Facebook for Aspies

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I really like it because it lets me deal with the world in a manner i can control. Plus i get to add new friends from people i find to be interesting. In real life i would never have a chance to speak with these people or drum up the courage to do so. I have facebook friends like this from all over the world.

I use Facebook mostly as a tool to keep in touch with people and to see what people (especially from my past) are up to. I never play the games or do a lot of contests.

I guess what bothers me about the site is not the site itself but much rather the people whom are my "friends" on there. It is a part of a bigger issue that I have with reciprocation and acknowledgement. First of all, one of my closest friends growing up will not friend me for whatever reason (longer story that I have drolled on about on here). Also when I try to correspond with people or post a status update, the return of messages is rather dismal. An example, I wrote my best friend last night that another friend that was moving. He never responded, but I see later that he posted some tomfoolery about a video game that he was playing. I also post things about events and community related issues that never seem to get a response, but everyone seems to respond when someone posts about their kids, their intoxicated evening, or some foolish matter.

I understand that people use Facebook for different things, but as I said, the lack of social decorum that people have on there really bothers me. Does anyone have any ideas to get more people to respond to my posts, or to messages?

I use Facebook quite a bit for organizing, as nearly everyone I know uses it.

Yes, I've noticed some people can post any random inane thought they have and everyone will practically fall over themselves to respond. I think if people don't perceive you as a socially "fun" person, nothing you say will make a dent. It's not going to fit their paradigm of you so they will dismiss it. In essence they don't see it. I say this because I think the same thing happens to me. I have FB friends who post what they are having for dinner and everyone is in a rapture about it. I post a video about autism and nobody says anything.

Why don't you hide or erase those friends who do not relate to what you are interested in?
I'm curious.
I did a cull on my FB friends list a while back. It was a good thing to do. I use it mainly for ASD related stuff now...but I don't go on there too often. I did initially and it became as confusing as a school playground. Too many personalities, too much social energy and too much of an inability on my part to cope with that level of input in my life.

Yeah, I could hide. I hid my niece's husband, who is a right wing evangelical minister and I have a hard time not responding when he posts something crazy. My problem is I'm addicted to looking at the site. I rarely post anything anymore. It just reminds me that other people have social relationships and that I am so inept at it.

I have often thought about doing this. Strangely enough, the people that I interact with on Facebook the most, I interact with IRL, sometimes more so IRL.

This goes much deeper for me than just Facebook. As a person I have a strong connection to my past and people from my past. It is a hard thing for me to say, but I have a tendency to live in my past. Part of it has to do with the fact, that I had closer bonds with people my own age, where it is almost impossible to find those bonds today.

^ Yes. It is interesting. I know when I culled the FB 'friends" list (and they are not friends...they are in fact contacts,) I had to weigh everything up. I had individual contacts on there from 12 step programs - some of whom were quite immature and zealous in their inability to understand and comprehend the complexity and variations of ASD's and also the dual-diagnosis issues in their peers. I had a growing number of ASD people in the friends list as well and I drew up a list and I tried to work out a loose criteria for culling......It really came down to who was understanding of ASD's and who wasn't. I needed to understand that one of the requirements I need in life is to surround myself as much as I can, with people who understand what it is like to live with an ASD.

Eventually, there was terrible misunderstanding and misinterpretation about the way many of the ASD people were communicating with each other, and some of the less wise 12 step program people were very critical of the expressions and communications of the ASD people.
I actually unintentionally caused a bit of a furore amongst the individuals in the group I culled... I had no intention to be mean to them. I just thought it wise for me to cull those people who had not really understood what it means to have an ASD.

The funny thing is, my behaviour was so blunt and lacking in ToM that it stood as a fine example of my ASD and my struggle to understand how others might perceive my behaviour. (I often operate as if people will automatically KNOW why i do something or say something and will fully understand!) And their behaviour towards what I had done was a pretty good example of how so many people fail to understand ASD people and why and how we may arrive at conclusions, behave and act.

It takes me weeks to work this stuff out.
I did work it out in a way that suited me, and as is often the case, that way did not accord with the majority view of the 12 step peers which is pretty much an encapsulated example of my life.

DISCLAIMER: there are however, some really wonderful 12 step people who have been very compassionate and understanding about my ASD and why I often am a little out of synch from the group, a little too opinionated and a little too odd. Those people have really helped me to see that I can make NO generalisations about what "NT's" are like, just as I can make NO generalisations regarding the generic nature of ASD people. As I get older, I learn that to so so is just artifice and illusion.

that is sooooooooooo true. It cracks me up. It doesn't apply to every NT but it seems like there are aspects of NT that they use facebook to NT it up to the nth power. I used to be on a political site that started going downhill with the advent of photobucket. I like the whole thing of a talking skinless mind meld, that is what the internet can be. And then on message boards I noticed with photo plastering the same social dynamics as IRL took hold. A hierarchy of appearance, bra size, borderlines running behind the scenes and really gumming up the works...then came social networking and that became the whole point, to continue online that 'real life' garbage. I had a facebook for a while and I got in touch with some old friends which was neat but other than that it grates on me. I used to live in a hippie town and all the light-energy-i-ching people were friend requesting me and then I realized they were all selling something and saw my face on someone elses page. And I felt like I had to have a front up and the whole point of the internet for me is to get to be yourself and talk about things you care about that maybe you can't in real life because no one is interested. I don't care what anyone looks like or what their 'facade' of their life is. And I sure don't go on the internet to continue some farce online that I am living in real life (I'm not, but if I were...ick). It's just icky. I like myspace but I don't have one right now...but I will again someday.

y'know....one thing I've come to realize about the world of socialization is that it's all a massive front; everyone wears "masks" if you will; they put their best faces forward when they go out, and the truth is you don't really know who they are cause they won't tell you.

OH sure, people always say "oh, I could tell this or that guy was such a phony"..but in most cases, even they can't, whether or not they admit it; it's why scams run so rampant in society...cause most people can't tell when they're absolutely positive they can. It's why people will even go out to clubs and places with friends, because they say it's "not safe" otherwise; well gee...if you can tell bad people so easily, how could it not be? Well gee whiz...maybe they can't.

People even ask me a lot "why do you deal with this or that person? He/she is such a loser", or whatever; I then find out that the very people who told me that are just as bad. They just do a way better job of covering it up.

Just remember this: everyone's got skeletons in their closets, and not everyone is as perfect as they make themselves out to be. Some people won't, but others will delude themselves, and make them out to be perfect.

Basically, when it comes down to it, most folks seem to have way, way, way more baggage than they're usually willing to admit. Now they're just announcing that baggage on Facebook.

On the plus side, I've pretty much all but stopped checking out my former classmates profiles; I don' know, it's weird...it's like I really just don't care anymore....something must've happened inside of me that helped me move on..and I have no idea what it was....

Like others, FB has helped me learn who my "real" friends are. I've been de-friended on several occasions so I have a much better idea of who my real friends are.

But I am 4 days into a deliberate effort to disengage from Facebook for a while. My wife doesn't use it anymore so perhaps she is onto something...

Nordic

Well, where it gets funny for me is, first off most of my co-workers added me which rules, cause they're awesome.

However, this year is my 10th Anniversary High School Reunion; I wasn't going to go anyway....but now that so many in my class have de-friended me, they've just given me even more fodder to work with as why not to go.

I mainly go there every day to play Mafia Wars, talk to fellow toygeeks, and read some stuff on Mattel's page, and that's about it. I also engage in discussion with co-workers.

OH yeah...and wish my family and friends Happy Birthday.

I prefer to use Deviantart, as it gives you at least one wider context to chat to someone. With facebook it's just generic social things.

I've started to increasingly use FB as an organisational/communication tool for my university groups, but I don't enjoy it. As I said, Deviantart is where its at.

I actually love Facebook, and I'm on there for about six hours every day. I find it very easy and fun to use, unlike MySpace for which I express the same concerns as the OP.

I dropped my MySpace account completely; I still have my business MySpace open..but only to keep us up in the Search Engines.

I still have a LinkedIn account, but I gotta go there more often...

I quite like facebook but I don't use all the applications and functions as I get way to overwhelmed. I use a few things on there like farm ville and read friends status updates and such and upload photos. I rarely look at other peoples actually profiles but I find it useful so I can talk to people I know but I can make it all go away with one click. I don't mind forums but can't use chatrooms and msn overwhelms me as well, especially if there is more than one other person in the conversation. I also find it really intrusive so even when I had it I rarely turned it on