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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • I was living pretty much entirely anger-free until 2 things happened:

    • I started working at my job, where I was hired for my expertise and yet I am frequently interrupted mid-sentence, disrespected, or told to do things in ways that defy the foundations of my entire discipline (before anyone tells me to quit, I can’t, because of immigration-related reasons)
    • One of my friends has fallen down the alt-right/X/Musk fanboyism pipeline and just about everything he rants is uninformed, reactionary, and rage-inducing. He spends too much of his time being angry about problems that don’t exist and spreads that anger everywhere

    Saying that, I am autistic and often struggle to distinguish between anger, frustration, feeling hurt, and even sadness. I can isolate depression as a feeling fairly reliably though, because that is more numb and less passionate.



  • You already know this, but I’ll reiterate it in case it helps you get over whatever guilt you might be feeling about it: you can’t. If you have already offered them a non-judgemental space to vent and have expressed that you’re there for them, then you have already done more than any friend should be expected to.

    You say “it doesn’t rest in [your] hands alone”; it doesn’t rest in your hands at all! Your desire to save your friend is very admirable but it also sounds like it could be self-sabotaging to some extent.

    “Rehab doesn’t work” is a blanket and not entirely true statement. There are a million different pathways to recovery; not every programme works for every person. Maybe try to explain this to them.

    Beyond that, the best thing you can do for them right now is to disengage and remain distant. You don’t deserve to have their pains inflicted on you too.

    P.S. I am speaking as a recovering addict. One of the things my recovery has taught me is how much of a burden being an addict is to other people. The thought of a relapse hurting my friends disturbs me. Your friend might resent you for turning them away, but when they do start recovery, they will not only understand why; they’ll appreciate it too.




  • Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.

    There just aren’t better proper adjectives for these 2 countries.

    While you can say ‘North American’ to mean anyone from North America and not specifically the US, I’m not sure there’s a fitting word that refers to anyone from North or South America. Although, at that point, the group of people you are talking about is perhaps too broad to be useful in most cases.



  • I am autistic, and honestly OP, I feel very similar. But based on the comments, I’m starting to think that we’re both narcissists haha

    I have this particular issue with a house mate who is self-obsessed and wants to do nothing but brag about his charisma and intelligence to anyone who dares come downstairs for a split second. He’ll go on for hours, and re-tell everything if someone else comes in. He kind of caricature-ises this whole experience for me. He has trapped me in a convo for so long that I’ve had evening plans ruined, even after telling him multiple times that I’ve got to go. No point pretending with him, you literally have to just ignore his existence and leave. Grim.

    With friends and family? It depends.

    For friends, I care if they’re very close (1 of a handful of people), not because of the topic itself. What I’m really listening out for is how they have been affected by the experience.

    For more distant friends, acquaintances, colleagues… generally no.



  • I also have ASD and I actually have the complete opposite view! I don’t like it when people text me expecting me to reply instantly, because I don’t feel like text conversations have a well-defined start and end. That bothers me in a “unfinished business” way. As in, if I respond immediately, and then they respond immediately, and so on and so forth, when does it end? Nobody really says goodbye in instant messaging anymore. I appreciate people who understand that I’m going to take my sweet time to respond, especially because I don’t use my smartphone often anyway (as it’s very distracting and can be a huge time sink for me).

    I like to let all my friends know that if something is important or they want an imminent response, they should just call me instead. That way I don’t have that feeling that “the ball is in my court” after the call ends, i.e. that I need to check my phone and respond to something before someone arbitrarily decides it’s been too long and gets upset with me.

    I am a “zillennial” (born in the late 90s), and one of the things I miss about the early days of the internet with stuff like MSN is the focus on statuses (online, busy, offline) and how accurate they were. If someone were marked as online, you knew they were on the computer at that very moment and it’s not just whatever status they had set on their smartphone or whatever.


  • If I’m completely honest, after reading both your account and theirs, I don’t really understand why you’re this hung up about it.

    It’s almost like you care more about credit than a port that actually works. I know you weren’t done/that it was a WIP, and they told you to wait, but at the end of the day it’s open software, and literally anyone could have beaten you to it.

    I don’t think you’re wrong to feel that your efforts should have been represented more, but I honestly would have backed off like 10% through that conversation and just started working on something else. It’s not worth it man. I hope you can feel better about this whole situation soon.