Hello neurodivergent comrades and allied neurotypical comrades! This months megathread is all about sharing funny or interesting stories that you want other people to know about.
Stories can be as in depth as a story about climbing a mountain, or as short as a story about how you stubbed your toe. If its something you want to talk about, its something we want to hear!
If you can’t think of anything to talk about then here’s some questions to consider:
What type(s) of stories do you like and why? What type(s) of stories do you dislike and why? What are the best ways to tell stories effectively? What stories do you still remember years later? How does your neurodivergence effect your relationship to telling or listening to stories?
Previous Thread: Megathread #7: Food and Cooking
Drop any suggestions for future Megathreads here
As always, feel free to completely ignore the theme and post what you want! We’re just happy to have you!
Important Community Stuff:
1.) First and Most Important
We want everyone here to feel safe and comfortable to post and participate in this community. We know there’s a bit of fear that even just one simple misunderstanding or ‘off’ social interaction will get you banned and slandered.
We just wanted to make it crystal clear that we will not let that be the case in this community. We understand very well how it feels for a social engagement to be going great and then suddenly its gone sour and it’s your fault and you don’t even know why everyone’s upset, and then without being given a chance to even learn what the problem was or grow, are cast out.
That won’t fly here. You won’t be cast aside for one or even multiple mistakes so long as it’s clear you’re doing your best to improve. Obviously, this isn’t a blank check for people to be abusive or hateful and get away scot-free, this policy can extend only as far as good faith. If you have any concerns or questions feel free to ask in the comments or dm us!
2.) Interest Spotlights
We’ve been getting suggestions that we should find ways to help users be able to spotlight their interests, as we’ve done here with this megathread, one other idea we had is to explicitly state that if you make a post about your interest and you want it spotlit, just @ one of the mods in a comment in the thread and we’ll pin it! Just ask!
3.) Tagging
Please let us know if you all would think of a more robust tagging system of posts, such as how [effort post] is commonly used, but maybe for stuff like [support] when you need to vent and want support, [venting] for when you need to vent but don’t want anyone to engage with it, stuff like that. It will normalize being able to directly ask for what you need, and it’s easy for us to imagine someone making a post to vent or complain about something but doesn’t want to or isn’t comfortable with people giving advice or pitching solutions. You don’t have to tag every post, but we want to encourage this as an option for people who would like it.
4.) It's ok to ask for upvotes
We think it’s okay for someone to explicitly ask to be upvoted, or for support, or to feel comfortable saying “I stayed up all night making this” because you stayed up all night making something that is something that you are proud of!
5.) Please contact mods about problems
Please read this post if you haven't already
TL:DR: Don't subtweet about issues you have with c/ND mods or about issues with the treatment of ND users on the site as a whole. Contact us directly about either of those issues and we'll try our best to resolve it. Good mods to contact are listed in the linked post.
Alt tl:dr: "To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one's suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one's own inclination. This is a second type [of liberalism]." - Mao Zedong :::# Important Community Stuff:
Story that I've told before in a past ND venting thread:
I came in from working out one night at around 11:00 PM. Went and did my daily grind in Genshin Impact, then went into the kitchen at around 12:30 AM to go take a couple of supplements/vitamins before I went and took a shower. However, my brain was operating on autopilot at the time, so I wound up taking one of my ADHD meds (dexmethylphenidate, aka Focalin, lasts for 4 hours) instead without realizing what I was doing. A few minutes later, the realization of my actions finally caught up to me, so cue me coming to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to fall asleep for the next 4 hours.
At the same time as I was doing that, I also went and took my shower, and for some reason I suddenly got the impulse to go and try out a dating app. I'd never used a dating app before, never even gone on a date before, and overall had basically no idea what the hell I was doing, but by god that was what I was going to do. I got out of the shower and basically spent the next couple hours setting up a dating profile. I didn't even have any pictures of myself on my phone at that point and had to go and take a couple selfies in the bathroom mirror. So basically, the first two pictures on my dating profile are both of me stimmed up and completely exhausted at 3:00 in the morning.
After that, I spent an hour laying on the floor just swiping through profiles and contemplating how strange it is to basically be window shopping for a partner over the internet, until around 4:00 AM when it felt like the effects of the meds had finally worn off enough for me to fall asleep. The next couple days were kinda miserable since I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep that night, but overall, me accidentally taking my meds at midnight was a weirdly positive experience since it resulted in me making my first ever attempt to put myself out there romantically.
I'll start the thread out with a story I hope is not relatable.
When I was in high school the principal gathered all the male students because someone peed in someone else's shoe in the boys bathroom. The student had the same name as me, so when the principal gathered all the boys to say "wtf don't pee in other peoples shoes" I quickly removed and checked my shoes out of fear.
I later moved schools, was in a classroom with a really loud class of troublemaking students. The teacher wouldn't let one of the students go to the bathroom, so I joked and handed him an empty water bottle. I did not learn my lesson the first time.
Might as well tell another story while this is still pinned:
A couple months ago, I made a Techno mix, uploaded it to YouTube, and then posted it in c/music hoping for some people here to give it a listen. About an hour or so after I posted the mix, I got a comment on YouTube that just said "Great mix🤟." Naturally, since I got the comment so soon after posting it to c/music, I was thinking it must have been someone from here on Hexbear.
But when I checked the channel, I found that was run by a pair of middle aged German techno DJs, with no obvious connections to left wing politics. So I responded to their comment, first thanking them, and then I asked whether or not they'd seen me share the mix anywhere. Turns out, they only found my mix 'cause they searched "techno mix" (or something to that effect), and then sorted the results by upload date. I never directly mentioned Hexbear or Chapo or anything like that, so it's almost certain that they've never even heard of this place.
So in conclusion, shout out to people who search by new on YouTube lol.
