Life with Aspergers

Following some recent issues with an  adult-aged autistic , I wanted to talk a little about social media and autism. Social media can be a great thing for autistic adults. It will enable them to contact others with, in most cases, fewer risks than real-life interactions. It can give them a chance to connect with others on the spectrum and/or with similar interests, and a chance to be heard. Unfortunately, social media has a dark side too.  Social Media can help people follow their special interests Social Media is Pervasive I've heard from a lot of parents that they don't allow their kids onto social media. This works very well when they are children and when you have total control over their devices. It didn't work for my kids because they were far too tech savvy and could find a way to connect with any kind of device and could get through any firewall security we put in place. Unfortunately, children grow into adults - and social media is everywhere. If your child has a n...

In my last post , I looked at some of the more "female" behaviours in memes and how they describe people on the autism spectrum in relationships.  This time I want to look at primarily male behaviours. Of course, these aren't really gender restricted behaviours and depending upon the type of relationship you're in, they could be either male or female. This is a long post, so I'm jumping in without further preamble. If you want more background, refer to the  previous post . White Male Privilege I could be mistaken but it feels like feminism is stronger online today than it ever was in the past. This is not a bad thing as women's rights still have a long way to go. Unfortunately not all men are the enemy but feminism can make men feel as if comments are directed specifically at them. This is especially true if you're a white male. It triggers a lot of bad feelings but the worst thing you can possibly do is to try to put your two cents in and d...

The internet is full of amusing sites like Ebaum's World  and Cheezeburger where memes rule and people surface almost any content on the internet in the most disturbing ways.  Just as the culture of the internet flows through the comments on more serious sites like Reddit, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, it flows through the meme sites too -- only with far less censorship. Don't get me wrong, many of these posts are terribly funny but most are not politically correct and some seem to showcase the darker side of human nature.  One thing that I have noticed is that there are a lot of "cringeworthy" posts which show some very disturbing trends towards dating -- on both the male and female sides. Why is this an autism problem? While the behaviours I want to discuss are not in any way restricted to autism, some of the memes and comments seem to echo sentiments I've heard all too frequently in the autism and Asperger's communities. People with autism o...