Fucking Insults, How do they Work?

[Shrapnel]

I know this isn't particularly rampant on the Den as it is elsewhere in the internet, but it's something I've been wondering about for a while:

Why is it that being called autistic or an "Aspy", on the internet in particular, is considered an insult? Autistic individuals aren't actually stupid by any means, nor are people with Aspergers. I should know since I actually have Aspergers, and, aside from having severe difficulty with social skills and situations, there is really nothing about having it that would be insulting or demeaning. What's supposed to be so bad about it?

Now, if you said someone had Downs Syndrome, or some other form of mental retardation that actually does impair mental functions, then yeah, I could see that being insulting. But saying someone has "undiagnosed Autism" is just... stupid.

[Ed]

The insult is used to describe someone without social skills. So you just answered your own question.

[Ancient History]

It's because we can't say people are retarded.

Seriously, that's the whole thing. People don't want you to throw around a disability condition (mental retardation) as a perjorative. Because someone with Downs Syndrome can still be a nice person and a decent human being.

But the rest of the internet still wants to call people out as being incompetent shitbags, and the term of the decade is Asperger's, an actual condition where people have difficulty interacting with others socially, or Autism where people still think of fucking Rain Man. They want to be very clear that there is something profoundly wrong and different about the people they want to insult, and that's what they've come up with.

So really, it's insultors being a) misinformed, b) lazy, c) half-assed politically correct, and d) mean.

[RobbyPants]

PR used to say that a lot here. He would do so any time he felt that posters were being too logical, calculating, or robotic. One time I remember him doing it in particular was in Prak's thread about wondering why people make a big deal out of the 10-year anniversary of 9/11.

Also, PR was a bit of a troll, so he tended to overuse it just cuz.

[Shrapnel]

But the rest of the internet still wants to call people out as being incompetent shitbags, and the term of the decade is Asperger's, an actual condition where people have difficulty interacting with others socially, or Autism where people still think of fucking Rain Man. They want to be very clear that there is something profoundly wrong and different about the people they want to insult, and that's what they've come up with.

So really, it's insultors being a) misinformed, b) lazy, c) half-assed politically correct, and d) mean.

But why not just call them incompetent shitbags, or say that they should be ashamed to be alive, and that they're a worthless waste of resources and a terrible burden on the rest of humanity? Or call them gay or something. There's far better ways to mean and insulting. It just makes the insultor come off as a jackass whose stupidity is the result of the faulty genetics of their parents.

[Stahlseele]

because mods will usually ban people for outright telling other people that they are incompetent shitbags, but not for questioning wether or not they are suffering from some disability that makes them act like an incompetent shitbag . .

[Ed]

But the rest of the internet still wants to call people out as being incompetent shitbags, and the term of the decade is Asperger's, an actual condition where people have difficulty interacting with others socially, or Autism where people still think of fucking Rain Man. They want to be very clear that there is something profoundly wrong and different about the people they want to insult, and that's what they've come up with.

Good call. But, to be minorly fair-ish, it usually seems to be more of a rip on the "self-diagnosed Asperger's" trend.

[Ancient History]

I blame House. People have gotten it into their heads that if they can label a behavior as being part of an inherent condition, then they're not responsible for it and then they're off the hook of even trying to and everyone else has to just accept it as they act however the fuck they want.

[Maxus]

I'm an honest-to-god diagnosed Aspie. It's ben...twelve or so years. No one had heard of it back then.

It's not a get-out-of-self-improvement-free. I fight it. I've gotten a lot better in the past 10 years, and I still slip up every now and then, but most people think I'm normal. Geeky, but normal

[Shrapnel]

Much the same here: I was diagnosed at a young age, it was still a new thing; I've worked, hard, to overcome most of the challenges, and for the most part succeeded and most people think I'm a normal yet eccentric nerd/geek.

Which is why calling someone is an Aspy or is Autistic to put them down irks me: There's really nothing about either that makes it a put down, and trivializes the disability and those who have it.

Those who use it as an insult are inferior, pathetic human beings who like to think they're better than others by slinging around terms that they don't understand to elevate themselves above those around them, and have absolutely no comprehension that they are a complete waste of carbon and lead worthless lives that are, ultimately, of no consequence to anyone anywhere.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Specific insults snag the imagination more than generic ones. That's why people don't just use endless iterations of jerk, stupid, blowhard, and sponge.

[Parthenon]

to call people out as being incompetent shitbags

But why not just call them incompetent shitbags, or say that they should be ashamed to be alive, and that they're a worthless waste of resources and a terrible burden on the rest of humanity? Or call them gay or something.

Yeah, that's a really good idea. [/sarcasm]

There's a difference between someone who can't instinctively tell facial expressions apart and needs to teach themselves how to make appropriate reactions, and someone who is a lazy arrogant shit who can't be bothered to socialise. However, some of both people call themselves autistic.

You see, my first reaction to hearing that someone is autistic is to ask whether it is medically diagnosed autism by actual professionals or self-diagnosed autism. Because too often people say that they are autistic to give themselves an excuse.

[DSMatticus]

You see, my first reaction to hearing that someone is autistic is to ask whether it is medically diagnosed autism by actual professionals or self-diagnosed autism. Because too often people say that they are autistic to give themselves an excuse.

If someone tells you they have some medical condition, I would refrain from immediately expressing skepticism. That's not to say there aren't a plethora of people who will claim to have the latest popular psychiatric disorder because reasons, but you're probably going to offend them either way and people usually manage to make it obvious which camp they're in pretty fast.

[virgil]

I find accusations of retardation/homosexuality/bestiality to be rather crass and unimaginative. My preference is to get eloquent when I have the time, and have done so on a couple occasions on this forum.

[Ancient History]

Honestly, calling someone a spooge-sipping cockwrangler isn't a vast improvement over asserting that they're homosexual or overly promiscuous and that that is a bad thing.

[Shrapnel]

to call people out as being incompetent shitbags

But why not just call them incompetent shitbags, or say that they should be ashamed to be alive, and that they're a worthless waste of resources and a terrible burden on the rest of humanity? Or call them gay or something.

Yeah, that's a really good idea. [/sarcasm]

It seems you can use sarcasm, but cannot detect it. Are you autistic?

[Maj]

Aspergers is a real thing that people actually have and deal with - as has been admitted in this thread. The problem with Aspergers isn't actually a problem with Aspergers. It's a problem with antisocial internet trolls who diagnose themselves with Aspergers and then use it as an excuse for their bad behavior on the internet.

[Koumei]

A doctor once told me I almost certainly have Asperger's, but that wasn't a clinical diagnosis, and while I agree I meet some of the criteria, I didn't feel it was completely accurate. Actual testing revealed that to be nope.jpg, so I'm just a terrible person.

I blame House.

It's not just House, actually. Basically every TV show that has super-intelligent people also makes them complete shits. Cracked did an article on how geniuses are misrepresented on TV as being "superawesome at every field ever", knowing 200 languages, and being inherently better than people so they flaunt it. The fact that autism has been seen as an "idiot savant" thing as well (see: Rainman) also means self-diagnosis leads to "I have autism therefore I am smarter than everyone else".

That said, when people think "Autism Spectrum Disorder", they still think:
[*]Rain Man
[*]That kid who can't look at people or talk and eats sand (an episode of House)
[*]Sheldon (BBT)

All of them: male, annoying to deal with, unable to have an actual "normal" social life or anything of the sort. There's a bit of a stigma there that if you have an ASD, people are wasting their time communicating with you and you're subhuman. There's a group called the Autism Awareness Angels that try to dispel that, spreading information via attractive people who don't wear much clothing.

Edit: I really should clarify something, even those who are seriously affected such that you can't communicate with them aren't sub-human who should not enjoy human rights, that's just the popular view.

[Josh_Kablack]

It's because we can't say people are retarded.

Seriously, that's the whole thing. People don't want you to throw around a disability condition (mental retardation) as a perjorative.

What's wrong with general purpose allegations of non-specific mental defects and disorders such as:

• Sicko
• Defective
• Deranged
• In need of professional help
• Nutcase
• (pants-on-head) Crazy
• Insane
• Head Case

??

[Whipstitch]

I'll cop to having used such insults on this forum and it's not an ignorance thing, I'm just mean. You see, I go for a very specific connotation when I use informal attacks like "sperging out" rather than say, calling someone a creep or a moron. For example, I repeatedly called Pulsewidth a sperglord during the ovipositor debacle because he was embarrassing himself in a very specific manner. You see, when it comes to language, Aspies often miss the forest for the trees--we're fine with grammar,* sure, and it's not even unusual to have a rather wide vocabulary and a fascination with strict formalism and correctness. But we're also are known for literal-mindedness, struggling with oblique conversational cues and frankly just coming across as pedantic, silly asshats. Which, you know, seems kind of an apt comparison given that we had someone arguing that Dan O'Bannon was wrong about the subject of his own screenplay on the grounds that metaphor doesn't count. That's exactly the kind of thing I was coached not to do by a therapist because such an argument is just weird dictionary fetishism rather than actually coping with how people actually communicate.

*Well, usually, anyway. I know I've never been particularly good at it--I've just never been able to restrain my love of run-on sentences and dangling participles. And yes, I'm an Aspie; I was diagnosed at the Mayo clinic back in the early '90s before it was cool. Although I guess if I want to stay on trend I should move to Celiac disease.

[Shrapnel]

Your borken tags have torn asunder the thread, Whip.

[Whipstitch]

It is due to Josh, actually. My post doesn't have tags and ignoring him temporarily fixes the issue on my end.

[Shrapnel]

Ah, my bad.

Shame, Josh, shame. You realize that a dingo is eaten by a baby every time you leave broken tags unfixed?

[Orion]

So apparently I'm an Aspy too, as of yesterday. Although my psychiatrist is himself an Aspy who likes collecting Aspy patients, so I'm taking a grain of salt here.

[sabs]

Your psychiatrist is a hack
Asperberger's is no longer a valid medical diagnosis.

I all fall unders the Autistic Disorder umbrella.