4 kinds of Aspie Bug bites

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The "Aspie Bug" is a metaphor for the way an NT reacts upon meeting a person with Asperger's. If the person ends up thinking "you're weird!" or such, I say that "the Aspie Bug BIT him". Now if, for example, I was fixed up on a date that didn't go well because of my Asperger's, rather than give a play-by-play description of what went wrong, I just tell the matchmaker that the Aspie Bug bit her, and leave it at that.

There are four basic types of Aspie Bug bite:

Category 3: Animosity. Bug strikes a blood vessel.
The most intense kind of Aspie Bug bite, the person who is bitten generates severe hatred for the aspie -- often for no reason whatsoever, but sometimes for an infraction committed so minor that they would chuckle at worst if anyone else did it. The hatred manifests itself in ways from teasing/taunting to downright physical violence. What's more, there seem to be very few other methods of evoking a rancor so intense and encompassing as an Aspie Bug bite.
The Category 3 Aspie Bug bites are most common in younger people, with the frequency peaking around middle school. From there it makes a slow decline. Category 3 bitees beyond, say, the Junior year of high school are, IMHO, persons with a serious deficit of moral and/or ethical character, even though they may actually be quite popular socially. I've often said that an Aspie makes a great "canary in a coal mine" to identify people like these; if you want to learn a person's true self, introduce him/her to an Aspie.

Category 2: Invisibility. Bug reaches tissue.
This is the most common result of when an Aspie Bug bites older people. The people who are bitten don't love or hate the Aspie, they just ignore him. Sometimes, the level of invisibility one can experience in social situations, while often depressing, can be downright fascinating, almost as if one is a ghost of the kind described in the movie "The Sixth Sense".
This reaction is not as bad as a Category 3 Aspie Bug bite, but, as they say, "A half a loaf is better than none, but it sure as heck isn't better than one" One is still the last on a choose-up team, without a study partner, or watching "Love Boat" on Saturday night. Also, a victim of a Category 3 bite, if charismatic, can lead a group of Category 2s in a ridicule attack, where the 2s range from mere "laughing along" to active participation.
(For younger readers: "The Love Boat" was this cheesy but popular long-running TV show about the mostly-romantic goings-on on a cruise ship. 3 plots were woven together, and each had its own title. The show aired from 9-10 on Saturday nights, and was stereotypically what a person without a date was doing at that time.)

Category 1: Politeness. Bug breaks the skin.
This kind of reaction to an Aspie Bug bite is rare, but it does happen. The person bit will be friendly to you, but to a very limited extent. For example, if said person is a desired female (and the Aspie a male), she might give you some honest -- and useful -- advice on how to meet someone and what you're doing wrong, but will SHE go on a date with you? Never. Look at Clark Kent's reaction toward the end of the movie "Superman II" when Lois Lane says "Isn't he a nice guy?!" about Clark, when he knows how she feels about the man of steel when in costume.
Usually, the type of person who reacts this way has strong moral values, sometimes of a religious nature, but are still subject to the usual NT social ways. Some folks think people like these are "patronizing" and not desirable; I'm reminded of a blind friend of mine who tells me he hates with a passion anyone who likes him enough to help him across the street, but not enough to invite him to their party. (Note: people who try to help him cross a street without asking first, more often than not screw up his spatial orientation. That may be the real cause of the animosity.) I, however, am in favor of anyone who makes the effort to reach out to an aspie.

Category 0: Genuine friendliness. Bug doesn't bite at all!
Who is immune to the Aspie Bug bite? In my experience, those most likely are:
-- NTs with a visible cosmetic impediment (a goiter for example), or too fat or too short for the average NTs liking
-- NTs physically and/or mentally challenged
-- NTs with a GENUINE sense of spirituality, with or without religious affiliation
-- NTs who underwent a perilous and/or painful ordeal
-- NTs who feel isolated for other reasons
-- NT newcomers to the social situation, at least for the time being
-- NTs from non-Western cultures
-- other Aspies.

I still don't know what the Aspie Bug looks like; any creative artists out there?

Last edited by ASBugaloo on 02 Jun 2006, 3:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

dont forget about the kind of aspie bug bite where they decide they like your candour/no nonsense practical way of looking at the world.

Aspie bug huh. Hmm well actually never heard of it. I didn't know I had Aspergers until last year but I didn't tell anyone about my self till only in here. So no one knew. I never did hang out with no one and no one cared.

I agree with your different levels of bug bites. I have experienced all of them.

I especially agree with category 0.

I especially agree with NT newcomers to the social situation. I have lived through that. It always seems like when a new NT comes on the scene, it feel like I always have to hurry up and get to know the new person before the other NT's get to them and poison the new person against me. They will tell the new person "She's wierd" or "Stay away from her" and junk like that. I like to get to the new person first so that they can determine for themselves whether they like me or not. Rather than form an opinion about me based on what someone else says.

I call that phenomenon "poisoning the well", where you have a short window to meet someone before the crowd descends. All too often, not only might the newcomer turn on you once they become accepted by the in-crowd, some really lace into you, as a means of making themselves more popular.

Yeah I get that too sometimes. It's been said that I "march to the beat of my own drummer".

But was the Aspie Bug bite in question a Category 1 or 0? One way to find out is: after the person tells you he's impressed with how you look at the world, what does he say:

(to you) "Hey... me, Jake, Ted, and Artie are going to the Beagle Cinema tonight to catch "Star Battles: Refresh of the Gith". Would you like to join us?"

(to someone else, possibly still within earshot) "Hey Jake! Did you pre-order tonight's movie tickets on your Blueberry?"

The first scenario is a Category 0; the second a Cat 1.

Well I'm not terribly talented, I am creative. But then again it might be a bit tricky to get the scanner set up.

Where you thinking the thing should be more cute, or scary?

Actually, in keeping with Aspie tradition, I would say more along the lines of "different", or "weird". I've heard that enough times.

Just make sure he's got a suitable snout or whatever for the bite!

And I thank you for volunteering!

Very interesting...I'm already coming up with examples of who fits into which category.

May I copy this into my blog (and give you credit for writing it, of course)? Not my WP blog, my other one. I'd like to share this with some non-aspie friends.

Permission gleefully granted! Note that I made a few recent corrections to the original post.

I would like to visit this blog myself. Can you post the link here, or send me a WP personal message if you'd rather not?

Thank you very much!!

Well, it's at my MySpace (I know it's lame to use MySpace as a blog, but...whatever, heh), which can be found at: http://www.myspace.com/surreal_nirvana

However, nearly all of the entries are protected so that they can only be read by people on my friends list. (I write about a lot of personal and sometimes-embaressing stuff, so there's people I don't want reading it, etc.) So if you can only see a few entires and don't have a MySpace, then I appologize... >.<

I figure that if they're really stupid enough to be influenced by word of mouth and not do any of their research, I'm not that interested in them as a friend.

Ooops, you've just described at least 90% of the NT population. People's minds are easily tainted by ill advice from their "friends".

What's more, with us Aspies they can even be influenced after you've already met them and had a mildly positive impression. What happens is, they meet their older "friends" later and poison the well by saying "oh, that Aspie Guy is so weird". So the next time you meet them, they make a point of avoiding you permanently, some more bluntly than others. If you ask why (or if it was a member of the opposite gender and you had a date set up which is now to be broken), you'll get an excuse so lame that it MIGHT fool some species of plankton.

Also, with Aspies, even people who are known to say stuff like, "I judge for myself if a person is decent or not", are still prone to getting bitten by the Aspie Bug based on secondhand information. This is especially true if a "big wheel" of the crowd or whatever you call the person with all the social clout gets an Aspie Bug bite first.

Luckily, the incidence of such behavior decreases as people get older. Of course, all too often the window for certain varieties of social experience are permanently closed by then, but that's a subject for another thread.

Ooops, you've just described at least 90% of the NT population. People's minds are easily tainted by ill advice from their "friends".


I know I'd rather have 1 good friend than 999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
fair weather friends.

I only wonder if such experience of peer preasure and social pecking orders is entirely unique to Aspers.

Iammeandnooneelse, please edit your above post and shorten your numeric notation, as I believe that it is deformatting this thread!

I haven't Aspergers or any sort of disorder like that (as far as Im aware!)

But I did get bullied severely as school which I feel puts me on a certain plane of understanding with you guys as I have expereienced the feeling of not being able to make social interactions work no matter how you try, and having the social skills I had in childhood kinda stripped away as it were. Having whole weeks of not talking to anyone or being spoken to except for to get some verbal abuse did a hell of a lot of damage and I still find people I dont know intimately quite unnerving.....

It took me a long time to recover and build my confidence back up again......But its also given me a lot of insights as regards to human psychology and why people do what they do.

Anyway. To the point! I experienced that whole thing of poisoned thoughts as well........If someone new came into my class I'd be filled with hope......Maybe this was someone who might actually treat me like a person?! Or even be a friend.

So I'd move in quickly to try and get the point accross that I wasn't just a freak, before they all taught the new person the basic ground adn that I was the enemy.

I did this in desperation and need to have some sort of human alliance, but looking back on the context of the situation I can see clearly how and why it didn't workl

For a start, my desperation to befriend them made me look desperate, needy and weird. No one wants a friend whos just desperate for friends. People need to be taken on their own merits and befriended because the person is interested in THEM. When people want to be a friend just cos they want a friend that freaks em out.

Secondly, even if I did get on their side it wouldn't last. It wouldn't take long until the stronger ringleaders of the peer group got round to em and they quickly learnt my place in the hierachy at the bottom. It was not 'cool' to hang around with me, and if they did then they'd get my treatment. And I dont think anyone wanted that and I cant blame em!

So it was catch 22.

If a class has decided it is not conducive to 'Popularity' to befriend you, then Im afraid you haven't a hope in hell. Getting to the top of the social tree is the most important thing to most High School kids. It is a cruel scene of animalistic warfare and domination games.........

But if its any comfort, by the end of GCSE's this whole thing generally ends and people begin to grow up. You will still get dodgy situations at college, but no where NEAR as bad as yrs 7 - 9. And in adulthood this whole Poisoning Opinions thing usually stops. People become more aware of their own individuality, and it becomes more important to appear their own person...grown up and in charge of their own decisions, instead of being led by everyone else.