Anyone Experience This Bizarre Form of Bullying?

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Pretending not to understand something so that you can wind people up is a very common form of bullying. It is also a reason why NTs get so angry at Aspies. They assume that you are doing this bullying to them since body language and what is an offensive thing to say are also common knowledge.

What really wound me up wasn't people acting dumb around me to get a rise out of me, but people acting dumb in order to be accepted in the "in" crowd. I first noticed this in fourth grade.

This one kid in my class claimed that his dad invented coca cola. Of course, since we were all ten, there was no reason not to believe him--except that my father, who is at least 15 years older than his father, grew up drinking coca cola (which was, of course, created in the 1880s), and he liked to tell stories about how it used to have cocaine in it. And of course, between my father, who had never given me a reason not to trust him (and still never has) and a classmate who was highly manipulative and never hid his distaste for my intrusion into his "herd," I had to believe my father. So I, always offended whenever someone was wrong about something, pointed out that my dad grew up drinking coke and that my dad was older, so he must have been mistaken.

Of course, my classmates didn't buy my logic, because it was far more interesting to be a follower of the kid whose dad invented coke than to be a friend of the rebel leader against him. Dumb sheep.

Actually, come to think of it, I think they just used name-calling to try to get a rise out of me. But it didn't work because I didn't know what a lesbian was until years later....

That reminds me in 6th grade when these girls used to ask me personal questions like about my period and I would answer them. They would walk off mad and I couldn't understand why. I thought it was because I was being nice to them and they maybe wanted me to be mean. But my school counselor told me when I was 15 or 14 that it was because I didn't get upset and they were trying to upset me. So funny how bullies get upset just because they thought their victim was bullying them.


Or are you saying that when we don't understand things NTs would normally understand, they think we're doing it on purpose? That explains it then so I pretend to understand stuff. I always thought they got upset because they were talking to a brick wall and couldn't get me to understand. Not because they thought I was playing dumb.

I remember in 6th grade, these girls decided to make up a singer and tell me about him. It was a sexual word but I didn't know that. I thought it was a real name so I decided to look him up and the teacher saw it and told me it was not appropriate. I told her I was looking up the singer because they kept telling me about him. The girls got caught and the one who started it all had to apologize to me about it and at home mom told me what the term meant.

Ive had this done to me before, not really with bullying but with friends messing with me but they didnt do it in a harmful way. They'd just like to mess with me because Id take them seriously when they'd be telling me absolute s**t. NT's find this entertaining that we take them so literally when there really just screwing with us. I know as an aspie, when I need to explain something, I cant drop it until Ive explained it. Even when people are all like, I get it, I still insist on explaining it even if its a bit ridiculous.

I'm saying the bolded part. If you say something that hurts somebody's feelings and you honestly didn't know it would hurt their feelings, they won't believe you didn't know. They will think you did it on purpose to bully them. Or if they are very sad and need comforting and express that non-verbally but you didn't pick up on it, they will think you deliberately ignored their feelings. These assumptions are false. But they will lead people to thinking you are doing the common form of "faking ignorance" bullying described in this thread. And they are really no different than the OP's assumption that everybody knows what pushpins are so anybody who claims not to is doing this passive bullying.

I'm pretty sure NT's actually are that dumb.

Ah I've been there, even online. I just think it's their problem if they accuse me or think that is what I am doing. I have finally figured when I ask a question to try and understand and they don't answer, they probably think I am playing dumb. But to me they are the rude ones for not even answering. Tell me or it didn't happen. So I think it's their problem, not mine and my mom has told me the same thing too.

My mom does that to me and it drives me nuts. You must start from the very beginning all over again explaining very simple things.

Wow, looks like this thread is getting a lot of responses (knock on wood). I now know that feigning stupidity was my classmates' way of bullying. I understood that a few years later. But back in 6th grade, I really believed that my classmates were stupid enough to not know what pushpins are, to mix up the "spring forward, fall back" rule, to not be aware of banking and finance, and to believe that Saturn's rings are made of plastic. What made it even more baffling is that my class was part of an accelerated learning program. After all, how could people in such a class be dumb enough not to know simple facts like those? The whole thing felt like wading through a sewage pond while wearing a tuxedo, planting roots for a mild but persistent misanthropic attitude that took me years to shake off.

I've read in a few threads about a technique some shrinks use. They ask a patient (I consider the term "client" to be a patronizing euphemism) to explain a topic he/she knows well, then feign complete ignorance, to test the reaction. This test is supposed to determine the level of empathy. So let's say the patient is a 12-year-old girl, and she chooses to talk about horses. Surely, a person with a Ph.D. in psychology would know at least a little bit about horses, even though he/she won't know the difference between a Thoroughbred and an Arabian. I have no idea what the shrinks were thinking when they came up with this test, because it's a form of bullying, plain and simple.

One time, a shrink testing me for ADD tried that with me, and I said: "isn't it unprofessional to for a psychologist to ask someone under their care for help?" (I got this from my own mind; I never even opened a legal advice book.) At that point, the look on her face showed that she knew that I wasn't going to fall for it. The result came out negative, although she said I had "immature emotional development", because I gave bad answers to her other tests. Oh well, I was only 12, so who cares. Back to the original topic.

yes, my mother does this to me all the time. she thinks it is hilarious how flustered and at a loss of words i become when she insists that common things are the opposite. i realize the next day she was messing with me and i feel stupid and laugh at myself.