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techstepgenr8tion
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05 May 2012, 10:03 am

Question:

Do any of you guys run into the problem where you can be talking with people, trying to joke or share *basic* experience in the most mundane NT-friendly ways and people don't laugh, don't react, at the worst and even half the time either give a glassy stare away from you like you had a big social fail or even start talking over you like it didn't process or they deemed it irrelevant three or four words in? I mean this especially when you know that the person next to you would have gotten a normal reaction for saying the same thing but that you got flatly denied based on nonverbal language and cadence not connecting?

How do you guys deal with that? For me it feels like this renders my social skills null and void because I have to act as if my social skills are much worse than they are - simply because they're to such an extent useless and what's supposed to work simply won't due to facial expressive or vocal factors that I control about as well as Steven Hawking can control his legs. Its tinnitus-level maddening at times....


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06 May 2012, 12:44 am

Story of our lives. If we knew the answer to that question we wouldn't be on Wronplanet/


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GoatOnFire
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06 May 2012, 3:26 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Question:

Do any of you guys run into the problem where you can be talking with people, trying to joke or share *basic* experience in the most mundane NT-friendly ways and people don't laugh, don't react, at the worst and even half the time either give a glassy stare away from you like you had a big social fail or even start talking over you like it didn't process or they deemed it irrelevant three or four words in? I mean this especially when you know that the person next to you would have gotten a normal reaction for saying the same thing but that you got flatly denied based on nonverbal language and cadence not connecting?

Absolutely. Happens to me frequently.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
How do you guys deal with that?

Honestly, the most common way I would deal with that would be is to go into an anti social mode for a little while and avoid others so that I can recover my mood because this is a rather infuriating experience.

Though I have played with it before on occasion. I have discovered that it is amazing what I can get away with saying if people aren't reacting to me properly because there is something wrong with my delivery on an intrinsic level. I can get away with saying horrible things that the average person would immediately be blasted for. Not something I would recommend, but I'm just saying I've played with it before.


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06 May 2012, 6:57 am

I usually don't try to be funny but on rare occasion I can bring the house down (metaphorically speaking) when an observation occurs to me and I deliver it in my always deadpan way. On the other hand, I have a friend who frequently tries to be funny and it usually fails because her body language and facial expression are always so tense that people take her sardonic comment seriously. They really get offended. I think she's on the spectrum btw.


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techstepgenr8tion
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06 May 2012, 2:23 pm

Yeah, I have similar times where I can talk to people and there's no problem what soever. I can make a joke, it by all intents and purposes could have been the same joke in the same overall set of conditions and it flies.

I don't know if its just me but it seems like if people have a reserved 'take' on who I am or how to socially deal with me that's when this problem really starts jumping out. People who I'm already well associated with because I know people who they know and the people I came in with are cool in their books - I do fine. With people who are real and non-pretensious, even when they're hypothetically quite judgmental in other ways - I get along with them fine as well. Then again it can happen with nonpretensious people as well but I've noticed that it just has a very personalized roll to it with them and its neither a permanent nor constant thing.

I guess there may well be another layer to this that I perhaps had put out of mind or written off and subsequently missed from my math on this.


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07 May 2012, 2:41 pm

That sounds familiar. I get the feeling people who don't really know me don't know what to think of me. Like I don't know how to broadcast the normal cues telling others what kind of person I am. In the past I've been told I'm not what they thought on first impression. I've had it where someone will comment on my intelligence, which should be a good thing, but it seems patronizing at the same time. I get the impression they initially thought I was an idiot and thus were so surprised when it turned out I wasn't that they felt the need to comment. :roll: :wall: I wish I could tell myself I'm just being overly sensitive and paranoid but I really don't know. I find it rather irritating. At least I noticed that when working with professors and scientists they are much less likely to judge your "togetherness" based on your verbosity.



techstepgenr8tion
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07 May 2012, 8:44 pm

One of my close friends actually told me that my voice, for whatever reason, just doesn't send the communicative set up to instantly signal to people that I'm talking and because of that it seems like people often won't even realize that I'm talking until I'm halfway into a sentence or even a couple sentences in. I used to also have problems with, even on perfect pronounciation, people just not being able to translate my speech into English (from what I don't know) or that my idea arrangement or way of broaching things used to be different enough that it literally couldn't stick as they listened. What was even worse - perhaps much lessened now though - was a problem that my voice had deadspots, on tape or video you'd hear a really dumb loud but amorphous drone with barely the edged of constonants and lots of sss's whereas anyone else would record normally (hearing myself on a microphone made me feel a lot better - I found out that at least that range I don't sound like I have Downs but something happens to my voice over ranges, quickly).


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08 May 2012, 10:12 pm

i'm rather good with humour. i almost never get these on-the-spot funny comments most of my friends can do, but i can come up with funny punch lines, sarcastic comments, and good jokes, jokes i've thought of well ahead of time.
my only problem is ending my jokes... the last sentence always comes out with a tone with hesitancy. my family are kind enough not to give it much attention, and just focus on the content. but others might not, so telling silly jokes, having a quick laugh, etc... is out of the question for me, my hesitancy just ruins it. but if the content is really good, it overshadows the hesitancy, and people just laugh anyway.
i have long since been aware of this problem, and try hard not to get funny unless i've thought good enough about it, or else i'll embarrass myself. mostly, i perform ok, i think well ahead of time, plan it silently for a good 30 seconds, and say it, and it just works.
oh, and try to be a little engaged in conversation, even if little... staying silent for 30 minutes then suddenly saying something funny might not have the desired effect, as most would be surprised you actually exist.