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Actual autist here: Took me a loooong time to figure out a whole bunch of social concepts when it comes to what neurotypicals basically deem as small talk.
Firstly, you basically just have to accept that for most people, a level of classist, racist, other kinds of stereotypical insults are socially viewed as basically acceptable, even though its usually quite obvious they are, in fact, insults.
Then you have to understand the concept of proportionality in small talk. You have to reply with something that's very obviously and directly relevant, and of the same magnitude.
(Jumping from an insult about dietary preferences to an insult about war crimes is not the same magnitude)
Encapsulating this entire social interaction is the setting: coworkers of mixed nationality likely and an after work dinner likely implies an expectation of basically corporate social etiquette, ie, back handed compliments to establish a social dominance hierarchy, where the name of the game us getting as close to breaching the invisible 'wow what an asshole' line without actually stepping over it.
To avoid looking meek, docile, awkward or antisocial, you have to figure out an appropriate small talk style reply, which actually requires a fairly detailed knowledge of the other persons you are conversing with. Their culture, personal history, personal beliefs, etc.
If you don't do this at least semi-regularly, then you are a pushover who will be given higher workloads with no extra compensation and likely will not advance very far in your career, as you seem to be fine where you are.
So ok, if you know a bit about Israelis, you might attempt to insult back along the lines of dietary preferences.
But, its a faux pas to escalate even within this realm of responses: If you retort that you 'prefer your potatoes with pork', well, that's probably going to be viewed as quite rude, as that's still a higher magnitude, as it references something that is commonly known to be forbidden to most Israelis.
What might be a proportional response would be 'Sorry, I'd make them (the potatoes) into latkes for you, but I don't have any eggs'.
But that may still be deemed as overly offensive, depending on the temperament of the Israeli and the level to which the other coworkers feel the need to be defensive toward perceived anti-semitism.
So, as an autistic person, you have to consciously have all this knowledge and think through it all logically in real time, all while your actual emotion is anger because you don't give a fuck that the potato comment was supposed to be a joke, because it was in actuality a racist insult that actually references a fucking famine and a dietary stereotype that exists largely due to imperialist exploitation of your ancestors.
In summary, yeah small talk is an absolute nightmare for autistic people who are in an aggressive, hostile social environment, which, at least in my experience, is almost all of them.
(Jumping from an insult about dietary preferences to an insult about war crimes is not the same magnitude)
The potato joke is also a joke about a genocide, though.
Like "How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?"
"None"seriously.
insert potato joke
"why is that funny?"
let them try to explain
"oh, I thought it was about he Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole."
see how awkward it can get.
That's when they ostracize you for being a killjoy and not appreciating their "humour"
Fuck that toxic place, never liked any of those cocksuckers anyway.
As someone who lived 5 years in ireland and saw the history its absolutely fucking horrible. If you think about it its kinda ironic. Uk occupies a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. Israel is occupying a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. By the way as a neurotypical who has autistic family members and friends, in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time but the genocide in gaza is a current event. Also the israel one is political. Third thing is most neurotypicals are pussies, if you spend time with neurodivergent people you realize that a lot of things they say are funny as fuck, even if its a bit raw sometimes.
in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time but the genocide in gaza is a current event
Yep, basically this. To most non Irish people or those who haven't bothered to learn, its just a commonly socially acceptable racist joke.
Third thing is most neurotypicals are pussies, if you spend time with neurodivergent people you realize that a lot of things they say are funny as fuck, even if its a bit raw sometimes.
My experience is that almost all of them are selfish hypocritical bullies, though I do seem to have just had astounding low quality people around me for much of my life. I have had a few genuinely nice neurotypical friends, but they're a small minority.
(I actually just think David Bowie had the right idea being afraid of Americans. We're boorish, ignorant cocksure, backstabbing assholes compared to everyone I've ever met or know from another country.)
The vast majority of neurotypicals I've known who constantly give me shit and often don't even realize they are doing so?
They either have nervous breakdowns or become physically violent when I dish back 10% of what they've thrown at me by simply explaining their own hypocrisy to them.
Doing so is funny to me because to me their hypocrisy is self-evident and thus they are just are absurd but it breaks the brains of people who seem to just say shit with very low self-awareness.
sure, it's an "accepted" racist joke, sucks when the turns have tabled.
This is true, (see my second to last paragraph) but ... that is not as widely known.
Most people just think 'Idk, Irish people like potatoes'.
Most people think it is just in the realm of dietary preferences and cuisine and don't know why.
Even though there is a fairly direct equivalence if you actually know the history of the stereotype, most people don't.
Thus you are perceived as overreacting if you jump right to genocide.
To attempt an analogy:
It's like if a boomer tells a millennial or gen z to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and they point out that the original meaning of that phrase was meant to encapsulate the literal physical impossibility of doing so as analogous to making a decent living for yourself in an economy where very very few people have the means/opportunity/connections/dumb luck to earn more than basically a subsistence wage.
The boomer just gets offended or bewildered because they didn't know that, or they don't believe it, and they're too arrogant to admit they have no real, useful advice, and that all they have to offer is infantilization.
Their ignorance (and inability to admit their knowledge is flawed) allows them to keep using an offensive phrase and not see this as offensive.
Can you explain how the joke references “a genocide”?
Please learn about Irish history.
Is every use of the word “potato” a reference to famine in the 1800’s?
is every use of the word “yellow” racist? no but context matters
Sure; an important part of this context is that the Irish bombed more hospitals than the Israelis have
the joke was in reference to the irish potato famine which was caused by the uk subsidising the export of food in ireland so potatoes were literally the only thing they were able to eat because the british would force them to hand over everything else
How does the joke reference that?
By using the concepts "potato" and "Irish"
The only reason those concepts are linked is because potato was the emergency food during the period during which England was trying to kill all Irish people
That’s an insane misapprehension of the potato famine
You, who needed an explanation on how a joke about Irish and potatoes was offensive, are an expert on the famine?
I don’t think you have to be an expert to know that the Irish Potato Famine wasn’t a situation where potato’s were all there were to eat. I think you just have to be someone who didn’t fail out in the 5th grade.
I'm autistic and I've learned to stop trying to play this game. Instead, I just make assholes like this explain their sideways ass comments in a straightforward fashion for the group. Forcing people to explain bigoted comments and not allowing the subject to change has now made everyone uncomfortable. Not so fucking funny anymore. I usually don't have to do this more than once or twice within a specific group.
I also stopped playing 'the game' long ago and no longer put up with shitty people, but I can only do that because I'm on SSDI and don't have to interact with people in an employment setting.
Anon here is learning the hard way that basically, to advance in almost any modern, monetarily lucrative career, and most non lucrative ones, welp, you have to play this stupid social jockeying game because that is subconsciously how most others determine your worth as an employee, as a coworker.
You can do the 'explain why thats funny' angle, but that just makes ... you look like an asshole, a killjoy ... to the people whose jobs are their lives, their selves.
It has been working for me, and I've been getting promoted. I also tell the truth to executive leadership against advice. I just don't have the bandwidth to fully mask and complete the job I'm paid to do. I mask the essentials, but I'm not playing games. We have work to do.
Well damn, I am genuinely shocked that is working for you, but also very glad to hear that at least its working out well for you!
I had a job like that once.
Thank you! It took a long time, and there have been challenges, but things are moving in the right direction.
=D
SSDI?
Google says social security disability insurance
Also autistic here. Let's say you reply with "So why is that funny" and that person or a third person says "Don't be so sensetive". What's the best way to force the explanation?
"Im not trying to be overly sensitive i genuinely just dont get the joke. Explain it to me. Make it funny."
Please don’t assume my sensitivities. And then proceed to push again.
"I'm sorry, please carry on with your racist jokes"
No need for sarcasm, deadpan works fine
“Well, you know, Irish cuisine has a lot of potatoes in it.”
Joke fucking explained. How do you figure the guy’s going to be on the spot, exactly?
I guess you never heard of the potato famine then, which was a type of genocide visited upon the Irish by the British. Hence the 'sudden'jump from potatoes to bombing hospitals.
That's the source of potato jokes people crack about the Irish.
I’ve heard of it. It happened in the 1800’s on another continent. Can you explain what it has to do with eating potatoes?
"Does it? What's a good dish to try?"
Corned beef hash? Colcannon? Literal Irish potatoes?
Well played, though I doubt some Israeli making genocide jokes is going to be that familiar with Irish cuisine.
Everybody knows about Irish food, just like everybody’s heard of hummus
... Hummus is a popular staple of cuisine all over the eastern mediterranean and much of the middle east.
The word 'hummus' itself is from Arabic.
Hummus is not particularly unique to Israel.
You've apparently heard of hummus but you don't know much about it.
Hummus is not particularly unique to Israel.
Potatoes aren’t even native to Ireland.
Not necessarily, and if they have, they might not know the ingredients. Even hummus, many people don't know what it is made from. If someone is making a joke about genocide and forced to quickly switch gears to a culinary discussion, I doubt they'd play it off so well. They might, but I doubt it.
People pretty generally know that the Irish cook with potatoes, as a result of the Potato Famine and the resulting Irish diaspora. People are extremely likely to have interacted with people whose name and descent are Irish.
“I guess I don’t know. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.” With a look on his face that clearly shows confusion at why you spent two whole responses about something as insignificant (in his mind) as potatoes. Everyone else probably has similar looks.
For small talk like that you get one response on the topic. If someone said I should order potatoes because I’m Irish I’d lean so far into it, adapt an obvious accent, and say “Oh I do loove me potatoes.” If I wanted to backhand him a little I’d tack on “Except during the famine when there were no potatoes. Those were daark days” to the first statement. There’s enough humor in the accent to cover the callout mass starvation he probably unwittingly referenced.
TBH that’s a great advice for anyone dealing with assholes, autistic or otherwise.
we'd get along well
Also autistic here, I feel calling people out works pretty well for me. No need for extended knowledge except about your own culture, just point out the offensive part and make them regret.
Example: "Are you referencing the Irish potato famine?"
It forces the person to either back out or admit that it was offensive. Third option could be "Don't be so sensetive, it was a joke". Then you can say that you don't mind jokes but that you found that one offensive.
With knowledge about the person's culture you can always use it for a counter-attack with "I thought that Israelis would know that some jokes are off limits".
One thing specifically about Irish vs Israeli is that, if I'm not mistaken, Ireland and Israel are not on remotely good terms and haven't been for a while. If the Israeli was a natural-born Israeli citizen they may have truly meant to piss Anon off.
Fuck, I'd actually forgotten that. You could be right.
(Jumping from an insult about dietary preferences to an insult about war crimes is not the same magnitude)
The potato joke is a joke about war crimes even if the person telling it doesn't realize this. They actually responded in kind.
So what you're saying is this dude's coworker threw him an impossibly unfair underhand in order to hide, even if by accident, behind their nationality or beliefs.
Not gonna lie, I would've spit my drink laughing if I was at that table.
EDIT:
I didn't even know about the famine or tension between Irish and Israeli. The context makes that comeback x10 better.That's not "a nightmare for autistic people". He had every right to be angry about a famine and this was all just "submit to my authority" bullshit. I don't care who you are descended from, that is not logical nor fair nor reasonable in any social setting. I literally would have just decked him in the face and stormed out because that's the only scenario where OP is making it clear that authority does not equal privilege. Respect your employees.
What I mean by nightmare for autistic people is that autistic people, while often excelling at tasks and activities that have firm, mechanical, logical rules, are also often totally bewildered by social interactions because, on their face, they don't really seem to follow any black and white rules.
Autists try to logic their way, consciously, through a challenging social interaction as if it were a game of chess, even though the rules are basically calvinball rules.
My point is that this kind of catastrophic social interaction is more likely and more challenging for a neurodiverse than a neurotypical, not that the Israeli's incitement was justifiable.
literally would have just decked him in the face and stormed out because that's the only scenario where OP is making it clear that authority does not equal privilege.
Yep and that's how you ruin your career and possibly go to jail, have fun paying off your student loans at a min wage job the rest of your life after everyone hears about the guy that freaked out over a friendly dinner and broke the funny popular guy's orbital bone.
That's how you are supposed to deal with that level of awfulness. If you idiots can't fucking throw away your worthless fucking lives en-masse to fix this mess, how do you expect change to ever happen?
... who is 'you idiots?'
Autistic people? Everyone who's ever experienced a bigoted insult?
... Can you actually explain your plan here?
Oh, jeez, not like that, no. I am autistic, and I didn't mean other autistic people. Let's just say I'm angry at humans in general and leave it at that, I think I'd better get off Lemmy for a while.
Hey, totally serious here:
You got a bit overheated, realized it, and you're taking a break.
I totally get just becoming so angry at the hypocrisy of it all, and I genuinely just want to commend you for realizing when you got a bit hot headed.
If only our allistic acquaintances had the same ability to admit when their emotions are driving their actions.
Thanks.
He had every right to be angry about a famine
A famine in 1845? Caused by Irish reliance on monocrop agriculture?
Why would any living person in 2024 have a right to be “angry” about a joke that barely refers to it?
A famine in 1845 that was caused by...
"As someone who lived 5 years in ireland and saw the history its absolutely fucking horrible. If you think about it its kinda ironic. Uk occupies a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. Israel is occupying a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. By the way as a neurotypical who has autistic family members and friends, in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time but the genocide in gaza is a current event. Also the israel one is political. Third thing is most neurotypicals are pussies, if you spend time with neurodivergent people you realize that a lot of things they say are funny as fuck, even if its a bit raw sometimes."
That was by Altoothbrush in this topic, if you didn't see it.
I'm not Irish, nor do have an issue with Israelis. This whole issue just reeks of "casual dismissiveness" and I'm autistic myself so this hurts deep.
A famine in 1845 that was caused by...
Monocrop agriculture, like I said. How else do you lose all your food to a single crop disease?
Israel is occupying a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide.
But… they aren’t? The Irish population declined by 1.5 million people in two years. The population of Arab Palestinians has monotonically increased since the formation of the State of Israel in 1948.
in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time
Can you explain what else you think is supposed to happen to history as it recedes into the past?
Are we supposed to feel infinitely bad about the infinite past’s infinite array of horrors? Forever? Doesn’t the past ever get to just be the past? I don’t think you have to be “neurotypical” to understand why human beings have recency bias.
Ok since you are either ignorant or quite dense:
The Irish were forced into monocrop agriculture by their Imperial Overlords, as colonial subjects extracting resources and establishing a very fragile and inequitable economic system for the Irish.
The Famine was greatly exacerbated by capitalist agents of their Imperial Overlords exporting food from Ireland, which could have fed the Irish, but they were paid so little, their buying power could not compete with higher prices offered by exporting.
Also, Israel is currently committing a genocide inasmuch as they have militarily invaded an area, bombed it into and its inhabitants into oblivion, killing far, far more civilian casualties than combatant, with multiple instances of designating safe areas for civilians to flee to and then bombing the fuck out of them weeks later.
Oh, and they're also causing a famine by not allowing food in, even drone striking and shooting up UN food convoys.
Finally, some forms of racism become unacceptable in the current day because attention and scorn are brought by people who make the atrocities of the past known.
You're probably not gonna be able to get away with polite company hearing you refer to a black person as a n##g##r or an arab as a sand n##g##r or an asian person as a ching chong, even though you absolutely could not too many decades ago, and the reason that is the case is that social movements brought historical wrongs into present attention.
That it is still acceptable to joke about irish potatoes is something that seems strange and hypocritical to an autistic person who is far more likely to see the arbitrary nature of social norms, is far more likely to try to establish consistent, inviolable rules, than to an allistic person to whom the rules of socialization are basically processed and determined subconsciously, without need for an analytic approach.
Also, Israel is currently committing a genocide inasmuch as they have militarily invaded an area, bombed it into and its inhabitants into oblivion, killing far, far more civilian casualties than combatant, with multiple instances of designating safe areas for civilians to flee to and then bombing the fuck out of them weeks later.
But that’s not genocide. That’s warfare, in an urban environment, prosecuted (as military observers all agree) with the maximum possible degree of protection for the civilian population. That’s what it looks like!
Israelis in Gaza continue to suffer, bleed, and die on behalf of Gazans, as a result of taking greater risks than they need to in order to avoid extreme civilian harm.
Oh, and they're also causing a famine by not allowing food in
But that’s false. Not only are they allowing food in, they’ve increased food aid since Oct 11, the start of the operation in Gaza. 3500 calories per person per day - that’s more calories per person than in Luxembourg.
How could it be the case that Israel is both feeding Palestinians and “genociding” them?
That’s warfare, in an urban environment, prosecuted (as military observers all agree) with the maximum possible degree of protection for the civilian population
Other than the IPCC and ICJ and basically the entire world and even members of the Biden admin so disgusted by whats going on that they resigned in protest, sure!
We all know the maximally safe thing to do is to carpet bomb the designated safe zone civillians were instructed to flee to.
We all know the best way to get your hostages back is to blow up buildings they might be in with a fucking tank cannon at point blank, because the hannibal doctrine of killing hostages that are too difficult to extract is more expedient.
How could it be the case that Israel is both feeding Palestinians and “genociding” them?
It isn't. You believe a lie. Everyone other than Israel themselves has been claiming and reporting on Israel is saying they are allowing food in when they actually are not.
Anyway, you're very obviously an idiot, troll, hasbarah clown, or some combination of those.
It's been fun, toodles.
Other than the IPCC and ICJ and basically the entire world and even members of the Biden admin so disgusted by whats going on that they resigned in protest, sure!
When would they have previously seen social media from intense urban warfare? Soldiers in the second Iraq war didn’t have phones.
But simply being shocked by the reality of warfare is not evidence of war crimes. It’s evidence that war is shocking.
We all know the best way to get your hostages back is to blow up buildings they might be in with a fucking tank cannon at point blank, because the hannibal doctrine of killing hostages that are too difficult to extract is more expedient
That’s not an IDF doctrine, though. The Hannibal doctrine is merely to prevent, if possible, the enemies of Israel from taking hostages. How does that differ from any other nation? The US doesn’t allow hostage-taking, either. Neither do they where you live.
Everyone_ other than Israel themselves has been claiming and reporting on Israel is _saying_ they are allowing food in when they _actually are not._
No they haven’t. How can it be a lie? Everyone can see the food going in, the warehouses filling up, the chow lines distributing it to Gazans.