...is personifying and assigning feelings to inanimate objects part of autism?
I've had issues with that in the past
Abstract
Object personification is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human agents. In online forums, autistic individuals commonly report experiencing this phenomenon. Given that approximately half of all autistic individuals experience difficulties identifying their own emotions, the suggestion that object personification may be a feature of autism seems almost paradoxical. Why would a person experience sympathy for objects, when they struggle to understand and verbalise the emotions of other people as well as their own? An online survey was used to assess tendency for personification in 87 autistic and 263 non-autistic adults. Together, our results indicate that object personification occurs commonly among autistic individuals, and perhaps more often (and later in life) than in the general population. Given that in many cases, autistic people report their personification experiences as distressing, it is important to consider the reasons for the increased personification and identify structures for support.
Full text on Sci-Hub (paper's only a few pages long)
Interesting. I don't think it applies to my situation so much. I have that, but if anything, I'm hyper sensitive of mine and others emotions, to the point that I people please at a detriment to my own well being.
Ah, that's not autism. It's the personality trait of Agreeableness. Go search for big 5 personality traits and see if "high agreeableness" matches your experience.
Highly disagreeable people won't do anything they don't want to do. They'll do their own thing rather than go with the group. This can cause them fucked-up personal relationships because this makes people feel bad. High agreeableness people place the group's well-being above their own, which can also cause them to have fucked-up personal relationships.
Highly disagreeable people won’t do anything they don’t want to do. They’ll do their own thing rather than go with the group. This can cause them fucked-up personal relationships because this makes people feel bad.
:side-eye-1:
:side-eye-2:
Oh no
Consider Steve Jobs, who was famously at the bottom of the Agreeability scale. But without him insisting that he was right and everyone else was wrong, we would have never had the iPod. Or the iPad. Or the iPhone.
It did also lead him to trying to treat colon cancer with Jamba Juice & fucking dying because of it, though.* So there costs to any benefit, I suppose.
*:sicko-crab:
Pancreatic cancer. But yeah, there are downsides to low Agreeableness, too. It's neither good nor bad. High Agreeableness people are usually bouncy and everyone loves them. They like nothing more than everyone to be on the same page and happy because we're all together in one big group.
I've seen a lot more reading on the subject pointing towards upbringing. I don't really think I have autism, but when I read about a trait of something like what this post is about and it relates to me, it gives me pause. Glad this conversation is happening today! I'm learning some interesting stuff!
Oh, I've definitely got some issues from growing up, but they're trivial compared to others I've ran into. My mom was a young single mom until I was six, so I was partially raised by a narcissist Catholic boomer. I'm 34 now and I've processed quite a lot of it and made my peace with some of it.
It's interesting that now we have all these studies and a lot more information about early childhood development. I missed it all by a decade.
This reminds me of reading Marie Kondo who, before giving away/getting rid of things, she would say (I'm not checking spelling) osukaresamadesuta (oh-scar-e-sama-desh-ta) which is like, thank you for your hard work. It is like releasing the item from its duty to you to either rest or have purpose is someone else's life.
As with any symptom, in isolation it means nothing, and if it doesn't actual cause you a problem or undue mental strain it's fine. But if it is in conjunction with other symptoms or on its own is a source of suffering you might want to look into it more.
Yeah, I don't think I fit the qualifications. I just didn't realize that this particular thought pattern was associated with autism.
I think a lot of us have some sort of shall we say, parasocial relationships with people and things.
It's not a whole lot different from when me and my cat are vibin'. We can't understand each other, but we both still get a lot of comfort out of each other's presence. It's nice to have a "relationship" where you don't have to bare emotional burden sometimes.
I've seen a couple of those where they turn things around on neurotypicals and they're hilarious. The behavior looks just as pathological if you flip it around and don't accept that it's "Normal">
Don't mind me, just sucking on your lips and licking your tongue, as is perfectly normal among a very particular group of romantic partners but wildly inappropriate for everyone else.
Idk about Freud, but I still think (mouth-to-mouth) kissing is weird and if I could get away with never doing it again I would. It just squicks me out and I always feel awkward. Kisses on the cheek/forehead/crown can be tender and on the rest of the body can be really sensual, though. But hugs > kisses every day of the week, romantically and platonically.
Is that why I feel really sad when I walk by a display or claw machine full of stuffed animals? They always have such sad expressions on their face, and I know it's meant to manipulate people into buying them, but my 34 year old ass can't buy them all and bring them home. I hate the way it makes me feel.
I swear, movies like Toy Story are only created to implant the idea that inanimate objects lead rich, inner lives and you need to "rescue" them all by buying them, lest they run afoul of a kid like Sid
Toy Story only used toys because 3D modelling couldn't yet do humans in a way that didn't make your eyes bleed. All phong lighting and low poly counts that aren't half bad at representing plastic, so if you want your characters to not look like shit, say that they're toys and build around that.
Interesting! I don't know the first thing about animation and video production
It's kinda making fun of autistic people for personifying objects. I find it crass, but I want to think it wasn't ill-intended, maybe the author too tends to personify objects, idk; I added the CW just in case.
Yeah it seems more like an example than trying to make fun of people or genuinely trying to guilt someone into reading this
It's manipulative of people's emotions would be my guess. I don't know a lot about autism, but if you're manipulating people who are predisposed to those feelings into reading your article, that's not great.
It's emotional blackmail at best
Why is society so fucking weird about autistic people?
I mean, obviously any deviation from the norm will be severely punished, doubly so if it in any way makes you a less than ideal worker. Which is to say, fuck society
Why is society so fucking weird about autistic people?
We don't have a means of providing adequate standards of living to the healthiest and most hard working domestic residents. We are literally beyond ourselves when it comes to dealing with differences and disabilities, particularly cognitive ones. If you can't sit in a factory mindlessly churning out widgets, you can't sit at a cubicle mindlessly churning out python scripts, and you can't sit in a back office mindlessly churning out excel spreadsheets documenting the next round of financial crimes, we just don't know what you're supposed to do with your life.
Which is to say, fuck society
This particular society is pretty fucked, but it hasn't always been this way and it certainly doesn't need to continue to be.
I think of it as society being bad at managing our large numbers. I'd argue it's pretty easy to imagine how autistic people would be relatively well cared for and often well valued in tribal units, where all the other like 50 people in your tribe know you and exactly how you are and what you're good at and what you're not.
In modern society, we're all faceless numbers, so anyone nonconforming is not only extra legwork for capitalist overlords, but people don't know them and so struggle with how to act with or how to think of them. It's an issue of understanding individuality among millions that I think we've still not overcome in any good way.
Proof that scientists are just as capable of posting cringe as the rest of us
Death to America
![[CW: Ableism] Crass](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/971551268650762271/1028496930147405874/unknown-191.png){kind=link}
