fans do memorise game scores, and facts about the team. Not sure about dates or history, though.

I have thought a lot about this and I think its because normal people are able to be totally obsessed with their interest but they are able to put that down and fit other things in but some ASDs appear not to do this because other things don't occur to them, so a normal person will notice they need a bath or get hungry or cold and sort that out before returning to watch football on TV or they will plan to watch the programme and then get fed, washed etc, someone with autism may be so absorbed and content that they do not notice that they need to eat, get cleaned up or have gotten very cold. Its about balance and management and being able to multi-task.

We do one-track at a time and it might last the whole day and even go into the next one.

Oh, no, no.

There is a very good reason for this.

Basically an interest is only a special interest if it's narrow and all-encompassing, which means that a person pursues their interest to the exclusion of other activities by which it can be source of considerate disability.

Note: Nobody says those with AS cannot have normal interest like non-autistic people. People with autism can have perfectly normal interest that they totally like and are very interested in.

But because most people do not like this definition of a special interest or don't know it or just don't care or whatever, it gets ignored usually and people just start having their personal definitions of what exactly a special interest is.

For surprisingly many people special interest = normal interest.

And I think that totally defeats the purpose of it being a trait of AS. Obviously typical, average traits are not traits of AS/autism?

It seems moreso that most people just seem to lack any significant interest in general. Most interests I hear from other people just seem like fillers; stuff any functional human would find enjoyment in. Perhaps its from only being around middle aged adults and late teens with no money, so I don't get to see many people that actually do have a large array of interests or deep interests. But, for a lot of people it always seems to be, in order, TV (being the biggest time consumer, though clearly NOT an obsession)/socializing/movies/music/politics/sports/reading/wildcard -- and a lot of these interests only hit a spark of their time, or they have a superficial knowledge of it. We've all seen studies that claim people spend on average 50% or more of their leisure time in front of the television -- how is that not an obsession?

It's all hypocrisy!