Herein you'll find a list of behaviors I don't understand, which feel like sandpaper on my brain every time I encounter them. These may not be limited to, but seem very common among, allistic (non-autistic) populations.
Not that you owe me anything, obviously. Feel free to disregard any or all of this as the ravings of a lunatic. But if you're curious, below you'll find some head-scratching behavioral anomalies you (if you're allistic) may not be self aware about, which are seemingly accepted as normal & sensible by an overwhelmingly allistic public.
Arguably this makes me the problem as these are largely complaints about incompatibilities between my own behavior/thought patterns, and a majority which greatly outnumbers ASD people for whom none of these cause any meaningful friction.
Some of these issues are also likely not even specific to allistic people, so this list is by no means objective or definitive. It's just how things appear to me, allowing that my perception is flawed, erring on the side of exhaustive (maybe excessive) inclusion:
Get mad at what you think I might be thinking
Ask question, constantly interrupt during answer (is conversation turn based or not? Do you want the information you JUST requested or don't you?)
The expectation that I will not only tolerate item 2, but repeat myself as many times as needed to compensate while concealing frustration (see item 10)
Want a description of what I'm gonna show you before I show you, defeating the purpose
Bucket errors, all the time, all subjects
Not conscious of your values hierarchy, that others have their own, that they may order priorities differently for reasons other than being evil
Allergic to E-Prime
Impatiently attempt to autocomplete my sentences, but incorrectly due to your theory of mind being trained on allistic thought/speech patterns (which has never failed you before, probably a baffling and frustrating experience for you too)
"Tip of the Iceberg": Assuming there’s more to what I'm feeling than what I've said, assuming you know what the unsaid portion is, and responding to me as if that’s what I said (an intrusive and presumptuous overstep)
The expectation that I conceal outward indications of my feelings, not just refrain from saying anything hurtful (the only one of the two I have control over)
“I mean you no harm” interpreted to mean the opposite (???)
Not noticing qualifiers in a sentence which drastically change its meaning
Are you mad? “I’m not mad” Oh, we’re cool now right? “No we’re not” (???)
Predictive listening: hear what you expect me to say instead of what I say due to item 12 and insufficiently granular parsing (Listening for commonly used phrases rather than parsing word by word, where sentences are equations within which qualifiers obey order of operations)
Performative extremism to allay suspicion of belonging to opposite extreme, leveraging this phenomenon deliberately to pressure people left or rightward
“Don’t point, use your words” So I use my words. Nobody understands until I point (???)
Saying "What?" without specifying whether you A. Didn't hear me clearly, B. Didn't know one of the words, C. Some portion is conceptually unclear, etc.
"Is this a safe person" test: Mild jabs to see if I retaliate. Must I be a doormat?
Submission tests: Making ultimatums you don’t really care about, withdrawing them if I assent, just to make sure I will give in
Reviewing someone's creative output not honestly, but positively if you like them as a person, and negatively if you dislike them and wish to diminish their self esteem
Investigating others by throwing out accusations to see which ones they defend against rather than simply asking
Emotional parsing of sentences to mean something other than what was expressed, i.e. “Morality is irrelevant when discerning truth” is heard as “morality is irrelevant”. Or someone pestering for up to date information when that takes time and energy to provide and they don’t need to be kept in the loop because they don’t perform any part of the process. So you tell them this, and they somehow hear “You don’t matter to me”, instead of “You matter to me, but right now I'm occupied with a task that you’re taking my focus away from, so that you can feel included”.
Asking what I'm referring to by "it" when the word it always refers to the subject of the prior sentence
Reacting to free grammatical or factual correction with hostility when one-on-one education is normally very expensive. I’m always grateful for more accurate information
Women asking whether a garment makes them appear overweight or whether you think their friend is attractive constitutes a variation on items 1 & 9 imo, also sometimes 21 or 22. Reading into what was not said spans items 1 and 6, something they do quite a lot, for some reason tantalized by the prospect of forcibly extracting secrets by linguistic hacking
Being performatively shocked when I say “I don’t know”, asking in a dramatic voice “But I thought you knew everything!” when I’ve never said such a thing and it’s unclear how that impression came about. Related: Acting like I talk forever when I have timed my sentences and they average 3-5 seconds. Am I unpleasant to listen to? Why not tell me that and advise specific changes?
Justificatory assumption of symmetry: “It’s ok to be privately awful in this way, as if I am, probably everyone else is too and they hide it like me” Sometimes also phrased as "every accusation a confession". A subset of this is the common inability to conceive of or believe in unselfish motives, not that cynicism isn’t often warranted in the world as it is today
Assuming absolutely awful things about me without pointing to any prior behavioral patterns to support it, revealing something of how you inwardly think of me but not why (Possibly because of item 27?)
Lie about me either to put me on the defensive or for the reason described in item 21, be shocked and offended when I lie about you as if it's a strat reserved for your exclusive use (negative reciprocity)
Enduring persistent irritation I'm unaware of & don't intend, giving no outward indication of mounting anger, smiling and calmly insisting "it's fine" right up until you explode, seemingly (to me) out of nowhere. Clearly it wasn't fine, and had you been frank with me sooner it need never have reached that point.
If you ask "What's taking so long" to which I reply "I'm trying/still working on it", that's not an invitation to reach into my personal space, snatch what I'm struggling with out of my hands, and attempt to finish it for me. That is extraordinarily invasive and infantilizing.
Starting sentences in the middle of incomplete sentences you never finish is very disorienting & hard to follow
If I have said something you find funny in a way which deprecates me, please do not call a friend/coworker over, then tell me to repeat what I said. I am not an organ grinders monkey. I have human dignity and can, sometimes, tell when I am being ridiculed.
Trust me, I’m well aware autism isn't an excuse for wrongdoing. This has been drilled into me because it's the first thing out of any allistic person's mouth upon learning I'm autistic, as if that's the only reason I might disclose it. But think about the circumstances. If you ask why I'm squinting indoors and I explain the relationship between ASD and light sensitivity, what wrongdoing am I making an excuse for? If it's a misunderstanding credibly attributable to my lack of a theory of mind, is it really impossible autism was a factor? That's not to say you can't be mad, how would I stop you? I only ask that your anger be informed. But, what does it tell me about the way you subconsciously regard autistic people that your first and strongest reflex upon any mention of autism is to warn us not to take advantage of empathy you seemingly lack anyway? And please don't whip out your phone to show me people pretending to be autistic on TikTok. I don't know them. I didn't tell them to do that. Cherry picked outrage bait isn't a good reason to treat me as inherently suspect.
If you assume wrongly about me (for example, regarding me as a probable danger because my “vibes are off”), it isn't my fault for failing to nonverbally signal to you in a way which would've helped you assume correctly. I can't do that, I would need to have internally modeled how I appear to you in order to anticipate the assumption. But, you can avoid assuming, and simply ask me things.
If you have explanations for any of these which you feel I've not considered, I'm very curious to read them. Let me know in the comments. I'm also receptive to communication strategies which may ameliorate these problems such as condensing operative words near the beginnings of sentences so that interruptions are less likely to result in critical misunderstanding.
