Aspies For Freedom

What should you do if people laugh at something you've said when you were not intending to be funny? Any ideas?

What, even if they are laughing right in your face?

Tell them that what you said was meant to be taken as serious and then do your best to look upset :cry:

NT's nearly always require an emotion that effects them personally in order for their brain to recognise someone elses opinion regardless of how intelligent the suggestion might be. Pity or 'crocodile tears' seems to work wonder for some reason, does completly the opposite for me :/


Unless they are laughing really hard in which case you can stun them by saying, "I knew you'd find that funny"!

What, even if they are laughing right in your face?

Were they laughing to be mean or because they didn't understand it?

To give an example of when this has happened... I was fired from my first proper job on the grounds that I didn't fit in, wasn't a team player and lacked initiative. There was also an unpleasant incident when I got asked to drive one of the company's cars and (don't ask me how) I accidentally drove it into the security barrier and narrowly missed smashing the windscreen. I subsequently discovered that if I mentioned the car incident people tended to laugh, so now if I'm asked why I lost my first job I leave out that bit of the story.

There may well be some unwritten rule that other people's driving disasters are a source of amusement, no matter how unpleasant.

I suppose a lot of humour depends on schadenfreude.

Are you telling me to pull myself together?!

I've never understood the mindset of people who say "Twenty years from now I'll look back on this and laugh". If I don't find something funny at the time, why would I laugh at my misfortune in years to come?

Actually even when I do find something funny enough to laugh at, I can still get annoyed by other people laughing, just because some people have annoying laughs (raucous, cackling, hyena-noise etc) that make me want to shout "Shut the *** up!" Whereas other people have really endearing laughs that warm me to them. I reckon I could list all the guys I've known in order of laugh quality and it would exactly correlate with the extent to which I've found them attractive. Of course it could be the other way round - if you fancy someone you find their little mannerisms endearing.

Or you could just ask "what's so funny?". Then it's up to them to justify themselves!

Last month I went out to a restaurant meal organised by my rambling club. I ended up sitting wedged in the middle of the table. Not a wallflower, more of a daisy in the middle of the lawn - trodden on and ignored. All through the evening I'd try to follow the conversation happening on one side of me, only for raucous laughter on the other side to drown out what had just been said; so I'd switch to following the conversation on the other side, and then the reverse would happen. On and on and on...

Then more recently I went out to a pub night, again with the rambling club, and I had the bad luck to end up seated next to someone who laughed raucously after everything she said. I had her infuriating cackle in my lughole all evening.

Just a thought but is it possible that you could start an aspie ramblers group. I know it's a bit of a long shot but it might encourage a few lurking aspies to join up for the sake of meeting others with who there is a better chance of getting on with someone like themselves. It could be the first AFF Ramblers Association meet-up!  :grin:

EDIT: Didn't see your post Amy, great minds think alike eh?  

It makes me despair of ever having a relationship. Contrary to what agony aunts recommend, the majority of people (or at least the people I know) meet their partners through friends, or friends of friends, not societies and hobbies. So if I have no circle of friends to begin with, what hope is there for me? :cry:

On a more positive note, I do know of one pub in Exeter that isn't "smoke-filled": George's Meeting House in South Street. It's Wetherspoon's first smoke-free pub, and it's in a former Unitarian chapel dating from the Georgian era, hence the name.

I don't get this concept of "meeting" someone online. The internet is all words on a screen to me. I can't relate to someone without all the intonations and non-verbal clues that communicate the tone of a message.

I'm way too old to be a girl!

I spend all my working day staring at a computer screen. If only I didn't have to spend my evenings and weekend doing the same - I suppose that's too much to expect. Do you know of any fora for Aspie environmentalists?

Do you know of any fora for Aspie environmentalists?

No. Start one

Perhaps the more pertinent question is whether there are any other Aspie environmentalists apart from yours truly. Apart from the (lack of) response to any green-tinted posts I've made, I haven't even encountered any AFF members with interests in environmental issues. I actually make a point of checking the member's profile for practically every post I read, and I've noticed that most people don't include any information on their interests. It makes me look really eccentric for listing mine. And if that's weird by Aspie standards, that's really weird. :shock:

I wish I had a close friend who had a solar home! I feel so alone.