I joined Facebook in order to promote my tutoring business. I soon got drawn into its nonsense, but couldn’t exit owing to having made connections I didn’t want to lose. But my ten years on FB has been a trial and a torture, exposing me to people who are irritating, annoying, dull, predictable, mediocre, and often abusive. To survive, I have to observe this wretched landscape in the manner of an anthropologist.
I’ve learned quite a lot about people, most especially the nice, kind, andcaring people, the people who claim to be lovers of all humanity – they talk well in the abstract, which requires little or nothing of them, but can be downright cruel and abusive in the particular. They love humanity in the abstract, just draw the line at humans in the particular. It’s an ugly world which is best to enter without illusion. I don’t take people in their own estimation. People always present a self-image which is socially pleasing and appealing, soliciting populaity and commonality. Members of the awkward squad, the real truth-tellers, are rarely popular.
Onesignificant difference I have noticed between the neurotypical and the autistic is that NTs spend an inordinate amount of time reminding themselves and others to “become what you are,” “live life to the fullest,” and “do what you love,” a repeated and shrill insistence that makes it plain that that is precisely what they don’t do. Autistic people don’t need to be told to do what they love – they do this every day, innately and instinctively, without the need for grand statements. It comes as naturally as breathing, and is often connected to what are called ‘special interests.’
