"Every social group has its own subculture"

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Whale_Tuune
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18 Jun 2020, 5:39 pm

I've heard this before, and I think it rings incredibly true. The basic idea is that every group of people, office coworkers, a particular group of friends, a classroom or family will at some point develop their own mini-social rules, norms, and customs. What topics are okay vs taboo, when and how to interrupt others, what type of humor is on or off the table, what or what does not count as tmi or overstepping boundaries, for example, will all be determined on the fly when any new social group comes together. In other words, every social group is its own mini-subculture.

Most "NTs" seem to be able to read the subculture of whatever group they find themselves in relatively quickly and get along with it. ASD does not. This is why we may even struggle when hanging out with other "geeks" or "nerds". "Geek" and "nerd" subcultures and friends groups frequently develop social norms like any other group. If you're not good with that, you're out of luck.


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Bravo5150
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18 Jun 2020, 5:46 pm

Boundaries vary for group to group. In some cases, a TMI comment can be an acceptable form of humor, other times frowned upon. Usually TMI comments involve comments that are extremely graphic, for example bringing up a story explaining in detail about various bodily functions.



RadioDog
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19 Jun 2020, 4:23 pm

Whale_Tuune wrote:
This is why we may even struggle when hanging out with other "geeks" or "nerds". "Geek" and "nerd" subcultures and friends groups frequently develop social norms like any other group. If you're not good with that, you're out of luck.


This became even harder when it became pop-culture level "cool" to be a "geek" or "nerd", so that the places aspies could hang and hide out became flooded with and taken over by "geeky" or "nerdy" NTs. Computer subcultures are rife with this, for example. When I started messing around with computers back in the day only (truly) geeky/nerdy people were there. The last several times I've tried to join in a computer group lately, they were very harsh in bad mouthing "Aspergers" people, using "autistic" as a put-down word, and so on. I slunk out pained.


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Whale_Tuune
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19 Jun 2020, 5:04 pm

That's awful! I've observed a big difference between "subcultures" and true Aspie behavior. Every aspie is kind of from their own planet.


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RadioDog
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19 Jun 2020, 5:28 pm

Whale_Tuune wrote:
That's awful! I've observed a big difference between "subcultures" and true Aspie behavior. Every aspie is kind of from their own planet.


Very true.


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