How To Spot Someone With Asperger's
A man’s philosophy is often times just an excuse for their personality.
For the longest time, I used to run into a certain problem: Unintentionally offending someone with a rather innocuous statement, sending them into a rude diatribe, as if I had just slapped their mother.
These are people who I would otherwise consider to be a smart and well-mannered, if not at least a little bit gruff people. The conversations were normal. Affable. And low stakes. Then a dramatic outburst would occur and like an obscure math problem that refused to be solved, I just couldn’t understand why they went off like that.
Was it something I said? Was there some larger context here I was missing? Where did it all go wrong?
Misunderstandings are common over text, but these reactions would rapidly spiral out of control, as if I had touched some raw, painful and sensitive nerve. One moment we’d be talking about enchiladas (and the best kind of cheese to use), the next they’d be enforcing some previously unknown, taboo boundary I didn’t realize I had been violating (much to their annoyance). Apparently there are just some kinds of cheeses you don’t bring up in a discussion.1
So. I decided to spend some time reflecting on what was happening and with all the humility of a Buddhist monk, I realized it wasn’t me. It was them.
Naturally then I started collecting my observations and writing them down, just to see if any patterns would appear. Not just with the way they treated me, but the way they treated others.
And sure enough a few patterns did appear. Turns out people who are on the spectrum sometimes behave in predicable ways. And they often share the same reactions to certain situations that (once you’re familiar with) are easily recognizable.
To be clear, this is a highly unscientific, largely anecdotal set of observations. What follows here won’t apply to most people and for the few that it does, there are bound to be exceptions. I am not a doctor and this is not a diagnostic test. Consider me the world’s most unscientific anthropologist, casually making observations of human nature I’m not qualified to make. For all we know I could be the autistic one and just misunderstanding the minutiae of basic social etiquette (although I very much doubt it).
It’s also possible if you catalogue enough traits and characteristics, just about anyone will fall under a cluster of them, making them largely useless. So I tried to keep the observations narrow, to eliminate as many people as possible and give examples when relevant to better illustrate the point.
So let me know if any of these observations match your experiences online (or whether it matches anybody you may know).
It may help you the next time you unexpectedly offend someone online. They might just be on the spectrum.2
Obsessed with certain topics/ideas for years, arbitrarily bringing them up in conversation
Everybody has a muse, an obsession that haunts their lives, but this is slightly different. Imagine being obsessed with the color of a Rubik’s cube for 6 years and (this is the key part) constantly bringing it up as if you had just made this wonderous discovery yesterday.
It is this assumption that everybody else will also have the same level of passion for these topics that’s the distinguishing feature here, a blissful ignorance of how most people won’t care, and the level of repetition.
There’s also sometimes an element of arbitrariness. The particular interest doesn’t actually seem that interesting.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course. The Internet now collects the niche, dedicated, and passionate hobbyists.
But once you see it, it’s hard not to notice, because it sticks out like a ripple on a calm lake.
“Man Jason sure enjoys talking about the gold standard huh…It’s been what? Four months now.”
Says what you’re not supposed to out loud (social faux pas). Can come off as being extremely rude.
Imagine an older woman, possibly in her late 30s, working a job that relies on beauty (say a modeling job for a sports organization).
The man with Asperger’s would remark (without an ounce of awareness), “You’re getting too old for that.” as he notices the small wrinkles now creasing her face, a practical observation that would be obvious even to a child.
The audience would naturally crucify him.
The Asperger’s man (not immediately understanding why they’re angry) would wonder why everybody is yelling at him now. He is right after all.
It’s much better to hire people overseas because you can pay them less money and save on business costs. I only have to pay my Filipino employees $6.25 an hour. Highly recommend.
Doesn’t get certain jokes (especially teasing/sarcasm online). Interprets what you say literally.
I don’t mean to say that people on the spectrum don’t understand humor or can’t be funny. In fact there are some people who aren’t on the spectrum who don’t seem to have a sense of humor at all.
Obviously people on the spectrum can understand jokes. They can even make jokes. Crazy, I know. But it does seem like they often take what’s said literally more often than one would expect. Especially when there’s a lot of context clues missing, like chatting over text. Teasing especially seems to be a difficult concept to spot, unless it’s very obvious.
And again, it isn’t that people on the spectrum can’t be playful, funny, or witty. Not at all. If I had to think of an analogy, it’s like colorblindness. There’s just a little more difficulty spotting the reds and the greens in the blur of online conversation.
And because of the constant misunderstandings, the reactions to non-obvious jokes can sometimes fall into two camps: Complete sincerity to what you just said or utter irritation.
“Why would you jump off a cliff? That’s stupid. The height alone would kill you or at the very least, fracture your femur.”
“How would you make a mountain out of a mole hill? Explain it to me. There’s not enough dirt in the hill to create a mountain.”
Doesn’t understand the implication unless there’s a logical path they can follow. Very formal in their thinking structure.
People with Asperger’s often have to make educated leaps to get what most people would otherwise intuitively understand.
It’s why conversations can sometimes go off in seemingly random directions when you’re talking to someone like that.
Turns out there’s a lot of subtext and assumptions we make when communicating especially over text. Most times we don’t notice because it’s so effortless, but someone blind to subtext has to do a lot of work just to understand what you’re talking about.
“Man, I want to know whose bright idea it was to put pineapple on pizza. It’s so gross.”
“I can explain. In 1942, the German Luftwaffe commanders needed a way to store high calorie dense foods for their fighter pilots for their long reconnaissance missions. Given the logistical complexity of storing food, shipping it, and lack of accessible preservatives (such as salt and ice due to the prolonged war effort), bread, tomato sauce, and pineapple became de facto standard for the air forces, owing to the superior preservative capabilities induced by the enzymes found in pineapple and caloric density of bread with tomato sauce. This greatly increased the intelligence gathering capabilities of the Abwehr (the German military-intelligence division) and with it, they were able to inflict massive casualties amongst the Allied forces. In total, historians estimate over 6,000 Allied soldiers died every week alone because of the intelligence gathered by Germany’s improved logistical capabilities.”3
“…what?”
Occasionally (but not always) easy to piss off/irritate online (it doesn’t take much).
You’re might be walking on eggshells around them, because they’re so prone to misunderstanding. You’ll often find their emotional dial goes from 0 to 100 and back down to 0, all within a few minutes and even with lifelong friends. They don’t find this strange.
You’d be like that too if it felt like everyone was always fucking with you.
“Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he was egg-cited, haha.”
“Your humor is so primitive and coarse, I prefer genuine bullshitters. They can be funnier. Really.”
Has trouble maintaining relationships without constantly blowing them up or fracturing them.
No man is a saint. In fact you could ask everyone to look back at their life and there you’ll find a moment of regret, something that should not have been said or done.
But people with Asperger’s seem to have a penchant for fracturing relationships or even minor relationships every couple of weeks. There’s rarely ever neutral territory. You’re either a team player or an enemy. They have a very either or mentality.
It isn’t even necessarily mean-spirited. Sometimes they’re just telling the truth, because there’s no filter, no norm they’re trying to avoid violating.
How would your relationships fare if you always said what you thought out loud?
Relationships are also very temporal. They make deep and impactful relationships just as quickly as they lose them. Just because you’ve been a lifelong friend doesn’t mean you’ll stay there for long. And just because you’re an enemy doesn’t mean you can’t become a friend overnight if the circumstances align again. They’re very fluid that way; always seemingly changing sides.
You can find them on the weekends engaged in some online battle trying to right some perceived great injustice.
Elon Musk.
A strange, almost misguided sense of self-importance (everyone else has the same misguided sense of self importance—they’re just savvy enough to hide it).
If you were to tear apart the many layers of the human subconscious, like skin on an onion until nothing was left but the ego, you’d find a creature that calls itself God.
People on the spectrum don’t seem to have as many layers.
You just see the creature.
I built this industry. I am objectively a great man. No one has had more impact than me. Why am I never wrong about these things?
Doesn’t seem empathetic enough. Occasionally seems like a very selfish person.
Everyone lives in their own world. Our wants, desires, worries, fears take precedence over everything else.
But there are times when we become aware enough to know that a brief show of empathy would suit the situation well (as Machiavellian as that sounds).
We learned this awareness through shame and socialization. Norms we picked up that make us feel bad and make us adjust our behavior.
Not so much for the Asperger’s man.
How would you behave if you rarely felt shame? Or didn’t feel it as often? You’d probably get a lot more done, at a cost.
Personally feels insulted when you change the conversation to something other than themselves
This one is an oddity, because everybody is always trying to shift the conversation to what’s important in their lives, but usually people are savvy enough to know when to do it. And we don’t necessarily get annoyed when it doesn’t go our way. That’s the give and take of conversation. Sometimes you give a little slack to get a little bit in return.
But people on the spectrum don’t always seem to be aware of this negotiation. They have a different expectation. The expectation is you’re going to talk about what they want to talk about and if you don’t, well, that’s rather rude of you. Literally. It is rude of you to change the topic to something other than what they want to talk about. How dare you.
“No, we’re not talking about strawberry jam Derrick. The topic is blueberry jam. Get it together. They’re not even remotely similar.”
Has great insights other people miss because they’re not susceptible to the same belief systems that infect our thinking
They seem like unrepentant assholes.
Conversations, when done well, have an ebb and flow to them. Listener and speaker. Like tossing a ball at someone and expecting them to throw it back.
You don’t expect them to walk off with the ball and curiously stare at it.
Doesn’t mean they’re an asshole. Maybe they’re just playing a different game.
Gets extremely irritated at rules that aren’t logically consistent (they can’t ignore it)
If you notice, irritation is becoming a bit of a theme here.
Imagine for a moment you spent a few hours building a moderately tall house of cards. You’ve had a few close calls, but overall, you made it to the end without any calamities.
You turn around to get your phone and take a picture, savoring the rich moment and silence all the doubters who said it couldn’t be done, when all of a sudden your dog tackles the house of cards, hitting a wall and inexplicably urinating out of fear.
Now if we were to pause this lovely moment and examine your emotional reaction, we might find an emotion called “Anger”. Or “frustration”.
Why?
Well, you expected one thing and you got another.
Your expectations were violated. You did not make the progress you hoped to make.
Now imagine your subconscious was trying to understand the world, its frenetic rules and odd trappings by constantly building these “house of cards.” You’re an alien creature in a world that everyone else seems to get and every once in a while, someone does something that doesn’t make sense. They knock over the house of cards.
It doesn’t fit.
Naturally, you’d feel some irritation.
Will effortlessly hold obsessive grudges (which are often framed as moral crusades) sometimes for years.
Most humans are rather spiteful in the sense that we will not forget a wrong committed to us, even if it was a slight one. Small inequities can color our lives rather intensely. Just talk to any family member who’s ever had a falling out with a close relative over money, a throwaway insult, or the way a gift was wrapped many years ago. There’s no end to our malice and spite. Sometimes justified. Sometimes not.
But people with Asperger’s seem to often take it a step further though and frame their obsessive grudges as something more, as if it were a great moral crusade. Nearly everything in their lives is framed as such. And that may be partly because many people with Asperger’s seem to have strong moral or normative values. Anything that violates that is seen through that lens; namely as an unjust violation. The result being this endless strife against a world that perpetuates great injustices.
(And who’s to say they aren’t right in this respect?)
Can take a bunch of seemingly random facts and connect them in a logically coherent way.
I’m not sure how they’re able to do this.
Maybe the patterns are obvious, but certain norms, biases, and socializations prevent the rest of us from connecting the dots in a meaningful way.
You’ll notice people like this immediately, because they’ll constantly give you a stream of ideas you’ve never considered before, despite hearing certain variations of them over and over again.
That’s also a strong sign of an independent thinker: Someone who thinks for themselves will have a combination of opinions you’ve never seen before.
Occasionally much better at a specific skill than everybody else, to the point where it seems almost impossible to do.
This a combination of deep obsession and following your particular interests for a long period of time.
Naturally, they’ll carve out a niche few others have taken.
It’s why people who create new things always seem like someone fundamentally new themselves. One of a kind.
Has their own specialized set of social norms they follow obsessively
They live their lives with a strict moral code, that’s partly arbitrary, partly a consequence of their own personality.
Not surprisingly, a lot of people they admire tend to be very honorable people. Or people who devote themselves to a strict code.
Like the mafia, samurai, or the Plains Indians in North America.
This is a hypothetical scenario that never happened. But it totally could have.
This cracks me up every time I read it. It’s like the punchline to a terrible comedy joke. As if the only time people get offended is when they’re too autistic to understand what you’re saying. What an absolutely terrible thing to say. It’s so fucking funny. This whole essay was worth it for that sentence alone.
I made this story up, but I’d like to think it could’ve happened. Putting pineapple on pizza is something Nazi Germany would definitely think of doing. Luckily my readers are of a more civilized nature.