Hard work faking a shallow persona?

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You should have left it at "..."

That has more rhetorical power than insisting that snide little 'apology' was genuine. You know what dude, I actually don't even... god, you win. There, okay?

No, no. The first apology was sincere.
The second was was (quite obviously) sarcastic, but it didn't invalidate the first.

Do you always get this upset over a simple difference in views?

Be less fake, see what happens.

And/or

Try associating with different people, until you find ones that feel more satisfying to be around, that you don't have to fake with (so much)

I plan on doing just that. But like I said, those with whom I can be myself tend to have issues that make them hard to deal with. I don't mean petty things, I mean abusive or aggressive. It's like an easy job you enjoy but doesn't pay well and you never know whether the boss is in one of his/her moods or even sober, VS a job that pays decently, but bores you and you don't look forward to all that much. Once in a while you find a balance, but otherwise you take what you can get.

That's a badass avatar, btw.

Yes it's a lot like that.

Maybe there's a third way, you just haven't found it yet. Between those two extremes.

Finding good friends is never easy.

Remember to be a good friend to yourself.

And thanks I wish I knew who painted it.

I was just about to ask.

wow..
Actually I have some kind of embarassing flashback because of whaty ou said
In August, I had this girl that wanted us to be friends and OK, she seemed interesting, not all too shallow. I did my effort to please her and next thing you know, she sets up a trip WE were going to do, but she planned it without me with other 'new' friends. I got SOOO mad and wrote her some brutally honest mails.
So there you go, I think I am one of the deep thinkers, but also have a lot of suppressed anger. Eventhough I don't show it without a very good reason (unexplainable BIG hurt etc).

I think we may be thinking too much, as a lot of normals tend to tell us after they watch us explain our view on life. Human relantionships are (/could be) so complicated, so undefinable, so magical sometimes (hence not possible to rationalize).. maybe we should just quit the thinking and keep our eyes on the road. OR something like that.
When I'm in stress, I imagine I'm a vulture flying over the desert looking for whatever is interesting. I identify with it, I love big birds and everyone hates vultures, they live off whatever they get and what nobody else wants.
Live it like this and you never know what you may find in the next minute. That is probably how life goes, IF you go out and keep your eyes open of course.

Oh man, that stinks.

MrEguy, excuse me if its a rude question but do you really have Asperger's? I'm on here trying to understand it a bit better because of some people in my life that I think may be affected by it. Your insights seem to show that you see things from other people's point of view, isn't that one of the core issues?

lol at random ** here but anyway. Let me explain this. Autism is a Spectrum, which means you can have VERY severe cases with people who can never learn to speak, never take care of themselves and given the chance, will hit their head against a wall until they die. On the light-end of the spectrum, there are autistic people that seem quite ok and act quite normal. These can be categorized as Aspergers/High functioning Autists.
Sorry if this explanation is somehow incomplete or so, it's a matter of showing there are variations in severity and also in symptoms that an individual can have. Some autists can be intelligent, some can learn to act normal and to figure out how the world and its people function/seem to function.

I see a box. What will another person think when he sees that box ?
Shall I say: I have no clue?
Or shall I first investigate my own reaction to this box and think 'oh a box, why is it here, what is in it?' and then transplant that thought into someone else's mind. It's not that hard here. With social life, things get complicated and things are harder to figure out. Or impossible. You can guess but most of the time you don't know what someone's thinking.

I PMed a reply to you before I realized you had also posted here. I would have simply answered here if I had realized the question was an open forum question and that you had sent me a private message just to ensure I had read it.

I'll post what my reply was to your message:

Remember, aspies aren't inherently unemotional people. They're just missing some of the tool set for reading people.

Aspies are capable of what doctors call a theory of the mind (this is the notion that I can perceive that other beings are sentient and having feelings much like my own). Where aspies fail to develop a theory of the mind, it is because they don't have the social tools to interact effectively with others, especially at a young age, enough to ensure that they internalize the notion that other people are thinking, feeling beings just like them.

I've worked hard over the years to pull together what I need to function around others.

Aspies aren't bad people. They're just people who are missing a key set of social tools. The biggest issue with most aspies getting them to get over their fears and to attack their shortcomings.

Hope that addresses the question.

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I'd also add that I am 33 years old and I had the good fortune to be in a gifted program as a kid (yes, I'm one of those aspies who make the "little professor" stereotype more widespread than it needs to be). I come from what I prefer to a call a functioning dysfunctional family, with severe money issues, a few drug problems and a fair number of criminal problems. But, on balance I drew a better lot than most aspies do.

Im sure aspies can make very good actors. See at least when NTs come off stage, they are no longer acting. But for the aspies that can "act" NT, they "act" in there everyday lives.

I think we are ignoring what the OP really needs and that is a way to understand and then interact in social situations to build social networks. I feel it too. I am immensely lonely despite having a significant other and some close but geodistant friends. I can't seem to connect with people in new jobs or in graduate school now and no one seems really interested in getting to know me. It may be because I am 10 years older or more than most graduate students so they assume I don't want to have anything to do with kids in their mid twenties (when in my dad's generations, 23-25 was venerable and fully adult).

What the OP sees as shallow may be what I would term non-commitment small talk which is something Aspies are normally not comfortable with. It moves to fast and it is surface level discussion which by definition is "shallow" but not in the pejorative sense. We excel at entrenched discussion of topics. I used to fit in there but was nowhere near as well read to participate back in the age when that was "in". I remember having more "philosophical" discussions in the early to mid 1990s than I have had witness to in the last 10 years. Where did it go? Since then I have been around twenty somethings quite a lot at work and school in the last 5 years but failed to find it in that group either.

Perhaps society is taking in more cognitive dissonance and therefore resorting to escapist surface based humor and small talk more often?


BBL