I’ve read about how it’s typically difficult for adults with autism to remain employed, and I can completely see why. Never been officially diagnosed, but I’m pretty sure it’s a foregone conclusion in the way that I constantly over analyze every action taken by my co-workers and supervisors
So yeah there’s definitely some ND thought here, but I also can’t seem to get past how fake everything feels. And it feels like I have to play along with their little game where they all assume different personalities between the hours of 9-5 instead of being themselves. Because contrary to popular belief, individuals aren’t beneficial to capitalism, drones are
I hate my brain
I've had problems with socializing since I was a child since I have ADHD, which gave me bad social anxiety causing me to be withdrawn and largely quiet and still around normies (masking is automatic now and I can't turn it off anymore), and also I have severe depression which makes me so inwardly focused it annihilates my capacity for empathy. I can't make friends easily and I don't know how to network and I feel fucking trapped in bottom-rung anything and I sometimes feel like I have no real connections with any other human beings at all, even my own family, even the ones I live with.
I'm really struggling with my self-worth right now and the finances are at the heart of it. Not just feeling bad about myself from being poor; having to budget money is stressful for me, and I'm having to compromise on food quality at this point when I do have the energy and organizational capacity to actually make it to the grocery store, assuming I have money to spend. I can't do the things I want to do, like buy clothes or have more than one pair of shoes at a time or pay back my brother the money he loaned me to fix my brakes, or start up boxing lessons or go out and meet more people or do fucking anything and payday is just so fucking depressing because I see my money disappear almost immediately.
And I don't feel like there's any way out. I am not fucking good at making money. I don't think I ever will be.
The worst part is I HAVE made friends at my job, and we go out to karaoke and bar trivia and shit, and afterwards I'll just feel worse about myself because it's like prodding at a wound instead of letting it lie and being numb. I'm crushingly lonely and want deeper connections, and just getting surface level shit is so much more painful than isolation.
You’re not alone comrade. Everything you’ve described rings true for me as well
This reads very familiar, I'm sorry you have to feel those feelings. Particularly the line about doubting ever having an authentic human connection with anyone, including family. I wish I had advice but I do want to offer sympathy. It's so hard to curb the inward focus instinct that depression cultivates.
I have ADHD and yeah I do that overanalyzing thing too with my supervisors and coworkers. It's awful. I also have no self confidence at all, and I always think my coworkers think I'm just awful at my job and they see right through me. Idk. Y
It seems to me like there are similarities between ADHD and autism. Like I do that thing with overanalysis as well, but I also like routine. But sometimes I get tired of routine and need change
And only extremely niche situations make me overstimulated. Most of the time I’m understimulated, which just doesn’t make sense to me
Part of it is just that you have to interact with people who have different... beliefs, than you. And if you want to be able to get work done you have to keep the conversation to things you can agree on.
I never knew why people drank in excess on the weekends until my experience this week.
the social hierarchy infects literally everything, from corpo jobs to position in leftist orgs
look at your local orgs and see how the leadership is exclusively university educated middle class people
I would be willing to bet part of that is also who has time and mental energy left over after work to run something.
You should read the classic feminist essay 'The Tyranny of Structureless' by Joreen. She describes so clearly and usefully this type of petty-bourgeoisie cliqueishness in radical (liberal) organizations!
The Tyranny of Structureless’ by Joreen.
I feel like this paragraph is ill-omened.
Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness -- and that is not the nature of a human group.
It's definitely an important warning, but I don't see it as a death knell. We just need to be deliberate and honest about how our groups are structured. Also people in privileged positions should be willing to have their subconcious behaviors checked and explicitly organized against. If they don't, they should question why they are drawn to organizing and 'the Left'. Are you/they/we in it to Serve the People or just for our own personal excitement? The two can coexist but if one cannot honestly say the primary motivation is not to Serve the People, they should question why and whether they belong in leftist organizations.
Being in a well-structured organization is also hugely liberating! Being able to trust your comrades to do what they have promised and truly free yourself from the individualistic 'I have to do it myself if it will be done at all' mentality is profound. Bigger and more impactful things become possible. You can move beyond having a five person collective where each person brings some leftovers to a sharing table when they remember to. You can take seriously the task of revolution.
The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness – and that is not the nature of a human group.
Load Marx quote about coughing due to coal pollution and human nature. Hopium is, as Bhagavan Shree Matt Christman says, the people who will exist provided that society has changed somewhat for the better in the future, would be fundamentally different to us such that their concept of "structure" or "hierarchy" would be vastly different to what we in the 21st century think or would be superseded by other ideas.
One small step in my journey of radicalization was realizing how little your income actually relates to intelligence or work ethic. Really, all the popular and socially savvy people in school just end up becoming the same people that pull the biggest incomes under capitalism, at least in my experience. Well, not counting nepotism.
Right?! I used to work in a technical field and had a wonderful older coworker who was autistic and a national expert on pumping systems and he made HALF what our slimey sales lead who failed out of the technical track does! Not to fetishize technical skills, but he was orders of magnitude better at his job than the guy in sales and had been working a decade longer to boot. Just did not want to play office politics or the career game because he really enjoyed actually designing things.
I've had the "pleasure" of going to a few work dinners with my team/managers that involved C-suite types, and holy shit these people never left high school. Get them in private and put a few drinks in them and they'll start gossiping like teenagers, complete with endless whining about how two-faced each other are and petty plans to get back at one another. In one case I literally had to listen to one of them contemplate sleeping with another board member's wife to get back at him over some petty bullshit, and it took all of my willpower not to throw my drink in his face.
I was thinking deeply about this as well. Like you could do everything in your power to complete a specific task, but if you aren’t savvy enough with buddying up with the people highest in the social hierarchy, you’re fucked
I felt this first hand the other night. I was tasked to write some code with a co-worker, I did my part, and ended up staying up until 2 AM attempting to fix the shit he didn’t do. It’s like I was instantly transported to my college days of group projects where I was forced to take the blame because someone else didn’t complete their portion. Except now instead your chill/non-chill professor takes the form of a supervisor who cares about nothing more than advancing business interests and has your fucking livelihood in their hands because there are no worker protections in this country
That's absolutely wack mentality. Sorry you aren't popular or good socially or whatever but be materialistic. Nepotism is a giant giant thing to discount. Also do you work in an office? You must be white collar. Service work is chock absolutely full of incredibly socially capable people. So capable it's their fucking job. Popularity isn't real outside of high school. Social skills and the ability to be popular can help and having bad social skills or barriers to operating socially well by ND standards can totally hamper one's ability to succeed in capitalism just like myriad other things, thar doesn't make it a primary force.
Popularity isn’t real outside of high school
This is absolutely untrue. The markers of popularity change drastically outside of high school, but the underlying factors remain the same. In a technical field being "popular" is a small boon, but if climbing the ladder is something you're interested in then it's an essential part of the process. Competence can change the equation, but having people like you is big part of everything.
i'd add that what constitutes "popular" can be reduced to people that smoothly fit the status quo culture. so even in academia, no the people that are well-regarded weren't popular in high school or whatever probably, but their social networking is the most important thing for their futures. they don't even necessarily have to be a good researcher themselves if they can command some skilled grad students to actually do the work.
So, yeah. Sounds like white collar problems. Get a non bullshit job and these won't be problems. We can't all be highly paid.
Social skills alone do not.get you higher on the ladder. In fact they generally hurt you cause they make you care about people around you.
Okay, you're talking malevolent social skills, I'm talking just like...general social skills. You can have those and not be evil and plenty of people I know have very very good social skills and are in working class gigs because they are i would argue better socially than a.ladder climbing office creep. I think we're taking a different view on 'social skills' I'm just like, talking about being easy to get along with and all that stuff.
Socially, yeah, there's a totally different approach. Light side of the force and dark side of the force stuff. Learning good social skills that are like positive for others around you and American psycho shot are very different things. Any therapist can tell you that.
Yeah, I think the problem is that things that are positive for everyone around you aren't necessarily optimal for your individual success. The most useful skills include things like placating/bullshitting the bosses, and throwing your peers under the bus when it serves.
Modern management tactics like stack ranking produce the worst versions of this. In such situations, the most beneficial move may be to sabotage your peers. Helping everyone else would simply hurt your own chances.
That's fair. I've avoided jobs that I have to deal with thst crap. As a consequence, I'm poor.
Same. I'm currently trying to figure out how little money I can afford to make just so I can have a drama-free work life. Faking enthusiasm and making small talk with supervisors/managers can be so tiring, and I hate how important it is even when not overtly part of the job duties.
The current trend of open floor plan offices is a nightmare too. I feel like I have to be constantly on guard, lest I say something that gets me branded "not a team player".
I just consider kindness and compassion and being able to express them well is social skills.
I'm paraphrasing a therapist with a PhD and all that, yeah, disagree
kindness is only a social skill in a society that raises you to be a nihilistic narcissist by default, where feelings of guilt are to be projected onto the victims of one's actions.
Well that’s not what good social skills are. Autistic people are very kind and compassionate
Like it's either how yo get what you want or how to express what you want and they are very different books there.
You don’t know what social skills means. It doesn’t mean caring about the people around you. It means having a great ability to conform and knowing exactly how to act around the people you’re with.
my sibling in christ, that describes most of the jobs people feasibly could get that will buy them bread and shelter. i'm looking at choosing between a job i can't socially navigate or not being able to buy a house to live in type shit.
That 'greater simplification' is really something you're undermining. If this was true the most awful views of class would be true and the lower classes are simply lower due to their lack of social sophistication. Get that shit out of here.
So....you couldn't take a pandering, competitive position to get ahead and benefit yourself as an individual?
"nah. under capitalism, you can always take a pandering, competitive position to get ahead and benefit yourself as an individual, but cooperation with people in the same class position is a significantly better route. unfortunately, capitalism’s hegemonic position makes solidarity seem like a non-option to most people."
So if you feel.like being at all ruthless it's just easy street and there is certainly nothing else in play. This is just grindstone mentality but saying it's bad. It's also just a fantasy.
Seems to be the statement made by what I quoted which was the post I replied to.
I think people here fundamentally misunderstood what GalaxyBrain was trying to explain. You don't climb up the corporate ladder by sucking up to your boss and applying everything you've read in some self-help book rehashing How to Win Friends and Influence People. How is this any different from following some grifter trying to peddle some get-rich-quick bullshit? People at the top of the corporate ladder are where they are because of nepotism. They didn't climb their way to the top but were placed there by their company owner parents. And if it's not because they have parents in high places, it's always some bullshit like how they and the company's founder go to the same church for over 10 years. It has nothing to do with merit, whether it's professional competence or social skills. They didn't Patrick Bateman their way to the top.
And speaking of Patrick Bateman, Bateman doesn't have good social skills at all. He's completely socially awkward. And he can't read people's faces. He didn't climb the corporate ladder with his terrible social skills and inability to read people's faces. He got to be vice president because his rich daddy owns the fucking company he's pretending to work in. That's literally it. The business card scene was literally the owner's shitty kid plus the shitty kids who have some personal relationship with the owners and members of the board jerking off over inconsequential shit. To buy into the idea of being able to climb a corporate ladder means buying into the idea of social mobility, even if done in an unsavory way. This is just capitalist realism. There is no social mobility.
It's a big club and you ain't in it.
The service workers that are more popular and likable with the management will have more opportunities to move up and get management positions. Neurodivergent service workers will be more likely to stay in the lowest paid positions.
I can't do offices/corporate world either. I have the education and experience to get such a job tmrw if I wanted.
But I fucking hate all their "little games". Can't stand it. Would rather blow my brains out then do that again.
I'd like to do a simulation of doing an office job. I've worked kitchens or sold drugs my whole life and I feel like I'd get fired in the first week or do a lot of illegal shit and get put in prison or lie my way to the top. Paperwork isn't real and business is a silly thing on computers that you dress fancy for.
to survive in an office environment I find you just have to stop expecting the world to make sense.
I started my current job this past July. When I started, I thought to myself "I'm going to try and make REAL friends here."
So yeah anyways now I just show up and don't talk to anyone unless spoken to and do my job and leave.
When I started, I thought to myself “I’m going to try and make REAL friends here.”
:doomjak:
It's more the society built up by current systems, not your brain, comrade. In a world designed more around human need, we could begin deconstructing these absurd hierarchical social mores that are structurally ableist.
And I think this is what the anti-work movement tried (but failed) to address. No one should be anti-labor. Everyone should be anti-“forced need to complete these extremely specific deliverables which are the source of tension but have 0 impact on the state of the world”
People act like there’s going to be Armageddon if the deadline isn’t met
Also doesn't help how fucking awful these people are. I started one of these jobs a month ago and the disgusting shit they've said to and around me about homeless people, trans people, women, black people is unreal. I still present as a cishet white guy and they have always assumed automatically that I'm one of them. One of my coworkers is related to one of my best friends, and in the conversation where I told him that he complained about her being too woke for going to BLM events and for wearing a mask 2 years ago. I just smile and nod along, it's just easier that these ghouls don't know I was at those same events lol
Nice to see so many people in this thread feeling the same way though, feels like I could've written any of these comments. If I am going crazy in this neoliberal hellscape at least Ive got little friends inside my phone doing the same :yea:
One of the many reasons I left my last job. I'm sick and tired of bigots assuming I'm One Of Them™ because I'm white and straight passing and just going off about whatever random culture war bullshit is being ginned up recently. Not to mention it was entirely male dominated so sexism was rampant as well as the racism and assorted other bigotry.
Yeah it's certainly better than being the target of their bigotry and hate, but it's still not enjoyable. Especially when it's at work and it's your boss
For real. This thread is such a breath of fresh air :meow-hug:
I have gotten maybe four interviews over the last decade and done pretty poorly at those. No idea what I'm supposed to be doing.
If it helps up until very recently people with autism had a much lower life expectancy in general so things are getting better.
Me personally, I am riddled with ADHD, and it has taken me a long time to find an environment where I can do okay. Even properly medicated I don't think I would do okay in a straight office type place. So find you a job where everyone gets PTSD and you will have a better chance of fitting in if this one doesn't work out.
It would have taken less effort to not post this.
Would you say this to a person in a wheelchair lamenting a society that refuses to build ramps?
The pain is just as real.
Ironically demonstrating your lack with this needlessly callous and dismissive response.
You might be missing the point in your rush to respond in the most braindead fashion. Though your social interactions in this case are abrasive, unimaginative, and a tad tragic, I get the sense that you're an adept bootlicker when you choose to be.
Your promotions at work are surely safe. It's just your life outside of work that looks bleak.
Oh no work isn't a real social environment under capitalism so shut up and fuck off
Oh no it takes intellectual courage to engage in productive dialogue and reasoning.
Unfortunately you learned rhetoric on /r/atheism, so you'll have to settle for getting euphoric by posting drivel. 🧐
yo Walt I'm mad euphoric rn
not bc of any phony god's blessing
but bc I'm enlightened by my own intelligence, biiiitch
Lol I know you’re just being an asshole, but this exact comment is what I was talking about.
So thanks for proving my point I guess
Seems a tad reductionist, no? What about people who have friends outside of work
I think people here fundamentally misunderstood what GalaxyBrain was trying to explain. You don't climb up the corporate ladder by sucking up to your boss and applying everything you've read in some self-help book rehashing How to Win Friends and Influence People. How is this any different from following some grifter trying to peddle some get-rich-quick bullshit? People at the top of the corporate ladder are where they are because of nepotism. They didn't climb their way to the top but were placed there by their company owner parents. And if it's not because they have parents in high places, it's always some bullshit like how they and the company's founder go to the same church for over 10 years. It has nothing to do with merit, whether it's professional competence or social skills. They didn't Patrick Bateman their way to the top.
And speaking of Patrick Bateman, Bateman doesn't have good social skills at all. He's completely socially awkward. And he can't read people's faces. He didn't climb the corporate ladder with his terrible social skills and inability to read people's faces. He got to be vice president because his rich daddy owns the fucking company he's pretending to work in. That's literally it. The business card scene was literally the owner's shitty kid plus the shitty kids who have some personal relationship with the owners and members of the board jerking off over inconsequential shit. To buy into the idea of being able to climb a corporate ladder means buying into the idea of social mobility, even if done in an unsavory way. This is just capitalist realism. There is no social mobility.
It's a big club and you ain't in it.
I would add an asterisk for extreme circumstances where someone is able to climb the corporate latter and not because of nepotism. But it happens so little that it’s not even worth mentioning
