Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
Hey Doc been enjoying your work and has helped out a lot but there is some ichies that remain unscathed. I’m high functioning autistic meaning I can actually take care of myself without assistance but it still comes with problems IE I’m what might normal people all “socially inept” and if I’m gonna be real I genuinely don’t trust or believe people because they might have ulterior motives.
Like I’m not gonna believe any straight white man who calls himself a feminist, an LGBT ally, pro BLM or even progressive because either A) he’s only doing it to get laid or B)had done something or said something in the past that they never atoned for and is trying to cover it up in a facade of being progressive. And similarly with women who have shown interest in me because they’re pulling a sick joke or trying to extort me. Because why would they approached me when there is more high quality men out there who are actually desirable with desirable careers, bigger bank accounts, better body types and best of all NOT AUTISTIC.
Like my reaction when someone tries to show interest in me is a very “Huh cool” and then mind my own business thinking I just dodged a landmine.
Could be because of toxic internet poisoned my brain into believing nobody is actually nice or good or wholesome because there is something always nefarious underneath (Skydoesminecraft, Mini Ladd, Austin Jones) and the people who are real and authentic are always sour, cynical, edgy and dripping irony because sure they maybe cold and rude but have nothing to hide. Because lies are pretty, nice and feel good while truth is always ugly, uncomfortable and unpleasant.
So what do I do shake off this feeling that no one is to be trusted? How can I trust again? How do I stop believing the worst about people?
Sincerely, Trust None, Question Everything
Well TNQE, I suspect that talking about the necessity of trust, the negativity bias or giving people a chance and whatnot is going to bounce off the armor of cynicism you’ve been wrapping yourself in, so how about this? I’m going to be incredibly blunt and to the point, even cynical and a bit mean, since that seems to work best for you. We even have a name for it around here: the Chair Leg Of Truth.
Ready? Cool, here goes:
Your issue isn’t that your autistic, nor that the truth is always ugly and unpleasant while lies are pretty. Your issue is that you’re being intellectually lazy while trying to disguise it by acting as though this edgelord attitude is somehow insightful and worldly. None of the things you’re going on about are the result of careful consideration and study, they are not the result of being a clear-eyed, objective observer of the world and the human condition and they’re certainly not the end product of years of education, research into human psychology or sociology or even so much as cracking an Intro To Psych 101 textbook. They’re you parroting things you’ve heard from shittier edgelords on 4chan, Reddit and TikTok by people who either don’t believe it themselves but want to appear “cool” because South Park told them that caring about anything is for cucks, or else who have fucked up their own lives by their own choices and need other people to buy into their beliefs so that they don’t have to confront that they’re in a situation of their own making.
Your own sign-off is even an example of this because if you truly questioned everything, one of the most important questions you would be asking is “am I wrong?”
Shit, Descartes got a handle on that shit when he realized that he couldn’t trust what he saw as “reality” was, in fact, real, because his own perception of it might be flawed. And that was before he even had LSD to blow open the doors of perception.
The idea that everyone has an agenda and nobody is honest is the sort of thing that sounds insightful coming from a character like Dr. House or Rick Sanchez and requires that you spend literally no time ever actually thinking or questioning it because it has all the intellectual rigor and honesty of an ad on Twitter promising to help you recoup your investment on the last crypto scam you fell for. If you were to look at any of this with an objective eye, the whole thing falls apart faster than a doublewide in a class 5 hurricane.
Let’s start with the obvious one: “they’re only doing X to get laid”. I would like you to stop for a moment and tell me, honestly, when in the history of ever has that actually succeeded? How, in specific detail, does pretending to believe that patriarchal traditions and standards harm everybody, and that women are people who deserve equal rights and treatment by society and the law, get somebody laid? What is the EXACT sequence that goes from “claims to be a supporter of racial justice” to “and that’s how I got into Sally’s pants” that doesn’t requires underpants gnome logic to elide that there is no middle step?
Take your time, but be aware that you’re going to have to actually back this up and “well obviously” or “everyone knows” or appeals to authority, begging the question, straw men and other intellectual fallacies that masquerade as “debate” on YouTube livestreams aren’t going to cut it here.
Now while we’re doing that, let’s consider the numbers of people who were protesting the extrajudicial murders of George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Andre Hill, Breonna Taylor, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Philondo Castille, Freddy Gay, Eric Garner, Michael Brown among many many others. Are you saying, with a straight face, that literally every single person who was out in the streets, who went to town halls and city council meetings, who lobbied municipal, county, state and federal lawmakers were all involved in a long con of reputational management in order to hide some nefarious mistake?
The same goes for everyone who’s been showing up for all the LGBTQ people who are currently under attack, everyone who’s been protesting, fund-raising, canvassing, volunteering, organizing and running for office to protect people’s right to reproductive health care, who have put their bodies on the line to protect the vulnerable when literal fascists are on the attack… these are all people who are in it for the clout or because there is a nebulous morass labeled “horny hippy women” who would fuck them for it?
OR is this simply a permission structure you’ve adopted in order to allow yourself to not even give a passing glance to things that might upset you or make you question your choices and decisions? Is it that the entire world is one big con, or is it that you’re using this as an excuse to narrow your options to nothing and thus excuse yourself from having to take responsibility, from having to question the validity of your own beliefs including the negative ones, and the fact that change and improvement is indeed possible, but only if you actually do the un-fun, unglamorous work of breaking old patterns, doing deep and honest examinations of your beliefs and behaviors and actually putting in the effort of generally being the best version of yourself, instead of writing all off with a glib reply that absolves you of ever having to think of any of this?
(Yes that was the world’s longest run-on sentence and I REGRET NOTHING.)
I know – and you know too, if you’re willing to, y’know, face that supposedly ugly truth – which it is. Know how I know? Because of this one capper of one sentence: “best of all NOT AUTISTIC.”
Now I single that out because the rest is the usual black-pill bullshit we hear over and over again from dudes on the Internet who somehow have managed to miss that fat people, skinny people, broke people, unemployed and underemployed people, old people and ugly people date, marry and fuck. A trip to Wal-Mart on any given Saturday in any small town will show you that.
But the capper of “best of all NOT AUTISTIC.” is telling us what the issue is. It’s that you’ve taken this label as your catch-all reason for why shit won’t work out for you because otherwise you’d have to face up to the fact that maybe some of those people you thought were tricking you were sincere.
Because hey, guess what? Autistic people date. Autistic people fuck. They have marry, they have kids, fight, break up, get back together, cheat and get cheated on, have one night stands they regret, one night stands they enjoy, fall in love with the wrong people, fall in love with the right people… the same as neurotypical folks. And – to forestall the straw man I see coming a mile away – it ain’t the ugly, the pitying, the desperate, the users or the scammers who are sleeping with, dating and marrying autistic people. They’re just people and people, shockingly enough, develop attractions and affection for folks that all the black-pill crowd would swear are cursed by God to never know the loving touch of another. Because, as it turns out, humans are really fucking complex, not meat robots that only respond with pre-programmed responses to specific stimuli and switches being flipped.
But it’s easier to just tap the sign that says “nothing matters, everyone lies, nobody will ever genuinely like me because I’m autistic” than it is to face the fact that finding love is a challenge for everyone, that it means doing things that scare you, risking getting hurt and having to put in a lot of work that isn’t guaranteed to pay off exactly the way you hope in the exact time frame you want it in. Much easier to tap the sign. And then when you have those long dark nights of the soul, when your defenses are down and the loneliness is especially sharp and pointed, it’s easier to tell yourself that its all bullshit – tapping the sign again – than to admit that maybe you should do something about all this. That there’s anything that can be done about this.
Tap tap. Tap tap. Sign says no.
Does being autistic make shit a challenge? Well of course it does. Nobody seriously says otherwise. We live in a society that doesn’t fully understand or accept that autistic people are people rather than broken things that need to be fixed, and some folks carry around shitty ideas about autistic people because of it – including other autistic people. Being part of the group doesn’t mean you don’t tacitly or explicitly carry around beliefs about that group. You will never find people who hate incels more than other incels, just as you will never find people with a lower opinion of men than Men’s Rights Advocates and masculinity grifters.
All of this is what Natalie Wynn calls “masochistic epistemology” – a form of circular reasoning that says “truth hurts, so if it hurts, it must be true”. It’s just psychic self-harm, a way of hurting yourself for the “crime” – in your case – of being neurodivergent, while also giving yourself permission to wallow without feeling the need to actually do anything about it. And beyond basic ‘not needing to explore any further than this’ permission structures, the entire reason why it’s easy to buy the “truth is ugly and painful” lie is because humans come with an inherent and well-documented bias towards negativity. Negative thoughts, experiences and memories have four times the impact of positive ones. This is entirely down to evolution, when recognizing danger and learning from negative experiences meant the difference between which proto-humanoids survived and which either got taken out by bears or shit themselves to death because they ate the wrong mushroom. Great for keeping us alive in the savannah, not so much for emotional happiness and stability. But like I said: our brains are designed to prioritize survival, not our emotional well-being.
And shit, even the “truth is inherently ugly” is demonstrably bullshit. Basic, verifiable truths aren’t automatically ugly, unless you want to come up with a tortured explanation of how Bernoulli’s Principle is ugly. And trust me if you’re about to try to pivot into some philosophical debate about the difference between “truth” and “fact”, then all that tells me is that you know exactly what I’m talking about, you just don’t want to accept it and will try to derail the discussion with minutiae instead.
Here’s a real truth: the people who pride themselves in “the ugly truth” or “brutal honesty” are never interested in the truth or honesty parts. They’re only interested in the “ugly” and “brutal” parts. There’s a reason why someone’s “brutal honesty” is always “you’re ugly and nobody likes you”, and never than “you’re an incredible person who’s accomplished great things and I’m envious of everything you’ve achieved and I wish I could be more like you”.
Here’s another truth: the only reason you think sour, cynical and edgy people are “real” is because of nihilistic shit like Rick and Morty and South Park saying so, when even those disagree with you. Shit, the episode of Rick and Morty that escaped containment into the mainstream was the one where Rick is read for filth and has every single fault, flaw and defense mechanism dragged out of him and laid bare for all to see that he is precisely as full of shit as everyone he accuses and mistreats.
Here is still another truth: yeah, you definitely have poisoned your brain by swimming in the constant reinforcement of negativity. Not because some of the “good” have revealed themselves to have feet of clay – welcome to the world, there will always be shitty people, wear a hat – but because you’ve been swimming in the constant sewage of folks who want to reinforce that worldview. Much as with the incels, the Red Pill communities, shit even most cults and MLMs, they need you to believe that there is no alternative, no chance of improvement, no chance of redemption or growth or change because otherwise a) they can’t benefit from your believing it and b) they have to accept actual hard-to-swallow truths that they’ve been pointedly avoiding.
Tap tap. Tap tap.
Oh and also I hate to tell you this but the “cynical, sour edgelord” isn’t any more honest than anyone else, nor do they have less to hide. If anything, they’re putting on even more of a performance. For some, it’s as simple as “revealing a lesser truth in order to hide the bigger lie” – relying on people believing that they’re putting all their shit out front so nobody goes looking any deeper. For others, its pure performance, trying to give the illusion of not giving a shit when in reality they hurt more deeply and are more panic-y, uncertain and lost than you would ever believe.
There will always be folks who will try to cover up the stench of their own rot with a pleasant façade. That has nothing to do with the beauty or ugliness of “truth” and everything to do with human nature not being like a cartoon where bad guys are easily spotted by the black hat they wear or the color of the lasers they shoot. This isn’t anything new or revelatory, it’s a tale that’s older than dirt. Take a thousand copper merchants and you’re gonna find an Ea-Nasir.
Now, how do you shake all of this? Well, as tempted as I am to be snarky, I’ll give you my standard first step for folks in your situation: go outside and touch fucking grass. That is: get the fuck off the Internet, shut down your 4chan and Reddit accounts, wipe your YouTube, Twitch and TikTok accounts to nothing and start interacting with people in the flesh because the Internet has poisoned your brain and you need the social equivalent of activated charcoal to bind up the toxins and flush them out of your system. The sooner you step away from the reinforcement vector that is every social media algorithm, the faster the detox will begin.
But the next step is to do what you claim to and start questioning these beliefs of yours instead of just accepting them because it’s easier and lines up with what you want to believe. Specifically, you have to stop blindly accepting the position of masochistic epistemology and ask whether the positive sides are accurate and to ask yourself why that might be, despite what you believe. Particularly when it involves you, and when it involves you as an autistic person and the possibility that people might actually like you if you don’t just shut them out.
Which is actually the third step: for the same of intellectual rigor – which I know you want – you need to spend time believing the opposite of what you’ve been telling yourself: that people aren’t inherently trying to scam you, that people aren’t just lying or trying to take advantage of you and that you aren’t shit out of luck because you’re neurodivergent. This doesn’t mean that you give up all pretense of discernment or act like the bastard love child of Pollyanna, Elmo and Dr. Pangloss. What it does mean is that you start from a place of “people are basically good” / “people already like me and accept me”, instead. Because right now, I can guarantee you: the main reason you’re going to run into shitty people is because you’re radiating negativity like a passive-aggressive reactor in Pripyat. What people respond to isn’t cynicism and bitterness, it’s warmth and friendliness. Sherlock is moderately entertaining to watch on TV but would be fucking miserable to deal with in reality – in any incarnation.
And the last thing is that you let go of the bullshit you’ve taken on board about being autistic and how that means people won’t like you and start liking yourself. Not despite being autistic, mind you; that’s just a continuation of the negative ideas about autism and autistic people. You want to like yourself in general, including the fact that you’re autistic, even because of it. Treating this part of who you are as not just a detail but a positive is important. It changes your relationship with others in no small part because it changes your relationship with yourself.
That part’s gonna be hard, so if you want to prove you’re not intellectually lazy, I’m going to expect you to put some real effort into it. If you believed in Santa Claus for years, you can start believing in yourself. When you don’t see yourself as likable or lovable, most people are going to just go ahead and agree with you instead of trying to talk you out of it. It’s just not worth their time for someone to try to express interest in you if you’re just going to scream “LIAR!” in their face.
So if you want to stop believing in the worst of others? Stop believing in the worst about yourself and start recognizing that maybe you’re worth a damn. Work outwards from there and life will get a hell of a lot better for you and the people you hope to bring into it.
Good luck.