Expected social behaviors among NT friends

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With time and careful observation, I have learned a few behaviors that friends are expected to engage into from time to time, in the NT world. The way I learned each of these things typically involved a situation in which an NT told me that they find it strange that I never do that thing. I would then add it to my NT fakebook. Here are some of them, in the context of friendship:

- Friends are expected to make the kind of joke in which one fools another in a lighthearted way (known as "pulling one's leg"), from time to time. This is something that I don't usually do. I do have humor, but not of that kind. Yet, it seems that NTs respond with strong enthusiasm to the 'fooling' brand of humor. Strange.

- If you tell someone in a friendly way that he/she's a bad person (e.g., cruel, greedy, mean), they are likely to see it as a compliment. I'm astonished by the enthusiastic reactions I get from this, whenever I do it. Very strange.

- You are expected to gossip. In fact, this seems to be the primary content of conversations between NT friends. This contrasts with the typical contents of my speech, which consists primarily of information about my special interests.

- Validation. This is an easy one that we aspies tend to forget. I'm not saying that you are expected to suck up to people. But people do expect that you try to see what's interesting in whatever they are saying or doing. Of course, one easy way to validate is to call the person "bad" (as mentioned above). Always works.

- It is expected that you sometimes be the initator of get-togethers. The typical night out starts at a restaurant and ends in a bar.


So that's about it for now. I find these behaviors strange because they seem to occur so naturally among NTs, with very little variation from one group to another.

I know a couple more that I've observed on my sister's Facebook:

Females are supposed to be talking about boys. Aside from my sister and her Mudkip-obsessed, cheerful, anime-loving friend, most of the girls seem to start their sentences with, "OMG! i got a boyfriend!" and "i'm depressed because jerkface broke up with me".

If you happen to talk about you're interests, people would start bashing you for some reason. This happens a lot in my class when I say something about a medical fact ("Some form of blindness is caused by the optic nerves forming improperly", "Certain chromosomal disorders may actually result in cancers of the kidney, breasts, and retina", and, "When you have any form of myiasis, it means that you have a fly maggot inside of a tissue, and it is eating the tissue, causing bleeding and scarring", things like that) or when I start talking about Nintendo, feminism, literature, and other things like that. (Nintendo is one of the worst of the interests to start talking about in my class; they call me "babyish", "childish", and would stop talking to me, aside from a few others who have played Pokemon for all of their lives and cheated on it.)

A lot of NT's seem to want me to say slang words (aside from my sister), because it seems, "cool". (Although I did make up a little saying called, "You just got Triforced!", which is meant for when someone does something epic, then they lose all of what they did, which happens a lot in The Legend of Zelda.)

Well, those are the things that I've experienced from my NT friends.

I think this is a very important bit of information. I think too often we with AS don't realize we have a responsibility to initiate social interactions on occasion, and expect everyone else to initiate it with us.

This is precisely the major problem among those with Asperger's Syndrome when regarding socialization. I, for instance, have not left my house with friends or attended something with anyone (let alone friends) in probably two or three years now. The problem is, I just don't share the interests of most neurotypical people, in that I do not find sports entertaining, I dislike crowds (which implies a lack of interest in most common social gatherings), I am VERY uncomfortable around females because I cannot communicate well enough with the average person and thus am labeled 'strange', and I cannot hold a very good conversations.

Great observations...I will say that all of these things ^ are absolutely true, especially with teens and young adults. I know they generally have a high degree of self-conciousness and they seem to tease each other and crave validation in order for them to feel confident about themselves in front of others, "break the ice" and relieve awkwardness.

People love to talk about themselves, and I find that even if you fake interest in some aspects (which I often do) they are more likely to return the favor and ask about you. It's the reason that I focus the conversation on the other person rather than just me talking about myself...I usually don't reveal anything about myself unless they ask about me.

As for friendly teasing, this could be difficult for most people with ASD to take in as they may not understand the nuances involved or even the purpose of it. Although I've learned to distinguish friendly teasing from personal attacks, I still find the whole idea of it strange, but for some reason the majority of people seem to like it and even encourage it.

When I say bad things about people in friendly/lighthearted ways, I usually get a very positive response though, so you are completely correct. It's so weird. An example, a few days ago I was talking with a male friend who asked me why I called him sexy through my MSN...which was actually a prank done by a good friend who was over at my place. So, me and this guy had an hour long conversation about ways to torture this friend for payback, including feeding her to a pack of wolves, then stealing her wallet and buying piles of candy with her credit card. This was one of my best girlfriends and realistically I'd never do anything like that to her, but this was exactly the reason this guy found it funny.

Honestly, as long as you don't do or say anything sexually explicit, and you are not attempting to date her, I don't think you need to feel uncomfortable around females on a casual, everyday basis.

yeah and they call us the lame boring selfish stupid ones. my apologies. not. spot on observations though. NTs are sheep. baaaaaaaahhhhhhh away, sheep, bah away.

I learned these two quite well from someone I used to be good friends with. Theres a sense of playfully making fun of your friends without bad intension. I like doing that but I often overdo it or do it wrong in some way.

People that know you like to touch you. I have always been the type to not want to violate other people's personal space. I seem to take up more space than most people, even when I am talking with friends. Proxemics is something I have never been comfortable with. Women, if they know you, will break through relatively easily. Play with your hair or massage your shoulders and other stuff. It is something I had to get used to. Unless it was a gf, I never feel that at ease, even if it as innocent as a hug.

Another thing is sharing food and drink. It used to freak me out to have someone drink out of my cup. Friends are supposed to beyone germs I guess.


Guys like to razz each other and will take it fine, until an attractive woman shows up. Then it is like birds to a crumb. Women are more sadistic, they will cut up somebody with knives when they aren't around, especially other women. Then they act like they are the best of friends when they are together.

Ok, I got one.

- A significant amount of NT's cannot think of a successful social occasion without a MASSIVE ABUSE of alcohol AND/OR noise AND/OR tobacco AND/OR drugs.

Haha you pretty much have that nailed.

they do? I dont see that much with the people I hang around. Sometimes I wanna do that to my guy friends but I dont wanna violate their space. Tho I used to do that to one of my gay friends. I mostly just see the girls I know get touchy around each other.

I hate this! Especially teachers. They'll put their hand on my shoulder while their talking to me, but then I can't focus on a word they're saying, because I'm too busy freaking out about their hand being on my shoulder. Or someone will come up to hug me and I won't realize that's what they're trying to do, so I'll just stand there awkwardly. One thing I will never understand is the hug.