I have to ask the ladies...

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If a shy aspiish girl has been doing these little things online like logging off AIM the instant I get on when I haven't even talked to her and she's the one who decided she wanted to contact me and get me on her list, am I a heartless a**hole to just shrug it off and sincerely think "Hey, if you wanna be a loop that's your call" and ignore her? This may on the surface seem like a stupid question but seriously, things in this area seem to work so counter-intuitively that I really have no idea anymore...

I do not know the reason for what you are observing. However it is important to note that sometimes things like this are caused for technical reasons, and it can be really embarrassing if you just assume that the other person is doing it intentionally and send them an angry message about it, when in reality it is just some technical side-effect or glitch and the other person was not even aware of it.

If I were you, I would give her the benefit of the doubt, or at least reserve judgement until I know more, because I would hate to make myself look like a fool for getting all worked up about something that was only technical phenomena. I have seen it happen to other people. Fortunately you have not sent her any angry message, so no harm done.

For example, a technical phenomena might be something like the following. I am just inventing this as a fictional example, but it is based on real phenomena I have observed elsewhere. She fails to close the AIM program before disconnecting from the internet (she is on dial-up modem). This means she did not log out of the AIM service in the correct manner. This may mean the AIM service has no knowledge of the fact that she is no longer on the internet, because of the lack of a proper logout command.

However, when you come online, the AIM service attempts some kind of communication with her AIM client program, perhaps to notify it that you are now online so it can display this status information. This communication fails because she is no longer on the internet. The AIM service realizes that the communication has failed, and then realizes that she is no longer on the internet, and so then changes her status within the AIM service to offline, and then sends notification of this change to everyone logged in, including yourself.

In other words, in this fictitious example, what you think is her logging off when she sees you is in reality the AIM service realizing that she is no longer connected to the internet, and updating her status accordingly.

Other technical explanations are also possible.

Sounds like a shy aspie-ish girl to me... kinda sounds like something I might do if I were in a situation like that. What I'm realizing lately about myself and a few other IRL aspies is that sometimes we like the *idea* of doing things, but when it comes around to actually *doing* it, that's where we fall flat - as I'm sure you know, this is especially true in the social realm. So that could be the explanation... if it is, I guess all I can suggest is patience and maybe a little encouragement on your part. I know for myself, I need someone to give me a push - it takes some work on their part to pull that inner side out of me so I can put those ideas into action.

Last edited by neongrl on 01 May 2006, 12:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

There are a gazillion and one possibilities..

One I wanted to mention is that women get warned more often the men about their safety in general, so that may be a possibility?

For example if I mention that I get public transport or go for a walk at night, to other people, some people may say things like "do you think that's safe" etc. I'm sure if I mentioned I chat to men on the Internet, some people might have the opinion that it's not safe to do so either.

Well yeah, I don't get worked up - I usually just wonder about the other person and their mental state.

Almost anytime I get the impression that I might be doing something like that to a girl I usually end up finding out that it was just my paranoia or that she was probably on some completely different track (that and I've met plenty who just tend to look that way regardless). Other than that though, online, I'd imagine putting a scare into someone would take actually doing something that's too quick or too bold, not being too nonchalant.

sorry I was being a bit off on a tangent with my post about safety

Just ignore her. Honestly it's not that hard to send an instant message.

If she added you and isn't going to make an effort to say hello, it's just a bit of a waste of time imo. I mean, how can you get shy sending an IM?

Ignoring people online has nothing to do with being an aspie, either.

I agree with hale_bopp, 'cause I've kinda been in that situation before, but it also could very well be technical.

If there's someone who never IMs me first or is generally kind of dismissive and stuff, I'll just take them off my buddy list (being sure to press the button on my mouse as hard as possible and gnash my teeth at the same time). If someone doesn't want to be friends with me, screw 'em. Funny, I used to be the opposite way.

i might not im someone if im worried i wouldn't have anything to talk about, but i wouldn't log off and run away. i can see how some people might get really shy and try to avoid it though but its not your problem, unless you want to get to know her better, then you might as well try to message her some other way.

General advice:

People should not be too quick to just presume that a person is ignoring them. Again there can be technical or other reasonable explanations that mean the person is not really ignoring you, it just looks that way.

There are all sorts of ways this can happen. For example, if you just presume that their computer works the same way as yours, but in reality they are using different software or different settings. Example, let us say you are annoyed because a person never says hi to you when you come online -- have you considered the possibility that their software/configuration does not notify them when a or any person comes online? They did not even know you were there! I have had people accuse me of ignoring their messages when in reality I never received their messages.

It is fine to suspect that a person is ignoring you or hiding from you or whatever, but depending on how much you know about the situation and over what period of time, it is not necessarily reasonable to presume that your interpretation of the situation is correct.

It is easy to think it is all about me but in reality it might have nothing to do with you at all. Keep an open mind until you gather enough evidence to reasonably support your theory. Avoid jumping to negative conclusions too quickly.

How about actually COMMUNICATING about the issue instead of trying to figure it all out by yourself with no real information to base your conclusions on. Ask questions like, "Hey I was wondering if you received my message?", or "Hey are you busy? Do you want to chat?", or "Hey, I was wondering if you have been avoiding me, because I'm a bit worried that I made you feel uncomfortable, if so I'm sorry about that" etc etc.

Again, no annoyance, I really wrote this post to see if some of the women knew whether or not this is one of those games that some feel they may be supposed to play just to see what the guy's reaction is as well as seeing if my grounded emotions-second mind is getting too far out of touch with the realities of the game. Other than just making sure I've got it straight I could care less about whether its rude, deliberate, etc. - I'm really not affected by it any which way.

I do admit sometimes I don't IM people because I don't see why they would want to talk to me. I tend to think if they wanted to talk to me they would.

True, I'm at least like that unless I've had enough of a conversation to know that I click with someone. Other than that, if I feel like pushing it, I just try to start conversations in subtle ways - anything straight out of the blue just feels too invasive.

I have not responded to emails or messages before - and usually it has nothing to do with the person but either a technical issue or I get interrupted and forget. One of the things (like with emails for example) is that if you read it than the new mail thing disappears and if you have to respond later on because you don't have time or whatever than you can forget about it since there is no visual reminder. Or you are not sure what to say and then put it off and then feel ackward about whether or not it has been too long to respond or not.

Anything could have happened. For example, someone else could have been using the computer, saw the instant message, freaked, and signed off. My daughter did that once when someone IMed me, and she was using my computer.