Too socially inept for the internet - I win at Asperger's!

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I was really upset when this happened last week, but I'm ready to laugh at it now. I think this is a bit long.

Summary: I put a post on an internet forum which I felt was perfectly on topic, calling out another poster who I thought was being a real @$$, and while I didn't expect everyone to agree with me I at least expected there to be a civil debate. When I went back the mods had deleted my post and those of everyone who replied to me because I was "lecturing" the other poster and it was inappropriate. Never got to see the replies. Apparently my sense of what's appropriate doesn't even make the grade on the internet.

I genuinely wasn't trolling either: the poster I was responding to really struck me as being selfish and insensitive. This was pretty ironic, because the purpose of the thread was to vent about selfish and entitled behaviour, and a common theme was people who can only see other people's problems as inconvenient to themselves.

The post I objected to was a respone to a poster who wrote in about two incidents in the past where she'd been forced as a child to pet a snake when she was scared of snakes, and when she refused to climb to the top of a lighthouse (IIRC) during training for a job (she wasn't actually going to be working in the lighthouse, it was just one of the on-site buildings) because she suffers from vertigo.

The poster I objected to (PIO) wrote in that the first poster should never have applied for the job if she couldn't handle these five minutes of the training (repeat, the vertigo wasn't something the first poster would have to deal with at the actual job).
PIO proceeded to talk about how in her daily life she didn't see how she should be inconvenienced by other people's "irrational behaviour", including phobias.

This outraged me. As an aspie, who's also struggling with an anxiety disorder, I can't count the times that things that would mean nothing to anyone else have caused me acute distress - just because you think it's irrational doesn't make it any less real to me.

I wrote and deleted two very rude replies, but the one I settled on definitely didn't pull any punches. I pointed out all the stories on the thread of people in emergency rooms, etc, who felt that their comfort is more important than other people's suffering and said that this was no different, and that she seemed to think a phobia was just people being dramatic when really it means the person is suffering paralysing terror whether the stimulus would affect PIO in the same way or not. I didn't mention my Asperger's but did say that I had an anxiety disorder, and something to the effect that holding onto a job despite that made me brave, not rude and selfish. I ended by saying that the only good thing that had come of it was learning how kind and tolerant people could be, and that I hoped PIO never had to rely on that herself.

The thing is, I'm not sure why the mods had to go so far as to delete my post. The harsh tone? That it was a very late reply to PIO's post? I've seen other late replies, but maybe they weren't going to start a debate like mine was? This is a forum where people go off topic fairly often and length, but since the topic was selfish behaviour I think I was actually on topic. And posters often disagree and debate with each other, often in quite harsh tones. I also see a lot of posts I'd consider lectures – when topics that require technical knowledge come up, or someone thinks someone else's opinion of an incident like behaviour on a job would change if they knew more about what the job involved or something.

I was very upset when I saw the post was deleted, just from the point of view that I'd stood up for myself, which I'm still learning to do, and then found myself back in outcast land for reasons I don't understand, yet again.

I suppose I just have to laugh, and to chalk it up to the vagaries of the NTs...

I don't think the person was being harsh.
If you can't do all the things in a job training - you shouldn't do the job.
Maybe it's unfair, but it's how the world works.
You can't expect the world to bend to your flaws, you have to bend to the world.

Yeah, but since it wasn't going to be part of the actual job she was going to do, just a tour of the premises before she started, I thought it was going too far to say she had no right to the job because of her inability to do something irrelevant. I can see your point, though - guess it would depend on what sort of environment that workplace had.

I suppose what really got to me was poster's statement that she had no tolerance for "irrational" behaviour. She seemed to just assume that phobias or whatever are people just being self-indulgent and annoying and she shouldn't have to put up with it. Never mind that what the person is actually going through ammounts to acute suffering, and they have no control over it in the first place.

Then why bother with them?
You can't react so strongly to every throw-away comment people on the internet make.
Some people will have different opinions than you, you should respect that.

I think you should find another internet forum to post on, but before you go post some scathing comment about the mod. This comment will probably be deleted but you will feel better afterward. If you're not wanted somewhere--why stay?

The Internet is the last place I would think to go to find acceptance...Just saying.

Cubedemon and Emlion, I see what you're saying. But the thing is, in this case it wasn't that the world wasn't making an exception for the girl with the phobia - not being able to go up the lighthouse for five minutes didn't actually cost her the job because it wasn't that important. But the poster I was objecting to was saying it should have, and that the girl didn't deserve to have a job because she had a phobia at all.

I was just trying to explain to that one person why she was being narrow-minded and intolerant, from the perspective of someone who has a lot of "irrational" hang-ups but is still very good at her job.

But see? You guys think I'm wrong, you're telling me so, and the internet hasn't exploded. This is what I expected when I made the original post - a discussion. I don't know what I did that was so wrong that the post had to be deleted.

I've been thinking about sending the mod a message asking why, but I think I've expended too much emotional energy on it already. I'm going to take jackbus's advice and find somewhere else to lurk.

This thread is kind of old but I'm new and reading back through the forums. Anyway, I don't know the rules of the forum you were referring to but, on many forums I'm on, starting a thread to call out another poster would be against the rules, even if the post itself wasn't nasty. So it's possible that you didn't say anything really bad but it was just the simple fact of making a post just to comment on the other poster that was seen as a personal attack.

Michelle